Recent publications

Haas, Florian. 2026. English human impersonal pronouns: Past and present. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Brill.

Diessel, Holger. 2023. The constructicon: Taxonomies and networks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Diessel, Holger, Kenny Coventry, Harmen B. Gudde, and Olga Caprici. 2021. (eds.), Demonstratives, Deictic Pointing and the Conceptualization of Space. Frontiers in Psychology.External link

Diessel, Holger. 2019. The grammar network. How linguistic structure is shaped by language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

König, Ekkehard and Volker Gast. 2018. Understanding English-German contrasts. 4th edn. Grundlagen der Anglistik und Amerikanistik. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag.

Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten, Natalia Levshina, Susanne Maria Michaelis and Ilja A. Seržant (eds.). 2019. Explanation in typology: Diachronic sources, functional motivations and the nature of the evidence. Berlin: Language Science Press.

Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten and Holger Diessel. to appear. The typology of relative clauses. In Anton Benz, Werner Frey, Hans-Martin Gaertner, Manfred Krifka, Mathias Schenner, Marzena Zygis (eds.), Handbook of clausal embedding. Berlin: Language Science Press. PDFExternal link

Diessel, Holger. to appear. Grammatik als Netzwerk: Konstruktionen und Kategorien in der gebrauchsbasierten Linguistik. Linguisten-Seminar: Forum Japanisch-Germanistischer Sprachforschung, 8: 9-39. PDF

Monakhov, Sergei, Holger Diessel and Brisca Balthes. 2026. Learn what is detectable, detect what is useful. Cognition 266, 106292.External link

Shcherbakova, Olena, V Gast, SJ Greenhill, D Blasi, RD Gray, H Skirgård. 2025. Different models, different assumptions, different findings: commentary on “Replication and methodological robustness in quantitative typology” by Becker and Guzmán NaranjoExternal link. Linguistic Typology 29 (3), 587-590

Diessel, Holger. 2025. Demonstrative determiners in crosslinguistic perspective. Acta Linguistica Academica 72, 3: 331-355. PDFExternal link

V Gast, KM Jóhannsdóttir, M Putnam, MT Putnam. 2025. Excessive events: The syntax and semantics of OVER-modification in IcelandicExternal link. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 10 (1)

Monakhov, Sergei, Holger Diessel and Brisca Balthes. 2025. Learn what is detectable, detect what is useful. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 47.External link

Bunzeck, Bastian, and Diessel, Holger. 2025. The richness of the stimulus: Constructional variation and development in child-directed speech. First Language 45 (2), 152-176.External link

Coventry, Kenny R. and Holger Diessel. 2025. Spatial communication systems and action. Trends in Cognitive Science 29(4): 356-367.External link

Boissonneault, M., A Tallman, V Gast, SJ Greenhill. 2025. Projected speaker numbers and dormancy risks of Canada’s Indigenous languagesExternal link. Royal Society Open Science 12 (2), 241091

Monakhov, Sergei and Holger Diessel. 2024. Complex words as shortest paths in the network of lexical knowledge. Cognitive Science 48.External link

Shcherbakova, Olena, DE Blasi, V Gast, H Skirgård, RD Gray, SJ Greenhill. 2024. The evolutionary dynamics of how languages signal who does what to whom. Scientific reports 14 (1), 7259

Monakhov, Sergei and Holger Diessel. 2024. A network model of English derivational morphology, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 46.External link

Bötticher, A., J Hernandez, MC Kettemann, V Gast, RA Bravo. 2023. Introducing a research programme for quantum humanities: theoretical implicationsExternal link European Journal of Risk Regulation 14 (3), 435-456

Shcherbakova, O., Blasi, D.E., Gast, V., H. Skirgård, R.D. Gray & S.J. Greenhill 2024. 'The evolutionary dynamics of how languages signal who does what to whomExternal link'. Scientific Reports 14: 7259.

Coventry, Kenny R., Gudde, Harmen B., Diessel, Holger, Collier, Jacqueline, et al. 2023. Spatia communication systems across languages reflect universal action constrains, Nature Human Behavior. 7, pages 2099–2110. PDFExternal link

Diessel, Holger. 2023. Demonstratives. In Eva van Lier (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Word Classes. 443-465. New York: Oxford University Press. PDFExternal link

Breunesse, Merlijn and Holger Diessel. 2023. Iconicity in spatial deixis: A cross-linguistic study of 180 demonstrative systems. In C. Gentens, L. Ghesquière, W. B. McGregor and A. Van Linden (eds.),  Reconnecting Form and Meaning: In honour of Kristin Davidse, 185-208. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. PDFExternal link

Janebová, Markéta, Michaela Martinkova and Volker Gast 2023. 'Czech type nouns: Evidence from corpora'. In L. Brems, K. Davidse, I. Hennecke, A. Kolyaseva, A. Kisiel & W. Mihatsch (eds.): Type Noun Constructions in Slavic, Germanic and Romance Languages: Semantics and pragmatics on the move. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Diessel, Holger and Sergei Monakhov. 2023. Acquisition of demonstratives in crosslinguistic perspective. Journal of Child Language50(4): 922-953.External link

Shcherbakova, Olena, Susanne Maria Michaelis, Hannah J. Haynie, Sam Passmore, Volker Gast, Russell D. Gray, Simon J. Greenhill, Damián E. Blasi and Hedvig Skirgård 2023. 'Societies of strangers do not speak less complex languagesExternal link'. ScienceAdvances 9.33.

Mohseni, Mahdi, Christoph Redies and Volker Gast 2023. 'Comparative Analysis of Preference in Contemporary and Earlier Texts Using Entropy MeasuresExternal link'. Entropy 25.3: 486.

Shcherbakova, Olena, Volker Gast, Damian Blasi, Hedvig Skirgård, Russell Gray and Simon Greenhill (2022). 'A quantitative global test of the complexity trade-off hypothesis: the case of nominal and verbal grammatical markingExternal link'. Linguistics Vanguard.

Gast, Volker, Christian Wehmeier and Dirk Vanderbeke 2023. 'A Register-Based Study of Interior Monologue in James Joyce’s UlyssesExternal link'. Literature 3.1: 42-65.

Gast, Volker and Robert Borges 2023. 'Nouns, Verbs and Other Parts of Speech in Translation and Interpreting: Evidence from English Speeches Made in the European Parliament and Their German Translations and InterpretationsExternal link'. Languages 8.1: 39.

Gast, Volker 2023. 'The Temporal Alignment of Speech-Accompanying Eyebrow Movement and Voice Pitch: A Study Based on Late Night Show InterviewsExternal link'. Behvioral Sciences 13.1: 52.

Mohseni, Mahdi, Christoph Redies and Volker Gast. 2022. Approximate Entropy in Canonical and Non-Canonical Fiction. Entropy 24.2: 278.

Gast, Volker 2022. 'Comparing annotation types and n-gram sizes: German discourse particles and their English reflexes in a translation corpus'. In Schützler, O. & J. Schlüter (eds.): Data and Methods in Corpus Linguistics: Comparative Approaches, 323-352. Oxford University Press.

Gast, Volker 2022. 'The German modal particle 'ja' and its lexical correlates in English: A qualitative study based on the Europarl corpusExternal link'. In Gergel, R., I. Reich & A. Speyer (eds.): Particles in English, German and beyond, 117–146. Amsterdam: John Benjamins..

Schokkin, Dineke, Volker Gast, Nicholas Evans, Christian Döhler. 2021. Phonetic fieldwork in Southern New Guinea. Language Documentation & Conservation 24: 76-107.

Gast, Volker & Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm. 2021. Patterns of persistence and diffusibility in the European lexiconExternal link. Linguistic Typology.

Diessel, Holger, Kenny Coventry, Harmen B. Gudde, and Olga Caprici. 2021. Editorial: Demonstratives, deictic pointing and the conceptualization of space. Frontiers in Psychology.External link

Mohseni, Mahdi, Volker Gast & Christoph Redies. 2021. Fractality and Variability in Canonical and Non-Canonical English Fiction and in Non-Fictional TextsExternal link. Frontiers in Psychology 12.

Holger Diessel & Merlijn Breunesse. 2020. A typology of demonstrative clause linkers.
In Åshild Næss, Anna Margetts & Yvonne Treis (eds.), Demonstratives in discourse,
305–341. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4055834

Rzymski, Christoph, Tiago Tresoldi, Simon Greenhill, Mei-Shin Wu, Nathanael Schweikhard, Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Volker Gast, Timotheus Bodt, Abbie Hantgan, Gereon Kaiping, Sophie Chang, Yunfan Lai, Natalia Morozova, Heini Arjava, Nataliia Hübler, Ezequiel Koile, Steven Pepper, Mariann Proos, Briana Van Epps, Ingrid Blanco, Carolin Hundt, Sergei Monakhov, Kristina Pianykh, Sallona Ramesh, Russell Gray, Robert Forkel and Johann-Mattis List. 2020. 'The Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications', reproducible analysis of cross-linguistic polysemies. Scientific Data 7. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-019-0341-x

Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten and Holger Diessel. 2023. The typology of non-argument clauses. In Manfred Krifka and Mathias Schenner (eds.), The Oxford handbook of embedding. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Diessel, Holger. to appear. Determiners and demonstratives. In Solveiga Armoskaite and Martina Wiltschko (eds.), The Oxford handbook of determiners. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gast, Volker. forthcoming. The German modal particle 'ja' and its lexical correlates in English: A qualitative study based on the Europarl corpus. In Gergel, R., I. Reich & A. Speyer (eds.), Particles in English, German and beyond.

Gast, Volker. forthcoming. Comparing annotation types and n-gram sizes: A case study of the German modal particles 'ja' and 'doch' and their English reflexes in the Europarl-Corpus, based on n-gram distributions . In Schützler, O. & J. Schlüter (eds.), Data and Methods in Corpus Linguistics: Comparative Approaches. Oxford University Press.

Janebová, Markéta, Michaela Martinkova and Volker Gast. forthcoming. Czech type nouns: Evidence from corpora. In L. Brems, K. Davidse, I. Hennecke, A. Kolyaseva, A. Kisiel & W. Mihatsch (eds.): Type Noun Constructions in Slavic, Germanic and Romance Languages: Semantics and pragmatics on the move. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.