Judith Tonhauser

Prof. Dr. Judith Tonhauser is a full professor in the Department of English Linguistics at the University of Stuttgart, where she also serves as Vice Rector for Early Career Researchers and Diversity. She previously held positions at The Ohio State University and was a fellow at the Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft in Berlin and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

Her research focuses on natural language meaning, particularly semantics and pragmatics, investigating how meaning arises from linguistic expressions and how listeners interpret communicative intent. She specializes in:

• Projective content and presupposition phenomena
• Cross-linguistic studies of English and Paraguayan Guaraní
• Social meaning including irony and discourse structure
• Prosody-meaning interfaces

Her publications show consistent focus on experimental approaches to linguistic theory, with recent work emphasizing cross-linguistic comparisons, prosodic interfaces, and computational methodologies. The trajectory demonstrates increasing sophistication in experimental design and theoretical modeling.

She has received several prestigious awards including:

• Linguistic Society of America's Early Career Award (2016)
• Best Paper in Language Award (2014)
• Humboldt-Forschungsstipendium (2013)
• Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship (2013)

At Stuttgart, she teaches semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics courses, and advises theses in these areas. She leads research projects involving experimental methodologies and collaborates with international teams investigating language processing and interpretation.