Prof. Dr. Martin Haspelmath
Dept. of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Main Focus
Martin Haspelmath's research interests in linguistics are primarily in
broadly comparative and historical morphology and syntax as well as
language contact. He started out with a focus on European languages
("The European linguistic area", 2001), in particular Lezgian (A grammar
of Lezgian, 1993), but more recently he sees himself as a generalist
whose primary concern is the discovery and explanation of linguistic
universals (The World Atlas of Language Structures, 2005; "Parametric
versus functional explanation of syntactic universals", 2008). He has
also been active in the area of comparative studies of lexical borrowing
(Loanwords in the world's languages, 2009) and creole and pidgin
languages (Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures, 2013).
Curriculum Vitae
Martin Haspelmath received his Ph.D. from Freie Universität Berlin in 1993, after studies in Vienna, Cologne, Buffalo and Moscow. He spent some time at the University of Bamberg and the University of Pavia before joining the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig in 1998. Since 2015 he has been at MPI-SHH in Jena, with an adjunct position at Leipzig University.