Phd Thesis
Hobich, Melanie (2025): what for-type kind and token Interrogatives. Frankfurt am Main: Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg.
Papers
Hobich, Melanie & Helmut Weiß (subm.): Was für eine Frage ist das – KIND oder TOKEN? Eine empirische Studie zur Interpretation von was-für-Fragen im Deutschen. In: Manuela Moroni, Edgar Onea & Anna Volodina (eds.): Zur Syntax, Semantik und Pragmatik von Fragen im Deutschen. Sonderheft Linguistik online.
Hobich, Melanie (accepted): The was für-construction across language families: Properties
and distribution in Baltic, Germanic and Slavic. SARDiS Proceedings 2024.
Hobich, Melanie (2018): A diachronic perspective on was für. Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Vol. 54. No. 1. Chicago Linguistic Society, 2018.
Talks (Selection)
Upcoming:
2026. DEGREE in German(ic) so– and was für-Exclamatives. Talk to be given at conference “Exclamations: form(s) and funtion(s), Sorbonne Université, Paris. 10 + 11 December 2026. With Helmut Weiß.
Recent:
2026. Graduierbare w- und so-Exklamative. Talk to be given at BÖDT 2026, Freie Universität Bozen, 16-18 September 2026. With Helmut Weiß.
2025. Was für eine Frage? Die Variation und Diachronie von was für. Talk given at the XV. IVG-Kongress 2025, University of Graz, Section V41: Fragen in der Krise. With Thomas Strobel and Helmut Weiß.
2024. Distribution and structure of the was für-construction. Talk given at SaRDiS 2024, Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken.
2019. The Diachrony of was für. Talk given at CGSW 34, University of Konstanz, June 14-15.
2019. From head to clause: A diachronic approach to was für as predication. CamCos 8, Cambridge, UK, May 2-4.
2018. The für in was für: Historical evidence against was für as wh-modification. CLS54, Chicago, USA, April 26-28.
2018. What do you want for a drink? The structure of the German was für construction in light of historic data. GLOW 41, Budapest, Hungary, April 10-14.
Organizing
Workshop on contact-induced language change (DGfS 2027)
How to investigate and to explain morpho-syntactic contact-induced language change? ‘Arbeitsgruppe’ to be co-organized with Nelli Kerezova as part of the Annual Conference of the German Society for Linguistics (DGfS) to be held at Universität Jena in March 2027.