Linda Stark

Dr. Linda Stark is an Academic Councillor at the Chair of German Linguistics under Prof. Dr. Wolf Peter Klein at the Institute of German Philology, Faculty of Philosophy, Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg. She has held this position since April 2020 after previously working as a research assistant at Ruhr-Universität Bochum from 2012-2015. Currently, she is pursuing her habilitation with a focus on German comma usage principles, supported by a SCIENTIA-Programm habilitation scholarship from October 2023 to February 2025.

Dr. Stark's research centers on German punctuation, particularly comma usage, language acquisition through children's literature, German as a foreign language, speech act theory, and language codex research. Her work explores the historical development of punctuation rules, the tension between syntactic and intonational principles in comma placement, and the teaching of German punctuation. She has made significant contributions to understanding how punctuation rules have evolved from primarily intonational purposes to predominantly syntactic principles over centuries, while norm-deviating comma variants persist in usage.

Her publication record reveals a strong focus on the historical development of German punctuation, particularly comma usage. Over the past five years, she has produced numerous scholarly works examining comma rules from multiple perspectives - historical, pedagogical, and theoretical. Her research shows a clear trajectory from examining language acquisition through picture books toward increasingly specialized studies of German punctuation, culminating in her current habilitation project on German comma placement principles. This body of work demonstrates both continuity in her interest in linguistic norms and evolution toward greater specialization in punctuation studies.

• SCIENTIA-Programm Habilitation Scholarship (2023-2025)

Dr. Stark has been actively involved in academic service, contributing to edited volumes and monographs including "Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten in der Linguistik" (2022) and "Vorlesen und Präteritum" (2016). While specific grant information isn't detailed in the provided text, her habilitation scholarship demonstrates external funding support for her research. Her collaborative work with colleagues like Wolf Peter Klein, Miriam Langlotz, and Claudia Müller indicates strong research partnerships within and beyond her institution.

She is affiliated with the Chair of German Linguistics at the Institute of German Philology, which appears to be part of the larger research ecosystem at Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg, contributing to projects like ZweiDat (Würzburger Datenbank sprachlicher Zweifelsfälle) that investigate linguistic uncertainties in German.