Hannes Kniffka

Hannes Kniffka (born October 15, 1942 ) is a German linguist . Until his retirement in 2008 he worked as a professor for general linguistics at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn .

Live and act

Kniffka studied historical-comparative linguistics, Indology , general linguistics and anthropology at the University of Bonn and the University of Cologne from 1962 to 1968 with the support of a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation . In 1968 he was with a thesis on word formation of the verb in Latin in Bonn doctorate . This was followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in linguistics at Stanford University from 1968 to 1970 . The focus of his studies was on the "Language Universals" project by Joseph Greenberg and Charles A. Ferguson , especially in the areas of sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics . Until 1972 he worked as a lecturer at California State University Hayward .

After returning to Germany, from 1972 to 1981 he was a research assistant to Heinz Vater at the Institute for German Language and Literature at the University of Cologne, where he completed his habilitation in 1980 in general linguistics with Hansjakob Seiler .

From 1981 to 1987 Kniffka was professor of linguistics, English and German at the King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia and from 1987 to 1988 lecturer in the German department of the Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) in China .

In 1989 he was appointed to the professorship for "General Linguistics including Applied Linguistics" at the University of Bonn, which he held until his statutory retirement in 2008.

Kniffka founded "forensic linguistics" in Germany in the early 1970s, prepared numerous expert reports for courts, investigative authorities and lawyers and carried out the first international congress of the subject in June 1993 at the University of Bonn. He held numerous visiting professorships at Arab, Asian, European and North American universities.

Fonts (selection)

• Prolegomena of a descriptive theory of word formation. The verbs of the first Latin conjugation derived from adjectives and adverbs . Dissertation 1968, Bonn 1972

• Sociolinguistics and empirical text analysis. Headline and lead formulation in American daily newspapers . Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1980, ISBN 978-3-484-10410-5
• Elements of culture contrastive linguistics ./ Elements of culture contrastive linguistics , Lang Verlag, 1995, ISBN 978-3-631-47602-4
• The linguist as an appraiser in court. Considerations and materials for an “applied sociolinguistics” . In: G. Peuser, S. Winter (Ed.): Applied Linguistics. Basic questions - areas - methods . Bouvier Verlag H. Grundmann, Bonn, 1981, 584-634. ISBN 3-416-01590-8 .
• Working in Language and Law. A German Perspective . Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2007, ISBN 978-0-230-55142-8

Web links

• Literature by and about Hannes Kniffka in the bibliographic database WorldCat

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Team - Institute for Linguistics, Media and Musicology. Retrieved February 8, 2020 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Karin Luttermann: Legal terminology . LIT Verlag Münster, 2002, ISBN 978-3-8258-5979-4 ( google.de [accessed on February 8, 2020]).
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Hannes Kniffka PhD. In: TALE: The Association for Linguisting Evidence. Retrieved February 8, 2020 (American English). 
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Wilfried Kürschner: Linguist Handbook: Biographical and bibliographical data of German-speaking linguists of the present . Gunter Narr Verlag, 1994, ISBN 978-3-8233-5000-2 ( google.de [accessed on February 9, 2020]).
5. ^ Hannes Kniffka: Elements of culture-contrastive linguistics . P. Lang, 1995, ISBN 978-0-8204-2927-4 ( google.de [accessed February 9, 2020]).
6. ^ Kämper, Heidrun: Proof of authorship. In: Kriminalistik 8-9 / 1996, 561-566. Retrieved February 11, 2020 . 
7. ^ Liu Weiming: IAFL Conferences. Retrieved February 11, 2020 . 
8. ^ Holst, F. / Kniffka, H .: Bonn Conference on Forensic Linguistics . In: Criminalistics and Forensic Sciences . tape 83/1994 . Kriminalistik Verlag, Heidelberg, p. 173-185 .