Uni-Tübingen

Prof. Dr. Peter Koch

Professor Dr. Peter Koch * 01.03.1951; † 07.07.2014

Wir trauern um den Romanisten und Linguisten Peter Koch, der plötzlich und unerwartet am 7. Juli 2014 verstorben ist. Für das Graduiertenkolleg 1808 "Ambiguität" ebenso wie für den SFB 833 "Bedeutungskonstitution" bedeutet dies einen unersetzlichen Verlust. Peter Koch hat durch seine mit höchstem internationalen Ansehen verbundene, außergewöhnliche wissenschaftliche Leistung, vor allem aber auch durch seinen unermüdlichen Einsatz für den akademischen Nachwuchs Maßstäbe gesetzt. Seine Leidenschaft, Präzision und Geduld als Forscher und als Betreuer wissenschaftlicher Arbeiten werden uns Vorbild bleiben. Wie kaum ein anderer hat er es verstanden, in der Zusammenarbeit mit KollegInnen und SchülerInnen neue Erkenntnisse zu gewinnen. Dies machte ihn zu einem idealen Projektleiter und Betreuer im Sonderforschungsbereich und im Graduiertenkolleg. Das GRK 1808 hätte es ohne ihn nie gegeben; er gehörte zu seinen Initiatoren, die von 2008 bis 2011 bereits im Promotionsverbund "Dimensionen der Ambiguität" zusammengearbeitet haben. Der SFB verliert einen Projektleiter, an dessen persönlicher Integrität wir uns ein Beispiel nehmen werden. Wir werden unsere Arbeit im Gedenken an Peter Koch weiterführen.

Einen von Johannes Kabatek verfassten Nachruf finden Sie hier (auf romanistik.de).

Einen weiteren Nachruf von Richard Waltereit finden Sie hier (auf linguistlist.org).

 

About Ambiguity

For over two decades, Peter Koch was concerned with problems of ambiguity in the context of his research on historical and cognitive semantics (particularly in regard to the subject of metonymy). Furthermore, it has been relevant to his work on lexical motivation in synchrony, where polysemy plays an important role as a form of ambiguity which is conveyed through metonymic, metaphoric, and other relations. Ambiguity in grammatical diachrony is the topic of SFB Project C4, that was directed by Koch (see below, “research”). The topic of ambiguity gained special significance for Peter Koch when he became involved in the supervision of doctoral candidates in the postgraduate programme ) „Dimensions of Ambiguity“ (2008-2011).

 

Biography

Peter Koch studied Romance Philology and Latin in Göttingen, Poitiers and Freiburg/Brsg., receiving his First State Examination degree in 1975. His dissertation in the field Romance Philology followed in 1979 (published in 1981 under the title Verb ∙ Valenz ∙ Verfügung. Zur Satzsemantik und Valenz französischer Verben am Beispiel der Verfügungs-Verben). In 1980, he completed his Second State Examination degree. His Habilitation thesis at Freiburg am Breisgau onDistanz im Dictamen. Zur Schriftlichkeit und Pragmatik mittelalterlicher Brief- und Redemodelle in Italien followed in 1987. Peter Koch was Professor of Romance Philology (Linguistics) at the University of Mainz (1988-90), the FU Berlin (1990-96) and has been at the University of Tübingen since October 1996.

 

Research

Throughout his career, Peter Koch participated in numerous research groups and externally funded projects at the University of Tübingen and other institutions (further research projects), most recently with RTG 1808. From 1997-2003, he directed the DFG project DECOLAR (Dictionnaire étymologique et cognitif des langues romanes: Les parties du corps humain), initally with Andreas Blank(†), Marburg. At the Tübingen Collaborative Research Centre (SFB 441) Linguistic Data Structures (1999-2008), he was in charge of Project B6 Lexical Motivation in French, Italian and German. Since 2009, he was heading Project C4 Ambiguity Phenomena in the Diachrony of Romance Languages: Verb and Participants at the current Tübingen Collaborative Research Centre (SFB 833) The Construction of Meaning. Since April 2013, Peter Koch led a subproject of Computational Historical Semantics in Tübingen. This BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research) project is sponsored by e-Humanities and will be carried out in collaboration with the universities of Frankfurt am Main, Bielefeld and Regensburg. His research encompassed ‘speech and writing’ in synchrony and diachrony, valency and casus theories, lexical typology, as well as diachronic and synchronic lexicology, with an emphasis on their respective application in Romance languages. In both of the last named subjects, his methodological focus was on cognitive semantics and, more recently, construction grammar. Peter Koch's interest in ambiguity primarily belonged to this context of research.

 

Teaching

Peter Koch was Professor of Romance Philology (a list of his courses and seminars can be found here). With a primary focus on French and Italian, his interests also included Spanish, Sardinian, and the Romance-based languages. From the perspective of diachrony, his range extended back to the earliest stages of language and encompasses both internal and external linguistic history. In modern synchrony, his focus was in the areas of lexical semantics / word formation, syntax, linguistic typology and variational linguistics. Apart from questions of ambiguity, Peter Koch had recently been preoccupied with the topics of comparative linguistic history on a variational linguistic basis and with construction grammar. In the last years, interdisciplinary courses have been realized with colleagues from Rhetoric, Latin Studies and Romance Literature Studies. In close collaboration with classical philologists and Romance literary scholars, Peter Koch was in charge of developing and implementing, for the first time, the linguistic portion of Tübingen’s newly created course type Latin for Romanists (designed to impart the necessary knowledge of Latin to secondary school teachers in accordance with the new GymPo regulations that have replaced the traditional Latin exams in secondary schools).

 

Other Activities

Peter Koch was a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Together with Daniel Jacob, Andreas Kablitz, Bernhard König, Margot Kruse, Joachim Küpper and Christian Schmitt, he edited one of the most renowned scholarly journals for Romance languages, the Romanistisches Jahrbuch (http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/roma). Within the context of the project Grande Grammaire Historique du Français (http://www.unice.fr/bcl/rubrique137?lang=de), sponsored by the Institut de Linguistique Française, he was responsible for Part 9 Lexique et sémantique lexicale. From 2000-2003, Peter Koch acted as a Referee for Romance Philology on behalf of the German Research Foundation and from 2001-2004 he was chairman of the German association of Italianists (Deutscher Italianistenverband).

 

Publications on Ambiguity

  • Landmesser, Christof; Peter Koch (2015). "Ambiguität und Schriftauslegung. Beobachtungen zu Augustins Schrift De utilitate credendi." Ambiguity: Language and Communication. Hg. Susanne Winkler. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. 217-268.
  • Bauer, Matthias; Joachim Knape; Peter Koch; Susanne Winkler (2010). "Dimensionen der Ambiguität." Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 158: 7-75.
  • Bauer, Matthias; Joachim Knape; Peter Koch; Susanne Winkler (2009)."'Disarmed': Ein interdisziplinäres Gespräch über Ambiguität am Beispiel eines kausativen Verbs." Dimensionen der Zweitsprachenforschung / Dimensions of Second Language Research: Festschrift für Kurt Kohn. Ed. Michaela Albl-Mikasa, Sabine Braun and Sylvia Kalina. Tübingen: Narr. 253-276.
  • Koch, Peter (2012). "The Pervasiveness of Contiguity and Metonymy in Semantic Change." Current Methods in Historical Semantics. Ed. Kathryn Allan and Justyna A. Robinson. Berlin: De Gruyter. 259-311.
  • Koch, Peter (2008). "Höflichkeit und Metonymie." Der gepflegte Umgang: Interkulturelle Aspekte der Höflichkeit in Literatur und Sprache. Ed. Dorothee Kimmich and Wolfgang Matzat. Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag. 143-184.
  • Koch, Peter (2004). "Metonymy between Pragmatics, Reference and Diachrony." metaphorik.de 07, 6-54.
  • Koch, Peter (2001). "Bedeutungswandel und Bezeichnungswandel: Von der kognitiven Semasiologie zur kognitiven Onomasiologie." Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 121: 7-36.
  • Koch, Peter (2001). "Metonymy: Unity in Diversity." Journal of Historical Pragmatics 2.2: 201-244.
  • Koch, Peter (2001). "As you like it: Les métataxes actantielles entre Expérient et Phénomène." La valence, perspectives romanes et diachroniques. Ed. Lene Schøsler. Stuttgart: Steiner. 59-81.
  • Koch, Peter (1995). "Der Beitrag der Prototypentheorie zur Historischen Semantik: Eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme." Romanistisches Jahrbuch 46: 27-46.
  • Koch, Peter; Daniela Marzo (2007). "A Two-Dimensional Approach to the Study of Motivation in Lexical Typology and Its First Application to French High-Frequency Vocabulary." Studies in Language 31.2: 259-291.

 

Further Publicationes

For a full list of publications, click here.