English Department

Rahel Oppliger is a research and teaching assistant in English linguistics at the chair of Prof. Dr. Marianne Hundt.

She holds a BA in English Literature and Linguistics, Computational Linguistics and General Linguistics from the University of Zurich, during which she spent a year at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ studying English Literature and Linguistics. She holds an MA in Language and Linguistics from Lancaster University, UK.

Currently, she is working on her PhD project, Complex referring expressions in dialogue: Interaction and language change (working title), supervised by Prof. Dr. Marianne Hundt (English department, UZH) and co-supervised by Prof. Dr. Martin Pickering (Psychology department, University of Edinburgh). Her research focuses on noun phrases in interactive, spoken English, which she investigates using psycholinguistic experimental methods.

Her research interests include syntax, cognitive linguistics, construction grammar, psycholinguistics and critical discourse analysis.

2018. “Whatever the specific circumstances, …: A Construction Grammar perspective of wh-ever clauses in English”. In Elena Seoane, Carlos Acuña-Fariña, and Ignacio Palacios Martínez, eds. Subordination in English: Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives. Berlin: De Gruyter, 263–284.

2016. “Automatic authorship attribution based on character n-grams in Swiss German”. In Stefanie Dipper, Friedrich Neubarth, and Heike Zinsmeister, eds. Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Natural Language Processing (KONVENS). Bochum: Bochumer Linguistische Arbeitsberichte, 177–185.

2016. “Part-Of-Speech in Historical Corpora: Tagger Evaluation and Ensemble Systems on ARCHER”. With Gerold Schneider and Marianne Hundt. In Stefanie Dipper, Friedrich Neubarth, and Heike Zinsmeister, eds. Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Natural Language Processing (KONVENS). Bochum: Bochumer Linguistische Arbeitsberichte, 256–264.

2016. “Variationist versus text-linguistic approaches to grammatical change in English: nominal modifiers of head nouns”. With Douglas Biber, Jesse Egbert, Bethany Gray, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. In Merja Kytö and Päivi Pahta, eds. Cambridge Handbook of English Historical Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 351–375.
 

2019. "Structural changes in noun phrase referring expressions in interactive communication." Workshop on the English Noun Phrase, University of Vienna, 11-13 July.

2019. "Diversity of head nouns in referential communication: Same-type vs. mixed-type sets of stimuli." TABU Dag, University of Groningen, 20-21 June.

2019. "Change in the structure of referring expressions over the course of an interaction." ICAME 40, University of Neuchâtel, 1-5 June.

2019. “Structural changes in NP referring expressions in interactive communication.” Cognitive Linguistics Research Group, The University of Edinburgh, 7 Feb.

2018. “The contribution of noun phrase modifiers to reference alignment.” AMPRA-4, SUNY at Albany, 1-3 Nov.

2018. “Happy is up, sad is down: Metaphors and language experiments.” ES Alumni Colloquia 2018, English Seminar, University of Zurich.

2017. “Reference in audio descriptions of TV programmes.” Language and Perception, University of Bern, 7-9 Sept.

2017. “When words are/go missing: Accommodating communicative breakdowns in semiotics.” Paper presented at Communication & Cognition (ComCog): Miscommunication: Getting Lost in Language(s), University of Fribourg, 8-10 Feb.

2016. “Part-Of-Speech in Historical Corpora: Tagger Evaluation and Ensemble Systems on ARCHER.” With Gerold Schneider and Marianne Hundt. KONVENS, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 19-21 Sept.

2016. “Automatic authorship attribution based on character n-grams in Swiss German.” KONVENS, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 19-21 Sept.

2016. “(The) fact is ... /(Die) Tatsache ist ... – A comparative corpus-based study of variable article use in English and German focalisers.”  With Marianne Hundt. SLE, University of Naples Federico II, 31 Aug – 3 Sept.