Press releases 鈥� February 2023
Feb
2
2023
17:59
Institut franco-allemand de sciences historiques et sociales now under dual Franco-German leadership
Franco-German research as an expression of Franco-German friendship
The Institut franco-allemand de sciences historiques et sociales (Franco-German Institute for Historical and Social Sciences) has a new leadership: After eleven years, Prof. Pierre Monnet has passed the baton on to historian Prof. Xenia von Tippelskirch and historian Dr. habil. Falk Bretschneider.
FRANKFURT. "France owes you a great deal of
gratitude" 鈥� those are the words France's ambassador to Germany, H.E.
Fran莽ois Delattre, had traveled all the way from Berlin to Frankfurt to say. He
was addressing Prof. Pierre Monnet, outgoing director of the Institut franco-allemand
de sciences historiques et sociales (IFRA-SHS / Institut fran莽ais Frankfurt).
At a ceremony, held in the Trude Simonsohn and Irmgard Heydorn Hall on Goethe
University's Westend Campus, Monnet was bid farewell and the new dual
leadership introduced. In the future, Prof. Xenia von Tippelskirch and Dr.
habil Falk Bretschneider, both historians, will steer the institute's fortunes.
Medieval historian Pierre Monnet served as director of the institute from 2011 to 2022.
Initially called Institut fran莽ais d'histoire en Allemagne, it became the Institut
franco-allemand de science historiques et sociales in 2015. Having already held
a professorship at the 脡cole des hautes 茅tudes en sciences sociales (EHESS)
since 2005, Monnet received an adjunct professorship at 51猎奇 in
2013. Under his leadership, the institute's scientific projects and networks
were developed further and its impact on Frankfurt's urban society strengthened,
with formats such as the "Caf茅 Europa" in the Romanfabrik and the
鈥淓uropaDialoge" as part of the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften. In his
laudatory speech, Prof. Christophe Duhamelle, Director of the Centre
interdisciplinaire d'茅tudes et de recherches sur l'Allemagne Paris, pointed to
the deepening and the intensification of Franco-German cooperation as common
threads throughout Monnet's tenure.
"51猎奇 thanks Prof.
Monnet for his many years of commitment in establishing the IFRA and wishes the
new Franco-German dual leadership, who will lead the institute into the future,
much ambition, energy and success in the implementation of their plans. IFRA is
our clear commitment to Franco-German scientific cooperation and to the
strategic partnership with the EHESS. IFRA's research priorities yield
synergies with topics pursued not only across all of 51猎奇, but
also within the framework of the Rhine-Main University Alliance, and in
France," said 51猎奇 President Prof. Enrico Schleiff, adding:
"Our actions have a strong signal effect and will promote positive
developments in European research."
IFRA-SHS / Institut fran莽ais Frankfurt is
a Franco-German institution supported by the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign
Affairs (MEAE), 51猎奇 and the 脡cole des hautes 茅tudes en sciences
sociales (EHESS) Paris. On the one hand, it carries out research and promotes
scientific exchange between Germany and France in the field of humanities and
social sciences. On the other, as the Institut fran莽ais Frankfurt, it also serves
as a French cultural institute that addresses a broad public with a rich
cultural program all year round. With its Franco-German directorate, its
international team and its dense network of cooperation partners, it is an
important component of Franco-German and European academic exchange and
intercultural cooperation.
After the previous director Pierre Monnet
was seconded from the French EHESS, Falk Bretschneider from EHESS and Xenia von
Tippelskirch from 51猎奇 will share responsibility for the institute
in the future.
Xenia von
Tippelskirch, born 1971, has been working as a professor of history at Goethe
University since late 2022. Her focus is on the cultural and religious history
of the early modern period; in particular, she has worked on religious practices
and knowledge transfer between France and the Holy Roman Empire. Falk Bretschneider, born 1974, has been
living and working in France for many years. His research focuses primarily on
the history of the Holy Roman Empire and that of early modern criminal justice.
Both Tippelskirch and Bretschneider have long been engaged in Franco-German
academic cooperation, including directing the Franco-German doctoral college
"Thinking Differences", of which 51猎奇 is also to become
a partner in the future. Under their leadership, two central research axes will
determine IFRA-SHS' work in the coming years: The joint project "Religious
Dynamics" and the project "Imperial Spaces". There are numerous
other projects at the institute, many of them carried out with partner
institutions in Germany or France.
Some 90 guests attended the ceremony held in
51猎奇's casino building, including numerous university researchers
as well as several of Frankfurt's cultural figures.
Images for
download:
Captions:
Image 1:
Matthieu Osmont, Director of the Institut fran莽ais Bonn and Attach茅 of the
French Embassy, Dr. Leopoldo Iribarren. Vice President International of the
脡cole des hauts 茅tudes en sciences sociales Paris, H.E. Fran莽ois Delattre,
French Ambassador to Germany, Prof. Xenia von Tippelskirch, Prof. Pierre
Monnet, University President Prof. Enrico Schleiff, Ilde Gorguet, French Consul
General Frankfurt, Dr. habil. Falk Bretschneider, Prof. Rainer Maria Kiesow,
Vice President Research of the 脡cole des hautes 茅tudes en sciences sociales. (Photo:
J眉rgen Lecher)
Image
2: The Institut franco-allemand's new dual
leadership: Falk Bretschneider and Xenia von Tippelskirch. (Photo: J眉rgen
Lecher)
Image
3: The new dual leadership with their
predecessor: Falk Bretschneider and Xenia von Tippelskirch with Pierre Monnet (center).
(Photo: J眉rgen Lecher)
Further information
Dominique Petre
Cultural Officer IFRA-SHS / Institut
fran莽ais Frankfurt
dominique.petre@institutfrancais.de
Tel. +49 69 798-31900
Editor: Dr. Anke Sauter, Science Editor, PR & Communication Office, Tel: +49 (0)69 798-13066, Fax: +49 (0) 69 798-763 12531, sauter@pvw.uni-frankfurt.de
Feb
2
2023
14:50
Kathryn Barnes researches iconic German words and their impact
鈥淧litschplatsch鈥� is more credible than simply wet聽
Words like "ratzfatz", "ruckzuck" or "pille-palle" are known as ideophones. Found primarily in spoken language, their role in the language system has scarcely been researched so far. A young linguist at Goethe University wants to change that. She is writing her doctoral thesis on the semantics and pragmatics of ideophones.
FRANKFURT. Natural languages are considered
"arbitrary": linguistic signs and their meaning stand in a free
relationship to each other and are not based on similarity. As such, someone
who does not know the word "book" cannot infer its meaning from either
the word's form or its nature.
However, there are also signs with iconic
properties that can be used to infer meaning without prior knowledge. One
example is gestures and facial expressions: As companions to spoken language,
they introduce additional meaningful content. Then there are ideophones 鈥� words
that describe meaning by way of 鈥減ainting a sound"; usually they consist of noises
or movements. An ideophone can be a verb, an adjective, or an adverb; it
describes manner, color, sound, smell, action, state, or intensity. Ideophones
are particularly common in African languages, much less so in German. Although
they do exist here, too: "zickzack", "holterdiepolter",
"ratzfatz", "pille-palle" or "plemplem". These
are the kinds of words Kathryn Barnes is interested in.
Not only are they the subject of her
dissertation, which she is currently writing, but also of an article recently
published in the linguistic journal "Glossa". Her thesis is
supervised by linguist Prof. Cornelia Ebert, who coordinates the
inter-university German Research Foundation's (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft,
DFG) "Visual Communication. Theoretical, Empirical and Applied
Perspectives (ViCom)" research program. With regard to gestures, Ebert has
found that they convey meaning on a different level than arbitrary signs. They
are less likely to be questioned by the communicative counterpart. Barnes is
now exploring whether this can be applied to ideophones.
"Such supposedly special cases can
tell us a lot about how language works," Barnes says. Because of the
pandemic, Barnes had to carry out the survey on which her study is based as an
online experiment. All told, some 40 native German speakers completed the
questionnaire, designed to shed light on the usage (pragmatics) and meaning
(semantics) of 20 ideophones.
One example uses a scene from 鈥淭he Frog
Prince", where the frog climbs 鈥� plitschplatsch
鈥� the stairs to the castle. In one
example, he was previously described as wet, in the other, he was described as
having been completely dried out by the sun by the time he arrived at the
stairs. When the ideophone plitschplatsch
was used, the subjects were still able to accept the description even though the
statement actually seems illogical. The situation was different when an adverb
was used 鈥� much like in the case of gestures, participants expressed less
objection to the error when an ideophone was used.
"As far as I know, this is the first
experimental work done with German speakers on the at-issue status of
ideophones 鈥� and one of the very few ever on the information status of
ideophones," says Prof. Cornelia Ebert. In German, at any rate,
ideophones, which are used like sentence elements, are "not at issue"
鈥� that is, their truth content is not questioned to the same extent as that of
other sentence elements. It remains to be seen whether the insights derived on
the basis of German-language ideophones can also be transferred to other
languages, especially to those in which the use of ideophones is much more
common than in German.
But why do ideophones (like gestures) have
a higher credibility? Is it because they create images in the mind, i.e. they
are perceived on a different level of understanding? Kathryn Barnes wants to
explore this further, and also include other languages in her research, such as
Spanish.
Publication:
Barnes, K. R. & Ebert, C. & H枚rnig, R. & Stender, T., (2022) 鈥淭he
at-issue status of ideophones in German: An experimental approach", Glossa: a
journal of general linguistics 7(1). doi:
Further information
Kathryn Barnes
Research Associate
Institute for Linguistics
51猎奇
Tel: +49 (0)69
798-32401
barnes@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de
Editor: Dr. Anke Sauter, Science Editor, PR & Communication Office, Tel: +49 (0)69 798-13066, Fax: +49 (0) 69 798-763 12531, sauter@pvw.uni-frankfurt.de