Quantification and scales in change
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The key foci are variablity and diachronic trajectories in scale structures and quantification, but readers will also find a variety of further (and clearly non-disjoint) issues covered including reference, modality, givenness, presuppositions, alternatives in language change, temporality, epistemic indefiniteness, as well as - in more general terms - the interfaces of semantics with syntax, pragmatics and morphology.
Given the nature of the field, the contributions are primarily based on original corpus studies (in one case also on synchronic experimental data) and present a series of new findings and theoretical analyses of several languages, first and foremost from the Germanic and Romance subbranches of Indo-European (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish) and from Semitic (with an analysis of universal quantification in Biblical Hebrew).
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Remus Gergel received his doctorate in English linguistics from the University of Tübingen after studying English, mathematics and Romance languages. He subsequently had stays at UPenn, Göttingen and once more Tübingen, where he defended his habilitation and was later tenured. He held a full professorship at the University of Graz before accepting the chair of English Linguistics at Saarland University. His research focus includes cross-linguistic variation as well as language change in the areas of structure and meaning, having investigated e.g. issues of modality, degree constructions, and presuppositions.
Jonathan Watkins holds a tri-national MA-degree after having studied German at Saarland University, Luxembourg, and Metz. He currently works on his doctoral thesis and as a research assistant at the chair of English Linguistics of Saarland University. His research interests center around diachronic and empirical investigations of English in the areas of semantics, pragmatics, and information structure.
