Research
Overview
I work on a variety of topics in a wide range of languages, including complementation, logophoricity, differential object marking, genericity, person feature systems, agreement systems, information structure, speech acts, definiteness, and allocutivity. My work involves solutions that take the morpho-syntactic and the semantic side into account. I’m particularly interested in the mapping between form and meaning. My research tends to focus on understudied languages, as they often make us see things that are hidden in many Indo-European languages. Cross-linguistic comparisons are another important tool I’m using to investigate potentially universal underlying structure. In the past few years, I was able to extend my interest to the field of L1 acquisition, where I explored the acquisition of negative indefinites, past tense morphology, and conjunction patterns across several language families.
Research interests
- agreement phenomena, PCC effects
- differential object marking, pseudo-noun incorporation
- syntax-semantics of genericity and definiteness
- information structure, speech acts
- syntax-semantics of complementation, logophors
- syntax-semantics of negative indefinites
Research group(s)
External activities
Overview
For a full and up-to-date list of talks and presentations, see:
https://pure.york.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/imke-driemel
Invited talks and conferences
Invited talks
- 2025. The University of Manchester, SemLab. “Definiteness in the nominal domain – Observations from Swedish and Kwa languages”
- 2025. University College London, Seminar Series. “Omnivorous agreement via post-syntactic overwriting: the object marker in Mundari”
- 2025. Leipzig University, Cyclops Colloquium. “DP/NP distinctions in Kwa languages”
- 2023. Leibniz-Center General Linguistics (ZAS). Definiteness and the internal structure of the noun phrase.
- 2023. Yale University. Pseudo-noun incorporation and differential object marking: A cross-linguistic study.
- 2022. Goethe-University Frankfurt. Implicit arguments and their morpho-syntactic effects.
- 2020. New York University. Say-complementation and agreement in Kipsigis. (with Maria Kouneli)
- 2018. University of Connecticut. How to agree with a QNP. (with Jelena Stojkovic)
Conferences
- 2024. Overt PAST on irregular verbs in child English due to secondary feature negligence. Talk at GALA 16, Lisbon. (with Johannes Hein, Fabienne Martin & Yining Nie)
- 2024. Say-clauses in subject position: observations from Kwa languages. Talk at LAGB, Newcastle. (with Abigail Bimpeh & Reginald Duah)
- 2023. Errors of redundancy in child English past tense formation. Poster at GLOW 46, Vienna. (with Johannes Hein, Fabienne Martin, Yining Nie & Artemis Alexiadou)
- 2023. An experimental study on kind and generic readings across languages: bare vs. definite plural. Poster at NELS 53, Göttingen. (with Johannes Hein, Desiré Carioti,
Jakob Wünsch, Vina Tsakali, Artemis Alexiadou, Uli Sauerland & Maria Teresa Guasti)
- 2022. As complex as they appear: Children’s comprehension of conjunctive expressions in Georgian. Poster at the Amsterdam Colloquium 23. (with Cory Bill, Aurore Gonzalez & Tamar Makharoblidze)
- 2022. Negative Concord in Dutch, English, and German child language. Talk at CGSW 36, Chicago. (with Johannes Hein, Cory Bill, Aurore Gonzalez, Ivona Illic, Paloma Jeretic & Astrid van Alem)
- 2022. Strict logophors. Talk at Sinn und Bedeutung 27, Prague. (with Itai Bassi, Abigail Bimpeh & Silvia Silleresi)
- 2022, Pseudo-incorporation vs. Differential Argument Marking in Korean. Talk at GLOW in Asia XIII., Hong Kong. (with Hyunjung Lee)
- 2022. Obligatory de se logophors in Ewe, Yoruba, and Igbo. Talk at WCCFL 40, Stanford. (with Abigail Bimpeh, Itai Bassi & Silvia Silleresi)
- 2022. Gender and allocutivity in the world’s languages. Talk at FASAL 12, Utah. (with Gurujegan Murugesan)
- 2021. A dedicated topic position in Kipsigis. TripleA 8, Singapore. (with Maria Kouneli)
- 2021. <v,t>-type complementation in Kipsigis. Talk at WCCFL 39, Stanford. (with Maria Kouneli)
- 2019. Pseudo-noun incorporation: A DP/VP approach. Poster at NELS 50, MIT.
- 2019. Adyghe cislocative: Canonical inverse but non-canonical PCC marker. Talk at NELS 50, MIT. (with Marie-Luise Popp & Bilal Özdemir)
- 2018. On pure focus movement in Syntax – Observations from Limbum. Talk at GLOW 41, Budapest. (with Jude Nformi)
- 2017. Person Mismatch Agreement. Poster at NELS 48, Reykjavik.
- 2017. Two types of focus in Limbum. Talk at ACAL 48, Bloomington. (with Laura Becker & Jude Nformi)
- 2015. Factivity in German exclamatives. Poster at Sinn und Bedeutung 20, Tübingen.
