Syntax and the interfaces with lexical semantics, information structure, and pragmatics

Project work

Co-PI (with Olaf Kramer and Susanne Winkler) of the DFG-funded project C1 ‘Construction and Destruction of Common Ground in Polarized Political Discourse’ within the CRC 1718 ‘Common Ground’.

Our interest in this project is a interdisciplinary linguistic-rhetorical analysis of polarization strategies in political discourse. Our goal is to identify the rhetorical strategies and linguistic markers that drive polarization. We also ask the question how polarization can be mitigated or reduced and which linguistic devices are useful for this purpose.

Workshop

Together with project C3 ‘Strategic Common Ground Updates’ we are organizing an international workshop on ‘Modelling Common Ground Across Divides’, taking place on 11-12 June 2026 in Tübingen. More information will follow as soon as possible. 

• PS(+Ü) English sentence structure (Tue 16-18)
• VL Introduction to English linguistics (with Polina Berezovskaya & Thanh Lan Truong)

Ph.D. thesis
Kehl, Andreas. 2021. Adjunct islands in English: Theoretical perspectives and experimental evidence. Ph.D. thesis: University of Tübingen.

Monographs and edited volumes

• Kehl, Andreas. 2023. Adjunct islands in English: Theoretical perspectives and experimental evidence (Studies in Generative Grammar 152). Berlin & Boston: Mouton de Gruyter. Publisher
• Hartmann, Jutta M.,Marion Jäger, Andreas Kehl, Andreas Konietzko & Susanne Winkler (eds.). 2018. Freezing: Theoretical approaches and empirical domains (Studies in Generative Grammar 130). Berlin & Boston: Mouton de Gruyter. Publisher

Book chapters & journal articles

• Kehl, Andreas. 2026. Complex verbal adjuncts in declaratives and interrogatives: Experimental evidence. In Andreas Konietzko & Susanne Winkler (eds.), Information structure and discourse in generative grammar: Mechanisms and processes (Studies in Generative Grammar 146), 275–314. Berlin & Boston: Mouton de Gruyter. Publisher
• Kehl, Andreas, Amelie Rüeck, Birgit Rapp, Sam Featherston, & Susanne Winkler. 2025. Locative inversion and the surprise effect: When word order interacts with Common Ground. Cahiers de Praxématique 84. 1–20, doi: https://doi.org/10.4000/15b40.
• Kehl, Andreas. 2022. Extraction from present participle adjuncts: The relevance of the corresponding declaratives. Languages 7(3). Article 177, doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030177.
• Hartmann, Jutta M.,Marion Jäger, Andreas Kehl, Andreas Konietzko & Susanne Winkler. 2018. Exploring the concepts of freezing: Theoretical and empirical perspectives. In Jutta M. Hartmann, Marion Jäger, Andreas Kehl, Andreas Konietzko & Susanne Winkler (eds.), Freezing: Theoretical approaches and empirical domains (Studies in Generative Grammar 130), 1–25. Berlin & Boston: Mouton de Gruyter. Publisher

• Kehl, Andreas, Selina Bernarding, Sarah Ebert, Olaf Kramer, Susanne Winkler. 2026. (De-)Polarization strategies. A view from rhetoric and linguistics. Poster presented at the workshop De-Polarisierung. Neue Praktiken einladender (Wissenschafts-)Kommunikation, Tübingen, 29–30 January 2026.
• Kehl, Andreas. 2025. Phrasal adjunct islands and locality theory. Invited talk, Syntax at the Edge workshop, University of Aarhus, 22 August 2025.
• Kehl, Andreas. 2025. Experimental investigations into adjunct islands and what they (don’t) tell us about locality theory. Invited talk, University of Potsdam, 28 January 2025.
• Kehl, Andreas, Amelie Rüeck, Birgit Rapp, Sam Featherston & Susanne Winkler. 2024. Effects of perspectivity on acceptability and surprise judgments of locative inversion: Common Ground and non-canonical word order. Talk presented at the Le common ground en linguistique : de sa construction à son incidence dans le paramétrage du sens conference, Paris Nanterre, 23–26 April 2024.
• Kehl, Andreas. 2022. Extraction asymmetries in complex participle adjuncts. Talk presented at the Linguistic Evidence 2022 conference, Paris, 6–8 October 2022.
• Kehl, Andreas. 2020. Subextraction from present participle adjuncts in English: Experimental evidence. Poster presented at the Linguistic Evidence 2020 conference, Tübingen, 14 February 2020.
• Kehl, Andreas. 2019. Extraction from participial adjuncts: Experimental evidence. Talk presented at the Challenges to Compositionality workshop, Tübingen, 7 Ferbuary 2019.
• Kehl, Andreas. 2018. Adjunct islands and aspectual classes: Experimental evidence. Poster presented at the Linguistic Evidence 2018 conference, Tübingen, 15–17 February 2018.