I am currently on the job market applying for grants and academic positions that will allow me to continue to research and teach about natural language semantics. I currently work as a Postdoc under both Cornelia Ebert in the Institute of Linguistics at the University of Frankfurt, and under Jacopo Romoli in the Semantics program at the University of Duesseldorf as part of the IDEAlISM project.

My previous appointments have been

• Post-doc, under Carolin Biewer in the English Linguistics program at the University of Wuerzburg.
• Post-doc, under Remus Gergel, in English Linguistics at Saarland University.
• Lecturer, under Klaus P. Schneider, in English Linguistics at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.
• PhD Researcher, under Hana Filip, in Semantics at Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf.

My long term goal is refining notions of semantic complexity to better understand how language changes. My short term goals include refining models noun phrases that capture the complexity of the count-mass distinction across varities of English, both historical and in the present day. I also have ongoing projects looking at the count-mass distinction in Greek, Hungarian, Sorani Kurdish, and Romanian.

I am also committed to anti-discrimination language research, and am currently participating in the project A comparitive corpus study of “race” and “Rasse”, which aims to investigate anti-racist language use and language policy.

My research projects are listed below, as are my publications and courses. You can find additional content on my Mastodon page.

Projects

The evolution of the English countability system: From Old to Present Day Englishes.

• Diachronic analyses.
  • Semantic change in the history of the English countability system, Slides.
  • The development of the collectivization construction in English. Abstract. Repository.
• Countability in present Day Englishes.
  • Countability shifts in the normative dimension, with Leda Berio. SuB 26 Abstract, Poster.
  • Counting and categorizing: The relationship between the mass/count distinction and thought, with Leda Berio, SemPrE Abstract, Slides.
  • Varieties of mass/count interpretation of hybrid nouns; with Yasu Sudo. Abstract.

Countability across Languages.

• Sorani Kurdish
  • Countability in Sorani Kurdish, with Delan Kheder. Submitted Manuscript.
  • The count-mass distinction in Sorani Kurdish. ICKL-5 Abstract, Slides.
• Romanian
  • Syntactic versus semantic countability categories, with Alyssa Löffler. (In prep).
• Greek
  • Object mass nouns in Greek; with Vasileia Skrimpa. LSA 93 Poster.
  • A measure based analysis of plural nouns in Greek.
• Hungarian
  • Bare nouns and the Hungarian mass/count distinction, with Peter R. Sutton, and Hana Filip.
  • Object mass nouns and subkind countability, with Aviv Schoenfeld. Repository.
  • Countability of subkinds and lexical plurals, with Aviv Schoenfeld.
• Japanese
  • Object Mass Nouns as Arbiter for the Mass/Count Category, with Peter R. Sutton, Hana Filip, and Katrin Byrdeck.
  • Object Mass Nouns in Japanese, with Peter R. Sutton, Hana Filip, and Katrin Byrdeck.
• Predicting object mass nouns across languges.

Complexity at the syntax-semantics interface of English NPs.

• Direct pseudo-partitives in American English, with Remus Gergel. (In prep).

The concept of race in (US-American) English and (German) German.

• A comparative corpus study of “race” and “Rasse”; with Benedict Kenyah-Damptey, Leda Berio, Daniel James, Esther Seyffarth.
• How do Germans and US- Americans Conceive of Race? Using Corpus Analysis and Semantic Feature Production Tasks to Compare the Structure of Race Conceptions. Daniel James, L. Berio, Benedict Kenyah-Damptey, and K. Erbach. (Under Review). Repository.

Plural predication.

• Fighting for a share of the covers: Accounting for inaccessible readings of plural predicates
• Readings of Plurals and Common Ground, with Leda Berio.

Publications

• Erbach, Kurt, Benedict Kenyah-Damptey, Leda Berio, Daniel James, Esther Seyffarth. 2023. A comparative corpus study of “race” and “Rasse”. Applied Corpus Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acorp.2023.100044
• Erbach, Kurt and Aviv Schoenfeld. 2022. Object mass nouns and subkind countability. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics (7)1. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5788
• Erbach, Kurt and Leda Berio. 2022. Countability shifts in the normative dimension. in Gutzmann, Daniel & Sophie Repp, Eds. Proceedings of Sinn und Beduetung 26. Universität zu Köln.
• Erbach, Kurt. 2021. Object Mass Nouns: A Frame Based Analysis. Heinrich-Heine-University, Duesseldorf. PhD Dissertation.
• Erbach, Kurt, Peter R. Sutton, Hana Filip, and Katrin Byrdeck. 2021. Object Mass Nouns as Arbiter for the Mass/Count Category. In Tibor Kiss, Halima Husic, and Francis J. Pelletier (eds.), The Semantics of the Count-Mass Distinction. Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108937979.008
• Erbach, Kurt. 2020. Predicting object mass nouns across languges. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 5.1 (2020): 228-241. https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v5i1.4698.
• Erbach, Kurt. 2019. A measure based analysis of plural nouns in Greek. In Espinal, M.T., E. Castroviejo, M. Leonetti, L. McNally, and C. Real-Puigdollers (eds). Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 23, vol 1. 413-431. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès).
• Erbach, Kurt and Leda Berio. 2019. Readings of Plurals and Common Ground. In E. Pacuit and J. Sikos (eds). At the Intersection of Language, Logic, and Information, Special Volume of Lecture notes in Computer Science, vol 11667. pp 21-41. Springer. Pre-final draft.
• Erbach, Kurt, Peter R. Sutton, and Hana Filip. 2019. Bare nouns and the Hungarian mass/count distinction. In: A. Silva, S. Staton, P. Sutton, C. Umbach (eds.), Language, Logic, and Computation. TbiLLC 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11456. pp. 86-107. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. Pre-final draft.
• Erbach, Kurt. 2018. Fighting for a share of the covers: Accounting for inaccessible readings of plural predicates. In: Sikos, J. (ed). Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2018 Student Session. pp. 197-208.
• Erbach, Kurt, Peter R. Sutton, Hana Filip, and Katrin Byrdeck. 2017. Object Mass Nouns in Japanese. In: Cremers, A., T. van Gessel, and F. Roelofsen (eds). Proceedings of the 21st Amsterdam Colloquium. pp. 235-244.
• Erbach, Kurt. 2014. Coordinate Systems in Gã. ScholarWorks. Missoula: The University of Montana Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library.

Teaching

• Erbach, K. 2022. Contrasting Grammars Across Languages. Saarland University.
• Erbach, K. 2022. Language and Power. University of Wuerzburg.
• Erbach, K. and H. Filip. 2022. Genericity. Heinrich-Heine-University, Duesseldorf.
• Erbach, K. and P. Maiwald. 2022. Research Methods in Linguistics. University of Wuerzburg.
• Erbach, K. 2021. Applied Linguistics. Universty of Bonn.
• Erbach, K. 2021. English Linguistics. University of Bonn.
• Erbach, K. 2021. Introduction to Semantics. University of Bonn.
• Erbach, K. 2021. Language in Culture and Cognition: Cross-cultural investigations.
• Erbach, K. 2021. Varieties of English. University of Bonn.
• Erbach, K. 2020. The acquisition of the mass/count distinction. Universty of Bonn.
• Erbach, K. 2020. Corpus Linguistics. Universty of Bonn.
• Erbach, K. 2020. Discourse and Power. Universty of Bonn.
• Erbach, K. 2020. The History of the English Langauge. Universty of Bonn.
• Erbach, K. 2020. Introduction to Semantics. Universty of Bonn.
• Erbach, K. 2020. Language in Culture and Cognition: Speech Acts, Politeness, Discourse. Universty of Bonn.
• Erbach, K. 2020. Methods in Applied Linguistics. Universty of Bonn.
• Erbach, K. 2019. English Linguistics](https://kerbach2.github.io/teaching/syllabus_Eng_Ling_2019_winter.pdf). Universty of Bonn.
• Erbach, K. 2019. The Mass/Count Distinction, Applied Investigations. University of Bonn.
• Erbach, K. 2017. Plurality. Heinrich-Heine-University, Dusseldorf.