Prof. Dr. Uta Reinöhl

seit 05/2020	Holder of the Chair of General Linguistics, Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg
10/2019 – 04/2020	Acting Professor of General Linguistics, LMU Munich
seit 02/2019	Head of an Emmy Noether Junior Research Group (DFG) at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz on the topic: “Non-hierarchicality in grammar. Construction formation without word class distinction across categories and languages.”
08/2017 – 01/2019	Return to the position as Assistant in General Linguistics, Institute of Linguistics, University of Cologne
10/2015 – 06/2017	Research stay at the ANU Canberra with a Feodor Lynen Postdoctoral Fellowship (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation)
27/03/2014 – 01/2019	Research assistant in General Linguistics, University of Cologne (Assistant position)
12/2013	PhD defense on the topic: Grammaticalization and the Rise of Phrase Structure – On the Emergence of Postpositional Constructions in Indo-Aryan (Supervisors: Prof. Nikolaus Himmelmann and Prof. Hans Henrich Hock)
04/2013 – 03/2014	Research assistant in General Linguistics, University of Cologne (covering assistant position)
07/2011 – 12/2011	DAAD Research Fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
02/2011 – 07/2013	PhD Scholarship recipient from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes)
10/2010 – 10/2013	Fellow of the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne
04/2010 – 07/2011	PhD studies at the University of Cologne
04/2010 – 07/2011	Research Assistant in General Linguistics, University of Cologne
01/03/2010	Magistra Artium (Master of Arts), Thesis topic: On the Concept of Renovation in the Framework of Grammaticalization Theory
10/2006 – 02/2010	Undergraduate studies majoring in General Linguistics with minors in Philosophy and English Philology at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
09/2005 – 06/2006	Studies in Linguistics, Philosophy, English Literature, and Political Science at University College Dublin (Ireland)

Corpora

• Reinöhl, Uta. 2024. Documentation of Igu, Data Center for the Humanities. [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.18716/dch/b.00000017
• Casaretto, Antje, Jakob Halfmann, Natalie Korobzow, Daniel Kölligan, &Uta Reinöhl. 2023. The morphologically glossed Rigveda – The Zurich annotation corpus revised and extended, hosted by VedaWeb – Online Research Platform for Old Indic Texts, University of Cologne. Available: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8410655
• Casaretto, Antje, Simon Fries & Uta Reinöhl. 2021. Vedic Sanskrit prose interlinearized and GRAIDed. Data Center for the Humanities. https://doi.org/10.18716/dch/a.00000053
• Kölligan, Daniel, Claes Neuefeind, Uta Reinöhl, Patrick Sahle, Antje Casaretto, Anna Fischer, Börge Kiss, Natalie Korobzow, Jürgen Rolshoven, Jakob Halfmann, & Francisco Mondaca, VedaWeb – Online Research Platform for Old Indic Texts, University of Cologne.

Books and Edited Volumes

• Louagie, Dana & Uta Reinöhl (eds.). 2022. Typologizing the Noun Phrase, special issue of Linguistics, vol. 60(3).
• Reinöhl, Uta. 2016. Grammaticalization and the Rise of Configurationality in Indo-Aryan, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Reinöhl, Uta. 2010. Zum Begriff der Renovation im Rahmen der Grammatikalisierungstheorie, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, manuscript.

Articles in Academic Journals and Edited Volumes

• Reinöhl, Uta, Pachu Pulu, & Usha Wallner. 2025. A sketch grammar of Igu, the shamanic language of the Kera’a, Himalayan Linguistics, 24(1). 58–87.
• von Contzen, Eva, Stefan Pfänder, Uta Reinöhl, and Maria Sulimma. 2024. Repetition, again: Cross-disciplinary approaches to practices and forms of repeating, DIEGESIS. Interdisciplinary E-Journal for Narrative Research / Interdisziplinäres E-Journal für Erzählforschung, 13(2). 138–159, doi: 10.25926/dr7c-jt58.
• Reinöhl, Uta & T. Mark Ellison. 2024. Metaphor forces argument overtness, Linguistics, 62(4). 795–847, doi: 10.1515/ling-2021-0072.
• Casaretto, Antje & Uta Reinöhl. Identifying discourse functions without formal clues – Secondary predicates and related functions in Vedic Sanskrit, submitted for publication.
• Reinöhl, Uta. Discontinuous nominal expressions in Vedic Sanskrit – Forms and functions, submitted for publication.
• Ellison, T. Mark & Uta Reinöhl. 2022. Compositionality, Metaphor, and the Evolution of Language, International Journal of Primatology, doi: 10.1007/s10764-022-00315-w.
• Louagie, Dana & Uta Reinöhl. 2022. Typologizing nominal expressions: The noun phrase and beyond, in Dana Louagie & Uta Reinöhl (eds.), Typologizing the Noun Phrase, special issue of Linguistics, 60(3). 659–714.
• Reinöhl, Uta. 2022. Locating Kera’a (Idu Mishmi) in its linguistic neighbourhood: Evidence from dialectology. In Mark W. Post, Stephen Morey, & Toni Huber (eds.), Ethnolinguistic Prehistory of the Eastern Himalaya. 232–263, Leiden: Brill.
• Kaland, Constantijn, Naomi Peck, T. Mark Ellison, & Uta Reinöhl. 2021. An initial exploration of the interaction of tone and intonation in Kera’a, Proc. 1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI). 132–136, doi: 10.21437/TAI.2021-27.
• Casaretto, Antje, Gerrit J. Dimmendaal, Birgit Hellwig, Uta Reinöhl, & Gertrud Schneider-Blum. 2020. Roots of ergativity in Africa (and beyond),” Studies in African Linguistics, 49. 111–140.
• Reinöhl, Uta. 2020. Continuous and discontinuous nominal expressions in flexible (or ‘free’) word order languages: Patterns and correlates, Linguistic Typology, 24. 71–111.
• Reinöhl, Uta. 2020. What are and what aren’t complex nominal expressions in flexible word order languages?, Language Typology and Universals, 73. 57–79.
• Kölligan, Daniel, Claes Neuefeind, Börge Kiss, Francisco Mondaca, Uta Reinöhl, and Patrick Sahle. 2019. VedaWeb – On the role of annotations in analyzing ancient Indo-Aryan texts, in Proc. Historical Corpora and Variation Conference (HiCoV), Cagliari, Italy.
• Kiss, Börge, Daniel Kölligan, Francisco Mondaca, Claes Neuefeind, Uta Reinöhl, and Patrick Sahle. 2019. It takes a village: Co-developing VedaWeb, a digital research platform for Old Indo-Aryan texts. In Steven Krauwer and Darja Fišer (eds.), Workshop Proceedings. Twin Talks: Understanding Collaboration in DH. Fourth Digital Humanities Conference in the Nordic Countries (DHN2019). 35–44, Copenhagen, Denmark.
• Ellison, T. Mark & Uta Reinöhl. 2018. Metaphorical extension and the evolution of configurationality. In Christine Cuskley et al. (eds.), The Evolution of Language. Proc. 12th International Conference, Torun, Poland.
• Reinöhl, Uta & Antje Casaretto. 2018. When grammaticalization does NOT occur: Prosody-syntax mismatches in Indo-Aryan, Diachronica, 35(2). 238–276.
• Reinöhl, Uta & Nikolaus P. Himmelmann. 2017. Renewal: A figure of speech or a process sui generis?,” Language, 93(2). 381–413.
• Reinöhl, Uta. 2016. A single origin of Indo-European primary adpositions? Unveiling the Indo-Aryan branch-off, Diachronica, 33(1). 95–130.
• Reinöhl, Uta. 2013. Reassessing Indo-Aryan postpositions in the Sprachbund debate, in Preproceedings of the International Conference on Language Contact in India. 170–184.

Reviews and similar publications

• Reinöhl, Uta. 2018. Review of Eystein Dahl & Krzysztof Stroński (eds.). 2016. Indo-Aryan ergativity in typological and diachronic perspective. Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics 5(1). 111-121.
• Reinöhl, Uta & Nikolaus P. Himmelmann. 2011. Review of Christoph Schroeder et al. (eds.). 2008. Secondary Predicates in Eastern European Languages and Beyond. Linguistic Typology 15(1). 131-139.

Selected talks / presentations

• Reinöhl, Uta. Schamanismus, Sprache und Heilungsritual im östlichen Himalaya. 12. Juli 2022. Dienstagskolloquium “Seele – Geist – Körper”. Universitätsklinikum Freiburg. 
• Mondaca, Francisco, Felix Rau, Claes Neuefeind, Börge Kiss, Daniel Kölligan, Uta Reinöhl, & Patrick Sahle. C-SALT APIs – Connecting and Exposing Heterogeneous Language Resources. Digital Humanities Conference 2019 (DH2019). Utrecht, Netherlands. 09.07-12.07.2019.
• Kölligan, Daniel, Claes Neuefeind, Börge Kiss, Francisco Mondaca, Uta Reinöhl, & Patrick Sahle. VedaWeb – on the Role of Annotations in Analyzing Ancient Indo-Aryan Texts. Historical Corpora and Variation Conference (HiCoV). Cagliari, Italy. 04.04-05.04.2019.
• Kiss, Börge, Daniel Kölligan, Francisco Mondaca, Claes Neuefeind, Uta Reinöhl, & Patrick Sahle. It takes a village: Co-developing VedaWeb, a Digital Research Platform for Old Indo-Aryan Texts. Twin Talks: Understanding Collaboration in DH. Fourth Digital Humanities Conference in the Nordic Countries 2019 (DHN2019). Copenhagen, Denmark. 05.03.2019.
• Reinöhl, Uta & T. Mark Ellison. Obligatorification stems from universal communicative requirements not syntactic reanalysis. Wither reanalysis? HU Berlin, 1.-2. March 2019.
• Reinöhl, Uta & T. Mark Ellison. Obligatorification in syntax. ICL 20, Kapstadt, 2.-6. Juli 2018.
• Reinöhl, Uta & Antje Casaretto. Secondary predicates in Vedic Sanskrit – On the challenge of identifying syntactic categories in a so-called ‚non-configurational‘ language. South Asian Language Analysis 34, 19.-21. Juni 2018, Universität Konstanz.
• Reinöhl, Uta & T. Mark Ellison. Obligatorification in syntax. 16. März 2018, Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Australian National University, Canberra.
• Reinöhl, Uta. Functions of discontinuous nominal expressions in Vedic Sanskrit. SLE, 10.-13. Sept. 2017, Zürich.
• Reinöhl, Uta. Towards a Typology of Old Grams. International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL) 23, San Antonio (2017).
• Reinöhl, Uta. Syntactic Paradigmatization as a Constraint on Grammaticalization – On the Rise of Participial Predicates in Indo-Aryan. International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL) 23, San Antonio (2017).
• Reinöhl, Uta. Locating Kera’a (Idu Mishmi) in its linguistic neighbourhood: Evidence from dialectology. International Consortium for Eastern Himalayan Ethnolinguistic Prehistory, La Trobe University, Melbourne (Feb 8-10 2017).
• Reinöhl, Uta. Exploring configurationality as a historical phenomenon. From non-configurational to (low-level) configurational in Indo-European. Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Australian National University (November 2015).
• Reinöhl, Uta. The Indo-Aryan ‘alignment change’ revisited. International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL) 22, Naples (July 2015).
• Reinöhl, Uta. The origins of the New Indo-Aryan postpositional phrases. South Asian Language Analysis 31, Lancaster (May 2015).
• Reinöhl, Uta. Disentangling semantic and formal change in grammaticalization – A case study from Indo-Aryan. Universität Zürich, Institut für Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft (8/5/15).
• Reinöhl, Uta. Exploring configurationality as a historical phenomenon. Syntax of the World’s Languages 6, Pavia (Sep 8-10 2014).
• Reinöhl, Uta. Syntactically nouns, semantically spatial relators: Zero-valent adverbs undergoing the genitive shift in Post-Vedic Old Indic. 36. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS), Marburg (March 6-7 2014).
• Reinöhl, Uta. An outlier in the family: Indo-Aryan branching off from Indo-European in its route to adpositions and configurationality. Contrastive Linguistics & Diachrony (CoLiDi), Ghent (Feb 27-28 201).
• Reinöhl, Uta. Syntactic variation and the rise of configurationality in Indo-Aryan. International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL) 21, Oslo (Aug 5-9 2013).
• Reinöhl, Uta. Reassessing Indo-Aryan postpositions in the Sprachbund debate. Language Contact in India, Pune, India (Feb 6-8 2013).
• Reinöhl, Uta. Invited talk with Nikolaus P. Himmelmann: A Note on Renovation. Journée d’étude. Autour de la grammaticalisation, Université Lille 3 (Dec 7 2012).
• Reinöhl, Uta. Die Entstehung phrasaler Struktur im Indoarischen – Konstituenz als emergentes Phänomen. Sprachwandel, Munich (July 13-15 2011).

Posters

• Kiss, Börge, Daniel Kölligan, Francisco Mondaca, Claes Neuefeind, Uta Reinöhl, & Patrick Sahle. 2018. VedaWeb – A Web-based Platform for Ancient Indo-Aryan Texts. To Appear in: Book of Abstracts of the First European Association for Digital Humanities Conference (EADH 2018 – Data in Digital Humanities). Galway, Ireland 7.12–09.12.2018.
• Reinöhl, Uta, Daniel Kölligan, Börge Kiss, Francisco Mondaca, Claes Neuefeind, & Patrick Sahle. 2018. VedaWeb – eine webbasierte Plattform für die Erforschung altindischer Texte. In Book of Abstracts der 5. Jahrestagung der Digital Humanities im deutschsprachigen Raum (DHd 2018), Köln 26.2–2.3.2018, 485–486.

Current Research Projects

• Co-Speaker with Prof. Stefan Pfänder (Romance Linguistics, Freiburg), as well as Prof. Dr. Achim Rabus (Freiburg), Prof. Dr. Daniela Marzo (Freiburg), Prof. Dr. Lars Bülow (LMU), T. Mark Ellison, PhD (Köln) of FRIAS Project Group on Repetition in Language (2022/2023).
• Projektleitung einer Emmy-Noether-Forschungsgruppe zum Thema: Non-hierarchicality in grammar. Construction formation without word class distinction across categories and languages.
  
• VedaWeb (Based at the University of Cologne, in cooperation with Prof. Daniel Kölligan, Prof. Rolshoven, and Prof. Patrick Sahle), since July 2017.
• Agent prominence and the diachrony of predication in Indo-Aryan (Together with Prof. Dimmendaal), subproject B03 in the Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 1252 Prominence in Language at the University of Cologne, January 2017–December 2020.
• Projekt Multi-headedness in cross-categorial perspective. The syntax and semantics of referents and events. Postdoctoral project funded by a postdoctoral scholarship from the University of Cologne.

Further information about the seminar’s current research projects can be found here.

Awards

• Heinz-Maier-Leibnitz-Preis 2019, the most important German early-career award, granted by the DFG (German Research Foundation) and the BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research)
• Wilhelm von Humboldt Prize for the Best Dissertation 2015, German Linguistics Society
• Award for the Dissertation by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes)
• Offermann-Hergarten Award 2016, University of Cologne