Research at the Department of English
Here, you can find an overview of all research projects and recent publications from all reserachers at the English Department. Further information on research can be found on individual pages of staff members.
Research Projects
Finished Projects
BASICS (A IV)
Credit: Carola TripsBorrowing of Argument Structure in Contact Situations. Read more here
LinguaPix (A I)
A crowdsourcing mega-study developing a database of picture naming norms. Read more here
Linguistic Creativity (A I)
Credit: Agnieszka Ewa KrautzExploration of Linguistic Creativity in Multilingual Speakers. Read more here
MEG-SKoRe (A I)
Credit: Christine RothLinguistic and cognitive resources of multilingualism in English acquisition in primary school. Read more here
Quantified Self (A III)
Probing the Limits of the Quantified Self. Read more here
Publications
Department of English (last 5 years)
- Baroncini, I., Michelotti, A. and Engemann, H. (2025). Priming motion events in Italian heritage language speakers: Agents and mechanisms of language change. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism.
- Baroncini, I. and Torregrossa, J. (2025). Language and structure activation explain cross-linguistic influence in bilingual language production: Evidence from within- and across-language priming. Bilingualism : Language and Cognition.
- Elter, W. (2025). ‘Busked hem redy boun’: Integrating norse‑derived busken into the class of ‘prepare’ verbs in medieval English author(s). North-Western European language evolution : NOWELE, 78, 178–215.
- Elter, W. J. and Shaw, M. (2025). Loan verb accommodation: a comparison of Old Norse and French in Middle English. English Language and Linguistics, 29, 35–58.
- Jacob, G., Ilen, H. and Engemann, H. (2025). The role of cross-linguistic structural priming in contact-induced language change : Ungrammatical comparative priming in Turkish–German bilinguals. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism.
- Karkaletsou, F., Jacob, G. and Allen, S. E. M. (2025). Cross-linguistic structural priming of innovations in Canadian French: Evidence from a language contact situation. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism.
- Leitner, F. (2025). “There's nobody else here:" Recessionary Ireland and the impossibility of community in Conor O'Callaghan's Nothing on Earth (2016). Anglistik, 36, 63–77.
- Meinhardt-Injac, B., Altvater-Mackensen, N., Mohs, A., Goulet-Pelletier, J.-C. and Boutet, I. (2025). Emotion processing in late adulthood: the effect of emotional valence and face age on behavior and scanning patterns. Behavioral Sciences, 15, 1–20.
- Michelotti, A., Baroncini, I. and Engemann, H. (2025). Linguistic variation in the interpretation and production of Italian motion event constructions in younger and older adults: evidence for language change? Language and Cognition, 17, 1–26.
- Michelotti, A. and Engemann, H. (2025). Evidence from priming on how L2 sentence processing impacts L3 production and cross-linguistic awareness. Frontiers in Language Science, 4, 1–17.
- Michelotti, A. and Engemann, H. (2025). The acquisition of motion event constructions by German-speaking learners of Italian as L3: The role of input frequency distributions, the L1 and the L2(s). International Journal of Bilingualism, 1–16.
- Schuhmaier, S. (2025). Immigrant Experience and Irish Literature: Melatu Uche Okorie's This Hostel Life. Review of Irish Studies in Europe : RISE, 7, 50–65.
- Schuhmaier, S. (2025). Subject Formation in the Early Black Atlantic: Disease Narratives of the Middle Passage. Journal of Literature and Science, 18, 1–10.
- Thoma, D. and Koziak, J. (2025). Nostalgic advertising enhances brand name recall by reactivating brand‐related autobiographical memories, especially for familiar and personally relevant brands. Psychology & Marketing, 42, 3306-3318.
- Engemann, H. (2024). Structural complexity reduction in English-French bilingual children’s event encoding. Journal of Child Language, 51, 1243-1267.
- Engemann, H. and Radetzky, S. (2024). Cognate facilitation in child third language learners in a multilingual setting. Languages : Open Access Journal, 9, 1–26.
- Jacob, G., Katsika, K., Family, N., Kholodova, A. and Allen, S. E.M. (2024). Evidence for a constituent order boost in structural priming. Glossa Psycholinguistics, 3, 1–26.
- Jacob, G., Schaeffer, M. J., Oster, K. and Hansen-Schirra, S. (2024). The psycholinguistics of shining-through effects in translation: cross-linguistic structural priming or serial lexical co-activation? Applied Psycholinguistics, 45, 542–566.
- Krautz, A. (2024). Tolerance of ambiguity, need for cognitive closure and feeling like a different person when speaking different languages. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 45, 289–305.
- Leitner, F. (2024). Poor little rich kids: privilege, murder and melancholia in Kevin Power's “Bad Day in Blackrock” and Tana French's “The Secret Place”. Review of Irish Studies in Europe : RISE, 7, 66–84.
- Lorette, P. and Dewaele, J.-M. (2024). Interpersonal perception of emotional intensity by English first (L1) and foreign (LX) language users in audio(visual) communication. International Journal of Multilingualism, 21, 1116-1133.
- Lorette, P. and Dewaele, J.-M. (2024). Valence and arousal perception among first language users, foreign language users, and naïve listeners of Mandarin across various communication modalities. Bilingualism : Language and Cognition, 27, 874–885.
- Maffongelli, L., Haerms, L., Paulus, M. and Altvater-Mackensen, N. (2024). Assessing action processing in preschool children: A systematic review and overview of different action tasks. International Journal of Developmental Science, 1–29.
- Melzel, S., Altvater-Mackensen, N., Ganglmayer, K., Müller, F., Steinmassl, K., Hauf, P. and Paulus, M. (2024). The development of children’s and adults’ use of kinematic cues for visual anticipation and verbal prediction of action. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology : JECP, 249, 1–25.
- Percillier, M. and Schauwecker, Y. (2024). Cognitive mechanisms driving (contact-induced) language change: introduction to the special issue. Linguistics Vanguard, 10, 109–113.
- Schuhmaier, S. (2024). National identity, race, and grime: Rethinking the margins of englishness. Journal for the Study of British Cultures : JSBC, 31, 77–93.
- Thoma, D. (2024). Language-dependent emotions in heritage and second language bilinguals: When physiological reactions deviate from feelings. International Journal of Bilingualism, 28, 374–389.
- Thoma, D., Heilmann, F. and Trotno, M. (2024). Homophone priming in bilingual preference formation. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1–14.
- Altvater-Mackensen, N. (2023). Sprachwahrnehmung im Säuglingsalter. Kindheit und Entwicklung, 32, 131–141.
- Blott, L. M., Gowenlock, A. E., Kievit, R., Nation, K. and Rodd, J. M. (2023). Studying individual differences in language comprehension : The challenges of item-level variability and well- matched control conditions. Journal of Cognition, 6, 1–26.
- Blott, L. M., Rodd, J. M. and Warren, J. E. (2023). Presentation format affects the behavioural and neural processing costs of sentence reinterpretation. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 38, 779–801.
- Dewaele, J.-M., Mavrou, I., Kyriakou, A. and Lorette, P. (2023). The role of language and emotional intelligence in judgments of real-life social and moral transgressions among Greek, Hungarian, and British users of English. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 1–12.
- Kholodova, A., Peter, M., Rowland, C. F., Jacob, G. and Allen, S. E. M. (2023). Abstract priming and the lexical boost effect across development in a structurally biased language. Languages : Open Access Journal, 8, 1–21.
- Lorette, P. (2023). Opportunities and challenges of positionality in quantitative research: overcoming linguistic and cultural ‘knowledge gaps’ thanks to ‘knowledgeable collaborators’. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1–15.
- Rolland, L., King, H. M. and Lorette, P. (2023). Introduction: Methodological implications of participant and researcher multilingualism: making language dynamics visible. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 44, 645–656.
- Schevenels, K., Altvater-Mackensen, N., Zink, I., De Smedt, B. and Vandermosten, M. (2023). Aging effects and feasibility of statistical learning tasks across modalities. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 30, 201–230.
- Schuhmaier, S. (2023). Class and the middle-class novel: Jonathan Coe's Trotter-Trilogy. Anglistik, 34, 113–123.
- Struik, T. and Schoenmakers, G.-J. (2023). When information structure exploits syntax: The relation between the loss of VO and scrambling in Dutch. Journal of Linguistics : JL, 59, 655–690.
- Thoma, D., Becker, K. and Kißler, A. (2023). Presuppositions are more persuasive than assertions if addressees accommodate them: Experimental evidence for philosophical reasoning. Applied Psycholinguistics, 44, 816–843.
- Thoma, D., Hüsam, J. and Wielscher, K. (2023). Introducing grip force as a nonverbal measure of bilingual feelings. Bilingualism : Language and Cognition, 26, 125–137.
- Tsehaye, W. (2023). Light-weights placed right: post-field constituents in heritage German. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1–13.
- van Kemenade, A., Hinterhölzl, R. and Struik, T. (2023). Word order change, architecture, and interfaces: Evidence from the development of V to C movement in the history of English. Journal of Historical Syntax, 7, 1–55.
- Engemann, H. (2022). Entropy convergence in early bilinguals' syntactic packaging. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1–8.
- Engemann, H. (2022). How (not) to cross a boundary: crosslinguistic influence in simultaneous bilingual children's event construal. Bilingualism : Language and Cognition, 25, 42–54.
- Hopp, H., Thoma, D., Kieseier, T., Jakisch, J. and Sturm, S. (2022). Early plurilingual foreign language teaching in mixed classrooms: Linguistic and metalinguistic predictors of foreign language development among majority-language and minority-language students in EFL classes. System, 108, 1–14.
- Kieseier, T., Thoma, D., Vogelbacher, M. and Hopp, H. (2022). Differential effects of metalinguistic awareness components in early foreign language acquisition of English vocabulary and grammar. Language Awareness, 31, 495–514.
- Krautz, A. E. and Keuleers, E. (2022). LinguaPix database: A megastudy of picture-naming norms. Behavior Research Methods : BRM, 54, 941–954.
- Liu, L., Götz, A., Lorette, P. and Tyler, M. D. (2022). How tone, intonation and emotion shape the development of infants' fundamental frequency perception. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1–14.
- Pashkova, T., Tsehaye, W., Allen, S. E. M. and Tracy, R. (2022). Syntactic optionality in heritage language use: Clause type preferences of German heritage speakers in a majority English context. Heritage Language Journal, 19, 1–41.
- Rohlfing, K. J., Altvater-Mackensen, N., Caruana, N., Van den Berghe, R., Bruno, B., Tolksdorf, N. F. and Hanulíková, A. (2022). Social/
dialogical roles of social robots in supporting children's learning of language and literacy – A review and analysis of innovative roles. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2022, 1–15. - Struik, T. (2022). OV/
VO variation and information structure in Old Saxon and Middle Low German. Journal of Historical Syntax, 6, 1–36. - Struik, T. and van Kemenade, A. (2022). Information structure and OV word order in Old and Middle English: a phase-based approach. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics, 25, 79–114.
- Trips, C. and Rainsford, T. M. (2022). Tolerating subject-experiencers? Yang’s tolerance principle applied to psych verbs under contact in middle english. Journal of Historical Syntax, 6, 1–43.
- Wiese, H., Alexiadou, A., Allen, S. E. M., Bunk, O., Gagarina, N., Iefremenko, K., Martynova, M., Pashkova, T., Rizou, V., Schroeder, C., Shadrova, A., Szucsich, L., Tracy, R., Tsehaye, W., Zerbian, S. and Zuban, Y. (2022). Heritage Speakers as Part of the Native Language Continuum. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 1–19.
- Blott, L. M., Rodd, J. M., Ferreira, F. and Warren, J. E. (2021). Recovery from misinterpretations during online sentence processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 47, 968–997.
- Dewaele, J.-M., Lorette, P., Rolland, L. and Mavrou, I. (2021). Differences in emotional reactions of Greek, Hungarian, and British users of English when watching television in English. International journal of Applied Linguistics : INJAL, 31, 345–361.
- Hopp, H., Kieseier, T., Jakisch, J., Sturm, S. and Thoma, D. (2021). Do minority-language and majority-language students benefit from pedagogical translanguaging in early foreign language development? Multilingua, 40, 815–837.
- Hopp, H. and Thoma, D. (2021). Effects of plurilingual teaching on grammatical development in early foreign-language learning. The Modern Language Journal : MLJ, 105, 464–483.
- Kieseier, T. (2021). Bilingual advantage in early EFL pronunciation accuracy of German 4th-graders. International Journal of Bilingualism, 25, 708–726.
- Kieseier, T. (2021). Productive phonological bootstrapping in early EFL of 4th-graders in German primary schools. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 7, 183–211.
- Lorette, P. (2021). Investigating emotion perception via the two-dimensional affect and feeling space: an example of a cross-cultural study among Chinese and Non-Chinese participants. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 1–14.
- Thoma, D. (2021). Emotion regulation by attentional deployment moderates bilinguals’ language-dependent emotion differences. Cognition and Emotion, 35, 1121-1135.
- Thoma, D. and Wechsler, J. (2021). Older and more personal: Stronger links between brand‐name recall and brand‐related autobiographical memories in older consumers. Psychology & Marketing, 38, 1384-1392.
- Tsehaye, W., Pashkova, T., Tracy, R. and Allen, S. E. M. (2021). Deconstructing the native speaker: further evidence from heritage speakers for why this horse should be dead!. Frontiers in Political Science, 12, 1–14.
- Percillier, M., Schauwecker, Y., Stein, A. and Trips, C. (2024). Carrying verbs across the channel: modelling change in bilingual medieval England. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Tracy, R. and Gawlitzek, I. (2023). Mehrsprachigkeit und Spracherwerb. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto.
- Karst, K., Thoma, D., Derkau, J., Seifried, J. and Münzer, S. (eds.) (2021). Lehrer*innenbildung im Kontext leistungsbezogener Heterogenität und Mehrsprachigkeit von Schüler*innen. Münster ; New York: Waxmann.
- Gonnermann, A., Schuhmaier, S. and Schwander, L. (eds.) (2021). Literarische Perspektiven auf den Kapitalismus : Fallbeispiele aus dem 21. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto.
- Buschfeld, S. and Percillier, M. (2025). World Englishes and second language acquisition: teaching English as an international language. In The Routledge handbook of teaching English as an international language (S. 63–76). London: Routledge.
- Sun, S., Lorette, P. and Herrero Férnandez, C. (2025). Melodic cues of acted emotional speech in LX Spanish spoken by Chinese L1 speakers. In Affectivity and prosody in second language learning (S. 79–104). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
- Zürn, N., Keller, M., Tracy, R. and Lüdeling, A. (2025). Dynamic properties of the heritage speaker lexicon. In Linguistic dynamics in heritage speakers : insights from the RUEG group (S. 325–375). Berlin: Language Science Press.
- Percillier, M. (2024). The outer and expanding circles in Southeast Asia. In The Oxford handbook of Southeast Asian englishes (S. 15–33). Oxford ; New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
- Engemann, H. (2023). How it all began: The acquisition of language(s) in childhood. In Applied cognitive linguistics for language teachers (S. 224–269). Berlin ; Münster: Lit.
- Tracy, R. (2023). Erwerb sprachlicher Kompetenzen im Lebensverlauf. In Grundlagen der sprachlichen Bildung (S. 57–83). Münster ; New York: Waxmann.
- Trips, C. and Stokes, P. A. (2023). From original sources to linguistic analysis: Tools and datasets for the investigation of multilingualism in medieval english. In Medieval english in a multilingual context : current methodologies and appoaches (S. 49–91). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Altvater-Mackensen, N. (2022). Neuropsychologische Grundlagen der frühen Sprachentwicklung. In Sprachförderung in Kindertagesstätten (S. 37–54). Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren.
- Percillier, M. (2022). Adapting the Dynamic Model to historical linguistics : Case studies on the Middle English and Anglo-Norman contact situation. In English historical linguistics : historical English in contact : papers from the xxth ICEHL (S. 6–33). Amsterdam [u. a.]: Benjamins.
- Reichardt, U. (2022). Sentience, artificial intelligence, and human enhancement in US-American fiction and film: Thinking with and without consciousness. In Artificial intelligence and human enhancement (S. 225–236). Berlin: De Gruyter.
- Reichardt, U. (2022). Shostakovich, totalitarianism, and Anglo-American fiction: Powers, Parnes, and Vollmann. In The public mind and the politics of postmillennial U.S.-American writing (S. 49–70). Berlin: De Gruyter.
- Thoma, D. (2022). Cognitive and linguistic profiles in early foreign language vocabulary and grammar. In Cognition and second language acquisition : studies on pre-school, primary school and secondary school children (S. 162–189). Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto.
- Thoma, D., Lorette, P. and Krautz, A. E. (2022). Bidirectional language effects: Evidence on the emotionality of bilinguals' autobiographical memories from pupillometry, eye-movements, and self-reports. In Recent advances in second language emotion research (S. 67–94). Cizur Menor: Civitas Aranzadi ;Thomson Reuters.
- Tracy, R. (2022). 18. Gemischtsprachiges Sprechen: Formen, Funktionen, Dynamik. In Handbuch Mehrsprachigkeit (S. 399–427). Berlin [u. a.]: De Gruyter.
- Trips, C. (2022). Diachronie des Englischen. In Linguistik im Sprachvergleich : Germanistik, Romanistik, Anglistik (S. 891–902). Berlin ; Heidelberg: Metzler.
- Altvater-Mackensen, N. and Meinhardt-Injac, B. (2021). Das psychologische Experiment. In Psychologische Forschungsmethoden in den Bildungswissenschaften : eine Einführung für Lehramtsstudierende (S. 123–142). Göttingen: Hogrefe.
- Fried, F. and Gawlitzek, I. (2021). Interdisziplinäre Entwicklung eines Kerncurriculums “Deutsch als Erwerbsobjekt und Unterrichtssprache im mehrsprachigen Klassenzimmer”. In Lehrer*innenbildung im Kontext leistungsbezogener Heterogenitat und Mehrsprachigkeit von Schüler*innen (S. 114–138). Müster ; New York: Waxmann.
- Gogolin, I. and Tracy, R. (2021). Vom mehrsprachigen zum mehrstimmigen Klassenzimmer: eine Bildungsreise. In Lehrer*innenbildung im Kontext leistungsbezogener Heterogenität und Mehrsprachigkeit von Schüler*innen (S. 161–179). Münster ; New York: Waxmann.
- Gonnermann, A. (2021). „Have there been unexplained deaths?”: Kapitalismus, Beschleunigung und die Rolle des Theaters in Alan Bennetts Allelujah! (2018). In Literarische Perspektiven auf den Kapitalismus : Fallbeispiele aus dem 21. Jahrhundert (S. 45–66). Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto.
- Gonnermann, A., Schuhmaier, S. and Schwander, L. (2021). Zur Thematik und Aktualität dieses Bandes. In Literarische Perspektiven auf den Kapitalismus : Fallbeispiele aus dem 21. Jahrhundert (S. 9–20). Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto.
- Keller, M. (2021). Developing a structural template for historical code-switching.. In Historisches Codeswitching mit Deutsch : multilinguale Praktiken in der Sprachgeschichte (S. 437–464). Berlin ; Boston, Mass.: De Gruyter.
- Lusin, C. (2021). Der 'Pate' ist tot: Macht, Markt und Moral in der BBC-Serie McMafia (2018). In Literarische Perspektiven auf den Kapitalismus : Fallbeispiele aus dem 21. Jahrhundert (S. 89–112). Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto.
- Lusin, C. (2021). Der lange Schatten des Kolonialismus: Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness. Eine literaturwissenschaftliche Perspektive. In Krise(n) der Moderne : über Literatur und Zeitdiagnostik (S. 137–148). Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.
- Schuhmaier, S. (2021). Singing the nation: The condition of Englishness in the lyrics of PJ Harvey and Kate Tempest. In Nationalism and the postcolonial (S. 92–108). Leiden ; Boston: Brill.
- Schuhmaier, S. (2021). Wert und Werte im Kapitalismus: Die Songtexte Kae Tempests und Kanos. In Literarische Perspektiven auf den Kapitalismus : Fallbeispiele aus dem 21. Jahrhundert (S. 139–164). Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto.
- Schwander, L. (2021). „Another world is possible“: Arundhati Roys anti-kaptialistische Vision in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017). In Literarische Perspektiven auf den Kapitalismus : Fallbeispiele aus dem 21. Jahrhundert (S. 211–230). Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto.
- Thoma, D. and Ofner, D. (2021). Bedingungsfaktoren für die Entwicklung von Basiskompetenzen für sprachsensibles Unterrichten bei gymnasialen Lehramtsstudierenden. In Lehrer*innenbildung im Kontext leistungsbezogener Heterogenität und Mehrsprachigkeit von Schüler*innen (S. 139–160). Münster ; New York: Waxmann.
- Baroncini, I. and Torregrossa, J. (2024). Bilingual children’s explicit language knowledge and its relationship to priming within- and across-languages. In , Empirical and theoretical approaches to language acquisition : a generative perspective (S. 204–226). , Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle upon Tyne.
- Di Domenico, E., Comunello, D. and Baroncini, I. (2024). Extending the decreased activation hypothesis. In , Current perspectives on generative SLA – processing, influence, and interfaces : selected proceedings of the 16th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (S. 38–63). Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, John Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam [u. a.].
- Leitner, F. (2024). Houses with histories: Ruins as Lieux d'oubli in Tana French's The Likeness (2008), Dervla McTiernan's The Ruin (2018), and Stuart Neville's The House of Ashes (2021). In , History in stories : the Irish past and the challenges of the present (S. 159–170). Anglo-amerikanische Studien = Anglo-American studies, Peter Lang: Berlin.
- Lorette, P., Gorski, T., Engemann, H. and Soroli, E. (2024). Language learning and cognitive restructuring in bilingual French-German event processing. In , Proceedings of 15th International Conference of Experimental Linguistics : ExLing 2024, Université Paris Cité, 23–25 October 2024, Paris, France (S. 61–64). , ExLing Society: Athens, Greece.
- Baroncini, I. and Torregrossa, J. (2023). The Effects of non-linguistic inhibition on structural Priming. In , Proceedings of the 47th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (S. 15–28). , Cascadilla Press: Somerville, MA.
- Elter, W. (2023). Integration of cognate loan verbs in contact bClosely related languages effecting valency changes. In , Language in educational and cultural perspectives (S. 237–258). , Springer: Cham, Switzerland.
- Altvater-Mackensen, N. (2021). What are you looking at? Using eye tracking glasses to monitor toddler attention in natural learning situations. In , Proceedings of the 45th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Bd. 1 (S. 1–14). , Cascadilla Press: Somerville, MA.