Martin Haspelmath (Linguist)

Martin Haspelmath (born February 2, 1963 in Hoya ) is a German linguist .

Life

Martin Haspelmath studied Indo-European Studies , General Linguistics and Slavic Studies at the University of Vienna from 1983 to 1985 and from 1985 to 1987 at the University of Cologne . In 1988 he completed his master's degree in linguistics at the University at Buffalo , and in 1989 his master's degree in Slavic studies at the University of Cologne. After a year abroad at the Lomonossow University in Moscow, he worked at the Free University of Berlin from 1990-1996 , where he received his doctorate in 1993 and also completed his habilitation in 1996 .

From 1998 to 2015 Martin Haspelmath worked in the linguistics department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. From 2015 to 2020 he worked at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Man. Since August 2020 he has moved back to the MPI in Leipzig with the Department of Language and Cultural Evolution from the Jena Institute. Since 1999 he has also been an honorary professor for linguistics at the University of Leipzig . In 2005 he was accepted as a full member of the Academia Europaea .

Haspelmath is a nephew of the organ builder Martin Haspelmath .

Haspelmath's research focuses on syntax theory , morphology , language contact and language change as well as language typology . Important projects with his participation were the creation of the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS, 2005) , the World Loanword Database (WOLD, 2009) in collaboration with Uri Tadmor and the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures (APiCS, 2013). Haspelmath also initiated the online linguistic encyclopedia Glottopedia.

"Martin Haspelmath, Linguist: The Grammar Hunter". In: Geowissen No. 40, 2007: The Secret of Language, pp. 80f. (with photo).