Uli Sauerland

Uli Sauerland is a Professor and Department Head of FB4 Semantics and Pragmatics at the Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS) in Berlin since 2017. He holds honorary professorships and research fellowships in Germany and Japan. His research focuses on syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and language acquisition. He has led numerous international research projects and serves on editorial boards of journals like Linguistic Inquiry and Semantics & Pragmatics.

Education:

• 1993: Diploma (M.Sc.) in Mathematics, Universität Konstanz
• 1998: Ph.D. in Linguistics, MIT
• 2003: Habilitation in General Linguistics, Universität Tübingen
• 2018: außenplanmäßiger Professor, Universität Potsdam

Research Interests: His work explores formal semantics, pragmatics, and syntax, with a focus on scalar implicatures, presuppositions, and experimental methods. He investigates cross-linguistic phenomena in languages like Japanese, German, and indigenous Brazilian languages. Recent topics include child language acquisition and computational modeling of pragmatic reasoning.

Awards:

• 2018 Honorary Professorship at Universität Potsdam
• 2014 Humboldt Alumni Fellowship
• 2011 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Bridge Fellowship

Grants & Leadership:

• Coordinated DFG SPP 1727 (XPrag.de, 2014-2020)
• Principal Investigator in EU-funded projects like CHLaSC (2006-2009) and COSY (2016-2019)
• Organized international conferences including Experimental Pragmatics 2007 and Formal Approaches to Japanese Linguistics 6

Labs & Collaborations: Leads the Semantics and Pragmatics Department at ZAS, fostering interdisciplinary research. Collaborates globally through networks like Euro XPRAG and COST Action A33.