Martin Becker

Professor Martin Becker holds a faculty position in Romance Linguistics at the University of Cologne's Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Romance Studies. His office is located in Philosophikum, Room 2.313, with contact via +49-(0)221-470-2832 and email martin.becker1@uni-koeln.de.

His research centers on tense, aspect, and modality from synchronic and diachronic perspectives, with additional focus on language change theory and history of linguistic theories. Current investigations examine temporal discourse structures within Romance languages, particularly through Subproject C02 "Tense and aspect in discourse" in SFB 1252 Prominence in Language.

Recent publications demonstrate expertise in Spanish and Portuguese linguistics, historical semantics, and grammaticalization processes. His 2018 Lingua article analyzes temporal prominence, while his 2014 De Gruyter monograph explores mood development in Romance languages.

Becker actively supervises research teams and hosts visiting scholars like Dr. Aroldo de Andrade (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais), whose Humboldt Fellowship research examines Brazilian Portuguese cleft-sentences. He maintains regular consultation hours (Thursdays 4:00-5:30 PM) and teaches courses spanning multiple semesters through 2022/23.

His laboratory operations are integrated with the SFB 1252 research consortium, focusing on linguistic prominence phenomena across Romance language varieties.