ABOUT ME

After having received my MA (1995) as well as my PhD degree (2001) from the University of Frankfurt, I joined the University of Amsterdam in May 2001; since 2014, I am associate professor in sign language linguistics at the Department of General Linguistics. Whilst studying in Frankfurt, I was focusing on issues in psycholinguistics and formal grammar theory. Both these aspects play an important role in my PhD thesis in which I investigate the processing of grammatical category labels and morphosyntactic features in language production, i.e. their role in spontaneous slips of the tongue.
As member of a research group in Frankfurt, I became involved in sign language research around 1995. It started as a hobby, but soon I devoted most of my time to sign language issues. Ever since, I have been studying aspects of sign language morphophonology (e.g. pluralization), morphosyntax (e.g. agreement, classifiers, and reciprocals), syntax (e.g. relative clauses, questions, and negation), and grammaticalization - often in collaboration with Markus Steinbach from the University of Göttingen. I find it particularly fascinating to take a typological and cross-linguistic perspective on these issues, and I enjoy collaborating with colleagues who work on other sign languages.
[see below for my CV]

Together with Pamela Perniss (University of Cologne), I am editor of the journal Sign Language & Linguistics; together with my UvA colleague Silke Hamann, I am editing Linguistics in Amsterdam.
I am also editorial board member of the Mouton de Gruyter Sign Language Typology (SLT) series. 
[see below for links]

NEWS

New website dedicated to sign language research at the UvA (maintained by Floris Roelofsen, ILLC):
https://www.signlab-amsterdam.nl/ 

New article coming out very soon: Hartmann, Katharina, Roland Pfau & Iris Legeland. 2021. Asymmetry and contrast: Coordination in Sign Language of the Netherlands. Glossa: a Journal of General Linguistics 6(1): 101, 1–33.

New edited volume (January 2021): Pfau, Roland, Aslı Göksel & Jana Hosemann (eds.) 2021. Our lives – our stories: Life experiences of elderly Deaf people. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

New handbook (March 2018): Quer, Josep, Roland Pfau & Annika Herrmann (eds.) 2021. The Routledge handbook of theoretical and experimental sign language research. Oxford: Routledge.

New research project (funded by ACLC, starting October 2021): Constraints on Filipono Sign Language variation: typological and sociolinguistic perspectives [see below for details]

PROJECTS
 

1. PhD project "Argument structure in Sign Language of the Netherlands (Vanja de Lint, started September 2015; supervised by Roland Pfau and Enoch O. Aboh; funded by Dutch Research Council (NWO), grant #360-70-520).
    
2. PhD project "Morphological reduplication in Sign Language of the Netherlands: A typological and theoretical perspective" (Cindy van Boven, started September 2019; supervised by Roland Pfau and Silke Hamann; funded by Dutch Research Council (NWO), grant #PGW.19.003)":
   Reduplication is a common word formation process in both spoken and sign language. Under reduplication, a (part of a) word stem is repeated. This study will offer the first comprehensive account of reduplication in Sign Language of the Netherlands. The study will describe the functions of and restrictions on reduplication of both nouns and verbs. Beyond description, the study will offer a typological and theoretical perspective on the phenomenon. First, results will be compared to earlier findings from both sign and spoken languages. Second, the patterns will be analyzed within a well-established linguistic framework, namely Optimality Theory.
    
3. PhD project "The emergence of complex syntactic structures in Russian Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlands" (Jenia Khristoforova, started September 2020; supervised by Roland Pfau and Enoch O. Aboh; funded by Dutch Research Council (NWO), grant #PGW.20.008): 
   The research investigates the development of complex sentences in Russian Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlands. In the first phase of the project, we provide a detailed description of coordination, complementation and relativization in these languages using variety of methods (corpus study, elicitation tasks, and grammaticality judgments). In the second phase, we integrate several theoretical approaches to explain the development of these construction types. The outcomes of this research will further our understanding of the emergence of complexity in human language, while shedding new light on modality-specific patterns.
    
4. PhD project "Constraints on Filipono Sign Language variation: typological and sociolinguistic perspectives" (Liberty Notarte-Balanquit, started October 2021; supervised by Roland Pfau and Suzanne Aalberse; funded by the Amsterdam Center for Language & Communication): 
   Applying the concept of linguistic variable beyond phonology and lexicon, this research investigates how strategies of marking numerals, negation, and wh-questions in Filipino Sign Language (FSL) yields sociolinguistic variations up to the morphological and syntactic levels. Paradigmatically speaking, this affirms the emerging typological perspective in studying sign language variations, emphasizing its benefits to Deaf communities and linguistic theory. As FSL remains an understudied sign language, providing a corpus of its variations in these domains will index FSL in future comparative and typological studies of sign languages thereby addressing the problem of scarcity of data in sign language typology in general.

in preparation / in press

Hammerly, Christopher & Roland Pfau. Submitted. Distributed Morphology and psycholinguistics. To appear in: Alexiadou, A., R. Kramer, A. Marantz & I. Oltra-Massuet (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of Distributed Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Klomp, Ulrika, Marloes Oomen & Roland Pfau. Submitted. Negation in Sign Language of the Netherlands. To appear in L. Veselinova & M. Miestamo (eds.), Negation in the languages of the world. Berlin: Language Science Press.

Lutzenberger, Hannah, Roland Pfau & Connie de Vos. In preparation. Negation in Kata Kolok: Grammaticalization throughout three generations of signers.

Pfau, Roland, Tamar Makharoblidze & Hedde Zeijlstra. Submitted. Negation and Negative Concord in Georgian Sign Language. Submitted to Frontiers in Psychology, Special issue.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. Submitted. Morphology in sign languages: Theoretical issues and typological contrasts. To appear in P. Ackema, P., S. Bendjaballah, E. Bonet & A. Fábregas (eds.), The Wiley Blackwell companion to morphology. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.

van Boven, Cindy, Marloes Oomen & Roland Pfau. Submitted. Negative Concord in Sign Language of the Netherlands: Journey through a corpus. To appear in E. Wehrmeyer (ed.), Advances in sign language corpus linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

2021

Kimmelman, Vadim & Roland Pfau. 2021. Information structure – theoretical perspectives. In J. Quer, R. Pfau & A. Herrmann (eds.), The Routledge handbook of theoretical and experimental sign language research. Oxford: Routledge, 591–613.

Pfau, Roland, Aslı Göksel & Jana Hosemann (eds.) 2021. Our lives – our stories: Life experiences of elderly Deaf people. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Pfau, Roland, Aslı Göksel & Jana Hosemann. 2021. Much more than a treasure: the life stories of elderly Deaf people. In R. Pfau, A. Göksel & J. Hosemann (eds.), Our lives – our stories: Life experiences of elderly Deaf people. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 1–15.

Pfau, Roland, Annemieke van Kampen & Menno Harterink. 2021. Pink sign: Identity challenges, choices, and changes among elderly Deaf homosexuals in the Netherlands. In R. Pfau, A. Göksel & J. Hosemann (eds.), Our lives – our stories: Life experiences of elderly Deaf people. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 129–167.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2021. Number in sign languages. In P. Cabredo Hofherr & J. Doetjes (eds.), The Oxford handbook of grammatical number. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 644–660.

Quer, Josep, Roland Pfau & Annika Herrmann (eds.) 2021. The Routledge handbook of theoretical and experimental sign language research. Oxford: Routledge.

2020

Boers-Visker, Eveline & Roland Pfau. 2020. Space oddities: The acquisition of agreement verbs by L2 learners of Sign Language of the Netherlands. Modern Language Journal 104(4), 757–780. [open access - doi: 10.1111/modl.12676]

Kimmelman, Vadim, Roland Pfau & Enoch O. Aboh. 2020. Argument structure of classifier predicates in Russian Sign Language. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 38, 539–579. [open access - doi: 10.1007/s11049-019-09448-9]

2019

Geraci, Carlo, Roland Pfau, Pietro Braione, Carlo Cecchetto & Josep Quer. 2019. Hidden languages in a digital world: the case of sign language archives. Journal of the Italian Association of Speech Sciences (Studi AISV) 6 (Audio archives at the crossroads of speech sciences, digital humanities, and digital heritage¸ ed. by D. Piccardi, F. Ardolino & S. Calamai), 31–47. [see below for paper]

Kimmelman, Vadim, Vanja de Lint, Connie de Vos, Marloes Oomen, Roland Pfau, Lianne Vink & Enoch O. Aboh. 2019. Argument structure of classifier predicates: canonical and non-canonical mappings in four sign languages. Open Linguistics 5, 332–353. [open access - doi: 10.1515/opli-2019-0018]

Kimmelman, Vadim, Roland Pfau & Enoch O. Aboh (eds.) 2019. Argument structure across modalities (Special issue of Open Linguistics). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

2018

Couvee, Sascha & Roland Pfau. 2018. Structure and grammaticalization of serial verb constructions in Sign Language of the Netherlands – A corpus-based study. Frontiers in Psychology 9: 993. [open access - doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00993]

Legeland, Iris, Katharina Hartmann & Roland Pfau. 2018. Word order asymmetries in NGT coordination: The impact of Information Structure. Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory 2. 56-67. [open access - doi: 10.31009/FEAST.i2.05]

Makharoblidze, Tamar & Roland Pfau. 2018. A negation-tense interaction in Georgian Sign Language. Sign Language & Linguistics 21(1), 136-151. [doi: 10.1075/sll.00013.mak]

Oomen, Marloes, Roland Pfau & Enoch O. Aboh. 2018. High and low negation in Sign Language of the Netherlands. Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory 1, 39-47. [open access - doi: 10.2436/20.8050.03.4]

Pfau, Roland, Martin Salzmann & Markus Steinbach. 2018. The syntax of sign language agreement: Common ingredients, but unusual recipe. Glossa: a Journal of General Linguistics 3(1): 107, 1-46. [open access - doi: 10.5334/gjgl.511]

2017

Oomen, Marloes & Roland Pfau. 2017. Signing NOT (or not): A typological perspective on standard negation in Sign Language of the Netherlands. Linguistic Typology 21(1).

Quer, Josep, Carlo Cecchetto, Caterina Donati, Carlo Geraci, Meltem Kelepir, Roland Pfau & Markus Steinbach (eds.). 2017. SignGram Blueprint: A guide to sign language grammar writing. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton (open access at www.degruyter.com).

2016

Baker, Anne, Beppie van den Bogaerde, Roland Pfau & Trude Schermer (eds.). 2016. The linguistics of sign languages: An introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins [doi: 10.1075/z.199].

Baker, Anne & Roland Pfau. 2016. Constituents and word classes. In Baker, A., B. van den Bogaerde, R. Pfau & T. Schermer (eds.), The linguistics of sign languages: An introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 93-115.

Kimmelman, Vadim & Roland Pfau. 2016. Information structure in sign languages. In: Fery, C. & S. Ishihara (eds.), The Oxford handbook on information structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 814-833. [see below for draft version]

Pfau, Roland. 2016. A featural approach to sign language negation. In: Larrivée, P. & C. Lee (eds.), Negation and negative polarity. Cognitive and experimental perspectives. Dordrecht: Springer, 45-74. [see below for draft version]

Pfau, Roland. 2016. Morphology. In Baker, A., B. van den Bogaerde, R. Pfau & T. Schermer (eds.), The linguistics of sign languages: An introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 197-228.

Pfau, Roland. 2016. Non-manuals and tones: A comparative perspective on suprasegmentals and spreading. Linguística 11, 19-58.  [see below for article]

Pfau, Roland. 2016. Switching, blending … and slipping (commentary on Lillo-Martin, Müller de Quadros & Chen Pichler). Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 6(6), 802-807. [doi: 10.1075/lab.6.6.11pfa].

Pfau, Roland. 2016. Syntax: complex sentences. In Baker, A., B. van den Bogaerde, R. Pfau & T. Schermer (eds.), The linguistics of sign languages: An introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 149-172.

Pfau, Roland & Heleen Bos. 2016. Syntax: simple sentences. In Baker, A., B. van den Bogaerde, R. Pfau & T. Schermer (eds.), The linguistics of sign languages: An introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 117-147.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2016. Complex sentences in sign languages: Modality – typology – discourse. In Pfau, R., M. Steinbach & A. Herrmann (eds.), A matter of complexity: Subordination in sign languages. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 1-35.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2016. Modality and meaning: Plurality of relations in German Sign Language. Lingua 170, 69-91 [doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2015.11.002].

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2016. Phonologischer Wandel in Gebärdensprachen. In Domahs, U. & B. Primus (eds.), Handbuch Laut – Gebärde – Buchstabe. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 264-282.

Pfau, Roland, Markus Steinbach & Annika Herrmann (eds.). 2016. A matter of complexity: Subordination in sign languages. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Schermer, Trude & Roland Pfau. 2016. Language contact and change. In Baker, A., B. van den Bogaerde, R. Pfau & T. Schermer (eds.), The linguistics of sign languages: An introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 299-324.

Schermer, Trude & Roland Pfau. 2016. Psycholinguistics. In Baker, A., B. van den Bogaerde, R. Pfau & T. Schermer (eds.), The linguistics of sign languages: An introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 25-50.

2015

Pfau, Roland. 2015. The grammaticalization of headshakes: From head movement to negative head. In Smith, A.D.M., G. Trousdale & R. Waltereit (eds.), New directions in grammaticalization research. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 9-50.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2015. PERSON climbing up a tree (and other adventures in sign language grammaticalization). In Rutkowski, P. (ed.), Signs and structures: Formal approaches to sign language syntax. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 71-101.

Strickland, Brent, Carlo Geraci, Emmanuel Chemla, Philippe Schlenker, Meltem Kelepir & Roland Pfau. 2015. Event representations constrain the structure of language: Sign language as a window into universally accessible linguistic biases. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 112(19), 5968-5973 [doi: 10.1073/pnas.1423080112].

Vos, Connie de & Roland Pfau. 2015. Sign language typology: The contribution of rural sign languages. Annual Review of Linguistics 1, 265-288 [doi: 10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-124958].

2014

Loon, Esther van, Roland Pfau & Markus Steinbach. 2014. The grammaticalization of gestures in sign languages. In Müller, C., A. Cienki, E. Fricke, S.H. Ladewig, D. McNeill & S. Tessendorf (eds.), Body – language – communication: An international handbook on multimodality in human interaction. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2133-2149.
 

2013

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2013. PERSON climbing up a tree (and other adventures in sign language grammaticalization). Sign Language & Linguistics 16(2), 189-221.

2012

Pfau, Roland. 2012. Manual communication systems: evolution and variation. In Pfau, Roland, Markus Steinbach & Bencie Woll (eds.), Sign language. An international handbook. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 513-551.

Pfau, Roland & Enoch O. Aboh. 2012. On the syntax of spatial adpositions in sign languages. In Proceedings of IATL 27 (MIT Working Papers in Linguistics), 83-104. [see below for paper]

Pfau, Roland, Markus Steinbach & Bencie Woll. 2012. Tense, aspect, and modality. In Pfau, Roland, Markus Steinbach & Bencie Woll (eds.), Sign language. An international handbook. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 186-204.

Pfau, Roland, Markus Steinbach & Bencie Woll (eds.). 2012. Sign language. An international handbook (HSK - Handbooks of linguistics and communication science). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

2011

Pfau, Roland. 2011. A point well taken: On the typology and diachrony of pointing. In Napoli, D.J. & G. Mathur (eds.), Deaf around the world. The impact of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 144-163. [see below for draft version]

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2011. Grammaticalization in sign languages. In Narrog, Heiko & Bernd Heine (eds.), The Oxford handbook of grammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 683-695.

Schuit, Joke, Anne Baker & Roland Pfau. 2011. Inuit Sign Language: a contribution to sign language typology. Linguistics in Amsterdam 4, 1-31. [see below for link]

2010

Aboh, Enoch O. & Roland Pfau. 2010. What's a wh-word got to do with it? In Benincà, P. & N. Munaro (eds.), Mapping the left periphery: The cartography of syntactic structures, Vol.5. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 91-124. [see below for draft version]

Ansaldo, Umberto, Jan Don & Roland Pfau (eds.). 2010. Parts of speech: Empirical and theoretical advances. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Ansaldo, Umberto, Jan Don & Roland Pfau. 2010. Parts of speech: Particulars, universals and theoretical constructs. In Ansaldo, U., J. Don & R. Pfau (eds.), Parts of speech: Empirical and theoretical advances. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1-4.

Pfau, Roland. 2010. Handwaving & headshaking? On the linguistic structure of sign languages. In Martí i Castells, J. & J.M. Mestres i Serra (eds.), Les llengües de signes com a llengües minoritàries: perspectives lingüístiques, socials i polítiques (Actes del seminari del CUMIPB-CEL 2008). Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Catalans, 59-84. [see below for draft version]

Pfau, Roland & Josep Quer. 2010. Nonmanuals: their prosodic and grammatical roles. In Brentari, Diane (ed.), Sign languages (Cambridge Language Surveys). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 381-402.

2009

Pfau, Roland. 2009. Grammar as processor. A Distributed Morphology account of spontaneous speech errors (Linguistik Aktuell 137). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Smeijers, Anika & Roland Pfau. 2009. Towards a treatment for treatment: On communication between general practitioners and their Deaf patients. The Sign Language Translator and Interpreter 3 (1), 1-14. 

2008

Ansaldo, Umberto, Jan Don & Roland Pfau (eds.). 2008. Parts of speech: Descriptive tools, theoretical constructs (Special issue of Studies in Language 32 (3)). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Baker, Anne, Beppie van den Bogaerde, Roland Pfau & Trude Schermer (eds.). 2008. Gebarentaalwetenschap - Een inleiding. Deventer: Van Tricht.

Baker, Anne & Roland Pfau. 2008. Constituenten en woordsoorten. In Baker, A., B. van den Bogaerde, R. Pfau & T. Schermer (eds.), Gebarentaalwetenschap - Een inleiding. Deventer: Van Tricht, 99-119.

Bakker, Dik & Roland Pfau. 2008. Agreement in the noun phrase: the dynamic expression of terms and what can go wrong. In Garcia Velasco, D. & J. Rijkhoff (eds.), The noun phrase in Functional Grammar.  Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 287-320.

Pfau, Roland. 2008. Complexe zinnen. In Baker, A., B. van den Bogaerde, R. Pfau & T. Schermer (eds.), Gebarentaalwetenschap - Een inleiding. Deventer: Van Tricht, 145-166.

Pfau, Roland. 2008. The grammar of headshake: A typological perspective on German Sign Language negation. Linguistics in Amsterdam 2008 (1), 37-74. [see below for paper]

Pfau, Roland. 2008. Woordvorming. In Baker, A., B. van den Bogaerde, R. Pfau & T. Schermer (eds.), Gebarentaalwetenschap - Een inleiding. Deventer: Van Tricht, 188-213.

Pfau, Roland & Heleen Bos. 2008. Enkelvoudige zinnen. In Baker, A., B. van den Bogaerde, R. Pfau & T. Schermer (eds.), Gebarentaalwetenschap - Een inleiding. Deventer: Van Tricht, 120-144.

Schermer, Trude & Roland Pfau. 2008. Psycholinguïstiek. In Baker, A., B. van den Bogaerde, R. Pfau & T. Schermer (eds.), Gebarentaalwetenschap – een inleiding. Deventer: Van Tricht, 43-62.

Schermer, Trude & Roland Pfau. 2008. Taalverandering en taalcontact. In Baker, A., B. van den Bogaerde, R. Pfau & T.Schermer (eds.), Gebarentaalwetenschap - Een inleiding. Deventer: Van Tricht, 275-292.

2007

Perniss, Pamela, Roland Pfau & Markus Steinbach (eds.). 2007. Visible variation: Comparative studies on sign language structure. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Perniss, Pamela, Roland Pfau & Markus Steinbach. 2007. Can't you see the difference? Sources of variation in sign language structure. In Perniss, P., R. Pfau & M. Steinbach (eds.), Visible variation: Comparative studies on sign language structure. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1-34.

Pfau, Roland. 2007. Cheap repairs: A Distributed Morphology toolkit for sentence construction. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 53 (The state of the art in speech error research: Proceedings of the LSA Institute Workshop, ed. by Carson T. Schütze & Victor S. Ferreira). Cambridge, MA: MITWPL, 9-33.

Pfau, Roland & Josep Quer. 2007. On the syntax of negation and modals in German Sign Language (DGS) and Catalan Sign Language (LSC). In Perniss, P., R. Pfau & M. Steinbach (eds.), Visible variation: Comparative studies on sign language structure. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 129-161.

Markus Steinbach & Roland Pfau. 2007. Grammaticalization of auxiliaries in sign languages. In Perniss, P., R. Pfau & M. Steinbach (eds.), Visible variation: Comparative studies on sign language structure. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 303-339.

2006

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2006. Modality-independent and modality-specific aspects of grammaticalization in sign languages (Linguistics in Potsdam 24). Potsdam: Universitäts-Verlag. [see below for link to paper]

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2006. Pluralization in sign and speech: A cross-modal typological study. Linguistic Typology 10, 135-182.

2005

Aboh, Enoch, Roland Pfau & Ulrike Zeshan. 2005. When a wh-word is not a wh-word: The case of Indian Sign Language. In Bhattacharya, T. (ed.), Yearbook of South Asian Languages and Linguistics 2005. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 11-43.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2005. Backward and sideward reduplication in German Sign Language. In Hurch, B. (ed.), Studies on Reduplication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 569-594.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2005. Plural formation in German Sign Language: Constraints and strategies. In Leuninger, H. & D. Happ (eds.), Gebärdensprachen: Struktur, Erwerb, Verwendung (Linguistische Berichte Special Issue 13). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 111-144.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2005. Relative clauses in German Sign Language: Extraposition and reconstruction. In Bateman, L. & C. Ussery (eds.), Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 35),Vol. 2 . Amherst, MA: GLSA, 507-521.

2004

Perniss, Pamela & Roland Pfau. 2004. Gebärdensprachen - Eine cross-linguistische Perspektive [Sign languages - a cross-linguistic perspective]. Das Zeichen 67, 264-271.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2004. An optimality-theoretic account of German Sign Language pluralization. In Agbayani, B., V. Samiian & B. V. Tucker (eds.), Proceedings of the Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL), Vol. 15. Fresno: CA: CSU, 234-245.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2004. Wie du mir, so ich dir: Reziprokkonstruktionen in DGS [Reciprocal constructions in German Sign Language]. Das Zeichen 66, 74-84.

2003

Pfau, Roland. 2003. Defective feature copy and anti-agreement in language production. Texas Linguistics Forum 53, 95-108 (Special Issue The role of agreement in natural language. Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Texas Linguistic Society ). [see below for paper]

Pfau, Roland. 2003. Ontkenning in DuitseGebarentaal [Negation in German Sign Language]. Interpres 16 (2), 4-5.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2003. A constraint-based analysis of reciprocals in German Sign Language. In Samiian,V. (ed.), Proceedings of the Western Conference on Linguistics,Vol.13 (WECOL 2001). Fresno, CA: CSU, 313-326.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2003. Optimal reciprocals in German Sign Language. Sign Language & Linguistics 6(1), 3-42.

2002

Keller, Jörg, Roland Pfau & Markus Steinbach. 2002. Review of: Erlenkamp, Sonja (2000), Syntaktische Kategorien und lexikalische Klassen. Typologische Aspekte der Deutschen Gebärdensprache. Munich: Lincom. Sign Language & Linguistics 5(2), 247-253.

Pfau, Roland. 2002. Applying morphosyntactic and phonological readjustment rules in natural language negation. In Meier, R.P., K.A. Cormier & D.G. Quinto-Pozos (eds.), Modality and structure in signed and spoken languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 263-295.

Pfau, Roland. 2002. Review of: Neidle, Carol et al. (2000), The syntax of American Sign Language: Functional categories and hierarchical structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Journal of Linguistics 38, 450-452.

Pfau, Roland & Josep Quer. 2002. V-to-Neg raising and negative concord in three sign languages. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 27, 73-86.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach. 2002. Rules vs.constraints in signed reciprocals. In Mikkelsen, L. & C. Potts (eds.), Proceedings of the 21st West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, 373-386.

2001

Pfau, Roland. 2001. Local licensing and feature copy in language production. In Thrift, E., E.J. van der Torre & M. Zimmermann (eds.), Proceedings of ConSOLE 9. Leiden: SOLE, 173-187. [see below for paper]

Pfau, Roland. 2001. Typologische und strukturelle Aspekte der Negation in Deutscher Gebärdensprache [Typological and structural aspects of negation in German Sign Language]. In Leuninger, H. & K. Wempe (eds.), Gebärdensprachlinguistik 2000: Theorie und Anwendung. Hamburg: Signum, 13-31.

2000

Pfau, Roland. 2000. Features and categories in language production. Ph.D.dissertation, Dept. of German Language & Literature, University of Frankfurt/Main.

Pfau, Roland & Susanne Glück. 2000. The pseudo-simultaneous nature of complex verb forms in German Sign Language. In Antrim, N.M., G. Goodall, M. Schulte-Nafeh & V. Samiian (eds.), Proceedings of the Western Conference on Linguistics, Vol. 11 (WECOL 99). Fresno, CA: CSU, 428-44.

1999

Glück, Susanne & Roland Pfau. 1999. A Distributed Morphology account of verbal inflection in German Sign Language. In Cambier-Langeveld, T., A. Lipták, M. Redford & E.J. van der Torre (eds.), Proceedings of ConSOLE 7 . Leiden: SOLE, 65-80. [see below for paper] 

1998

Glück, Susanne & Roland Pfau. 1998. On classifiying classification as a class of inflection in German Sign Language. In Cambier-Langeveld, T., A. Lipták & M. Redford (eds.), Proceedings of ConSOLE 6. Leiden: SOLE, 59-74. [see below for paper]

Happ, Daniela, Susanne Glück, Annette Hohenberger, Jörg Keller, Helen Leuninger & Roland Pfau. 1998. Ich sehe was, was Du nicht hörst: Struktur, Erwerb und Verwendung der Deutschen Gebärdensprache [Structure, acquisition, and use of German Sign Language]. Forschung Frankfurt 3/1998, 4-11.

1997

Pfau, Roland. 1997. Zur phonologischen Komponente der Deutschen Gebärdensprache: Segmente und Silben [The phonological component of German Sign Language: Segments and syllables]. Frankfurter Linguistische Forschungen 20, 1-29.

Glück, Susanne, Daniela Happ, Jörg Keller, Gerald Koblitz, Helen Leuninger & Roland Pfau. 1997. Zur phonologischen Beschreibung von Gebärden: Vergebärdler [On the phonological description of signs: Slips of the hand]. Das Zeichen, 240-257.

Glück, Susanne & Roland Pfau. 1997. Eine Klasse für sich: Klassifizierende Verben in Deutscher Gebärdensprache [Classificatory verbs in German Sign Language]. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 16 (1/2), 181-208.

Glück, Susanne & Roland Pfau. 1997. Einige Aspekte der Morphologie und Morphosyntax in Deutscher Gebärdensprache [Some aspects of German Sign Language morphology and morphosyntax]. Frankfurter Linguistische Forschungen 20, 30-48.

1996

Glück, Susanne & Roland Pfau. 1996. Where's Morphology now? Bericht vom 7th International Morphology Meeting in Wien, 16.-18.02.1996. Frankfurter Linguistische Forschungen 19, 71-88.

1994

Pfau, Roland. 1994. Sprachstörungen im Neuronalen Netz: Eine Untersuchung zur konnektionistischen Neuropsychologie [Language disorders in neural networks: An investigation of connectionist neuropsychology]. MA thesis, University of Frankfurt/Main.

Pfau, Roland. 1994. Sprachstörungen im Neuronalen Netz [Language disorders in neural networks]. Frankfurter Linguistische Forschungen 17, 1-21.

Klaus, Petra, Werner Kollmann & Roland Pfau. 1994. Interview mit Andreas Engel vom MPI für Hirnforschung in Frankfurt [Interview with Andreas Engel fromthe MPI for brain research in Frankfurt]. Frankfurter Linguistische Forschungen 16, 67-78.

1993

Kollmann, Werner & Roland Pfau. 1993. Annäherung. Kontakt. Bruch? Zur Beziehung zwischen Kognition und Künstlicher Intelligenz [On the relation between cognition and artificial intelligence]. Unpublished manuscript (40 pp.), University of Frankfurt/Main.

Kollmann, Werner & Roland Pfau. 1993. Dem Symbol ins Netz gegangen: Konnektionismus versus Symbolismus [Symbols caught in nets: Connectionism vs. symbolism]. Frankfurter Linguistische Forschungen 14, 1-13. 

2019

a) Conference

Braione, Pietro, Carlo Cecchetto, Carlo Geraci, Roland Pfau & Josep Quer. 2019. Hidden languages in a digital world: the case of sign language archives. Poster presented at 15^th Conference of the Italian Association of Speech Sciences (AISV), Arezzo, February 15^th, 2019.

Katharina Hartmann, Roland Pfau & Iris Legeland. 2019. Asymmetry and contrast in coordination in Sign Language of the Netherlands. Workshop “Encoding varieties of topic and focus: the role of contrast and information status” at the 41^th Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS 41), Bremen, March 6^th 2019.

Klomp, Ulrika, Marloes Oomen & Roland Pfau. 2019. Headshake patterns in Neg-raising constructions in Sign Language of the Netherlands. Workshop SignNonmanuals 2, Graz, May 3^rd, 2019.

Oomen, Marloes, Roland Pfau & Ulrika Klomp. 2019. On the nature of Neg-raising in Sign Language of the Netherlands. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR 13), Hamburg, September 27^th, 2019.
 

b) Invited talk

Pfau, Roland & Ronice de Quadros. 2019. Formal approaches to sign language syntax: the impact of modality. Invited panel session at the 11^th International Congress of the Linguistic Association of Brazil (Abralin), Maceió, May 8^th, 2019.

Pfau, Roland. 2019. Headshakes – from gesture to grammar. Invited keynote lecture at LingCologne 2019: Multimodality, Cologne, June 6^th, 2019.

2018

a) Conference

Kimmelman, Vadim, Vanja de Lint, Connie de Vos, Marloes Oomen, Roland Pfau, Lianne Vink & Enoch O. Aboh. 2018. Non-canonical argument structure in classifier predicates in four sign languages. Argument Structure Across Modalities (ASAM 2018), Amsterdam, February 2^nd 2018.

Klomp, Ulrika, Marloes Oomen & Roland Pfau. 2018. Typological aspects of negation in Sign Language of the Netherlands: negative particles, negative modals, and neg-raising. VIII Syntax of the World’s Languages, Paris, September 5^th 2018.

Iris Legeland, Katharina Hartmann & Roland Pfau. 2018. Word order asymmetries in NGT coordination: The impact of Information Structure. Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory (FEAST 7), Venice, June 18^th 2018.

Pfau, Roland & Tamar Makharoblidze. 2018. A negation-tense interaction in Georgian Sign Language. Poster presented at Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory (FEAST 7), Venice, June 19^th 2018.

Pfau, Roland & Tamar Makharoblidze. 2018. Negative modals in Georgian Sign Language: Partial suppletion and concord. Workshop “One-to-many relations in morphology, syntax, and semantics” at the 40^th Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS 40), Stuttgart, March 9^th 2018.

Quer, Josep, Roland Pfau, Carlo Cecchetto, Pietro Braione & Carlo Geraci. 2018. Building sign language repositories for linguistic and cultural purposes. Workshop on Linguistic Diversity, Minority Languages, and Digital Research Infrastructures, Hamburg, September 21^st 2018.

b) Invited talk

Kampen, Annemieke van & Roland Pfau. 2018. Project SIGN-HUB: Het culturele en linguïstische erfgoed van oudere doven in Europa [The cultural and linguistic heritage of elderly Deaf people in Europe]. Werelddovendag 2018, Leeuwaarden, September 29^th 2018.

2017

a) Conference

Kimmelman, Vadim, Roland Pfau & Enoch O. Aboh. 2017. Event coordination in Russian Sign Language classifier predicates. Generative Linguistics of the Old World (GLOW 40), Leiden, March 17^th 2017.

Pfau, Roland, Martin Salzmann & Markus Steinbach. 2017. Sign language agreement – common ingredients, but unusual recipe. Generative Linguistics of the Old World (GLOW 40), Leiden, March 17^th 2017.
 

b) Invited talk

Pfau, Roland, Vadim Kimmelman, Ulrika Klomp, Vanja de Lint & Marloes Oomen. 2017. Grammar & society: How sign linguistics benefits the Deaf community. Invited lecture at Workshop Beyond Hearing – Cultures Overlooked, Amsterdam, Apil 20^th 2017.

2016

a) Conference

Cokart, Richard, Roland Pfau & Trude Schermer. 2016. The auxiliary verb aux-op in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT): Patterns of use by Deaf NGT signers and NGT-Dutch interpreters. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 12 (TISLR 12), Melbourne, January 5, 2016.

Kimmelman, Vadim, Roland Pfau & Enoch Aboh. 2016. Argument structure of Russian Sign Language classifiers: insights from corpus data. Poster presented at Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 12 (TISLR 12), Melbourne, January 7, 2016.

Kimmelman, Vadim, Roland Pfau & Enoch O. Aboh. 2016. Word-internal coordination in handling classifier predicates. Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory (FEAST), Venice, September 1, 2016.

Pfau, Roland & Martin Salzmann. 2016. The order of Agree and Merge – evidence from sign language agreement. Workshop “Sign language agreement revisited” at the 38^th Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), Konstanz, February 26, 2015.

Strickland, Brent, Carlo Geraci, Emmanuel Chemla, Roland Pfau, Meltem Kelepir & Philippe Schlenker. 2016. Event representations constrain the structure of (sign) language. Poster presented at Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 12 (TISLR 12), Melbourne, January 5, 2016.

b) Invited Talk

Pfau, Roland. 2016. Gestures, features, and grammaticalization: the case of sign language negation. Invited lecture at Workshop Probe into the Multilingual Mind, Gent, October 19^th 2016.

2015

a) Conference

Geraci, Carlo, Brent Strickland, Roland Pfau, Meltem Kelepir, Emmanuel Chemla & Philippe Schlenker. 2015. sell or negotiate? Extracting telicity from sign language. Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory (FEAST 4), Barcelona, May 5^th 2014.

Oomen, Marloes & Roland Pfau. 2015. Signing not (or not): A corpus-based study on negation in Sign Language of the Netherlands. Poster presented at Workshop on Negation, Göttingen, September 18^th 2015.

Strickland, Brent, Carlo Geraci, Emmanuel Chemla, Philippe Schlenker, Meltem Kelepir & Roland Pfau. 2015. Event representations constrain the structure of language: Sign language as a window into universally accessible linguistic biases. 23^rd Annual Meeting of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology (ESPP), Tartu, July 17^th 2015.

Papadatou-Pastou, Marietta, Luisa Cabral & Roland Pfau. 2015. Handedness in 86 deaf Dutch schoolchildren with and without cochlear implants. 22^nd International Congress on the Education of the Deaf (ICED), Athens, July 7^th 2015.

b) Invited Talk

Pfau, Roland. 2015. A Jespersen’s Cycle scenario for the grammaticalization of headshakes. Invited lecture at Workshop: Perspectives in Gesture & Sign Language Research, Stuttgart, September 22^nd 2015.

Pfau, Roland. 2015. Sign language negation: from head movement to negative head. Invited lecture at Workshop on Negation, Göttingen, September 18^th 2015.

Pfau, Roland. 2015. Sign language syntax: typological and structural properties of sign language negation. Invited keynote lecture at 1^st Meeting on the Morphosyntax of Portuguese Sign Language and other sign languages, Porto, November 26^th 2015.

Pfau, Roland. 2015. The grammaticalization of gestures in sign languages. Invited keynote lecture at II. Colóquio da Unesp sobre línguas de sinais e libras, Araraquara (Brazil), May 18^th 2015.

2014

Invited Talk

Pfau, Roland (2014), Sign language negation: Gestures, features, and variation. Invited keynote lecture at Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory (FEAST 3), Venice, June 11, 2014.

2013

a) Conference

Pfau, Roland (2013), Diachronic and structural aspects of sign language negation. Invited talk for the workshop 'Negation and Polarity: Interfaces and Cognition' at the 19th International Congress of Linguistics (CIL 19), Geneva, July 22-27.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2013), A natural history of sign language negation. 25th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics (SCL 25), Reykjavik, May 14.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2013), Headshakes in Jespersen's Cycle. 11th Conference on Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR 11), London, July 10.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2013), PERSON climbing up a tree: On the grammaticalization of a sign language auxiliary.  31st West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, Tempe, AZ, February 9, 2013.

b) Invited Talk

Pfau, Roland (2013), Distributed Morphology as a production model: focus on derivational morphology. Invited talk for the special session on Distributed Morphology at the 87th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), Boston, January 4, 2013.

Steinbach, Markus, Roland Pfau & Edgar Onea (2013), The referential use of signing space. Workshop "Sign languages and nominal reference", CNRS Paris, February 27, 2013.

2012

a) Conference

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2012), PERSON climbing up a tree (and other adventures in sign language grammaticalization). Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory (FEAST 2), Warsaw, June 2, 2012. [see below for handout]

b) Invited Talk 

Pfau, Roland. 2012. From gesture to language: The grammaticalization of headshakes. Invited talk at Journée de Grammaticalisation, Lille, Decmeber 7^th 2012.

Pfau, Roland (2012), Pointing and shaking: On the grammaticalization of gestures. Invited keynote lecture at New Reflections on Grammaticalization (NRG5), Edinburgh, July 16, 2012. [see below for handout]

2011

a) Conference

Aboh, Enoch O. & Roland Pfau (2011), Spatial adpositions in sign languages. 27th Annual Meeting of the Israel Association of Theoretical Linguistics (IATL) , Haifa, October 25, 2011.

Pfau, Roland, Martin Salzmann & Markus Steinbach (2011), A non-hybrid approach to sign language agreement. Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory (FEAST 1) , Venice, June 20, 2011. [see below for handout]

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2011), Doubling in sign languages: Focus on agreement. 44th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE) , Logroño (Spain), September 8, 2011. [see below for handout]

2010

a) Conference
Aboh, Enoch & Roland Pfau (2010), Spatial adpositions in sign languages. Workshop "Morphosyntax and semantics of spatial relators" at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), Berlin, February 25, 2010.

Schoonhoven, Monica, Roland Pfau & Bart de Boer (2010), Colour on hands: Phonological markedness of sign language color terms. Poster presentation at Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 10 (TISLR 10), West Lafayette, October 1, 2010. [see below for handout]

Pfau, Roland, Martin Salzmann & Markus Steinbach (2010), Sign language agreement is syntactic: the importance of auxiliaries. TIN dag 2010, Utrecht, February 6, 2010.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2010), Plurality of relations in German Sign Language: Mapping semantics onto morphosyntax. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 10 (TISLR 10), West Lafayette, October 1, 2010. [see below for handout]

b) Invited Talk

Pfau, Roland (2010), Grammaticalization of auxiliaries in sign languages: the role of event schemas. Workshop on Grammaticalization, Amsterdam, November 10, 2010.

Pfau, Roland (2010), The grammar of headshake: A typological perspective on sign language negation. Conference Preserving the Future: Sustainability of Language, Culture, and Nature, Reykjavik, April 17, 2010.

2009

a) Conference

Pfau, Roland (2009), Typological variation in sign language negation: A generative perspective. 35th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society , Berkeley, February 14, 2009.

Aboh, Enoch O. & R. Pfau (2009), Spatial adpositions in sign languages. Workshop on "Formal approaches to sign languages" at the European Summer School of Logic, Language & Information (ESSLLI) , Bordeaux, July 30, 2009.

b) Invited Talk 
Pfau, Roland (2009), Grammaticalization of auxiliaries in sign languages: the role of event schemas. Sign Language Colloquium, Nijmegen, September 23, 2009.

Pfau, Roland (2009), On spreading: Domains and hierarchies. International Workshop on "Non-manuals in sign languages (NISL)" , Frankfurt, April 5, 2009. [see below for handout]

2008

a) Conference

Pfau, Roland (2008),Topics and conditionals in sign languages. Workshop on "Topicality" at the Annual Meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS), Bamberg, February 28, 2008. [see below for handout]

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2008), Agreement auxiliaries and transitivity in sign languages.  Workshop on Transitivity , Cologne, November 15, 2008. [see below for handout]

b) Invited Talk

Pfau, Roland (2008), The grammar of headshake: A typological perspective on sign language negation. Invited lecture at Deafness, Cognition, and Language Research Centre (DCAL), London, March 14, 2008.

Pfau, Roland (2008), Weder Wahnsinn noch Willkür: Wh-Fragen ohne Wh-Wort [Wh-questions without wh-word]. Invited lecture at the colloquium of the Graduiertenkolleg "Satzarten" , Frankfurt, May 27, 2008.

Pfau, Roland (2008), On the linguistic structure of sign languages. Workshop "Sign languages as minority languages", Barcelona, July 23, 2008.

2007

a) Conference

Aboh, Enoch O. & Roland Pfau (2007), What's a wh-word got todowith it? 17th Colloquium on Generative Grammar, Girona, June 14, 2007. 

Branchini, Chiara, Caterina Donati, Roland Pfau & Markus Steinbach (2007), Relatively similar: Relative clause typology and sign languages. 2nd Conference of the Association Francaise de Linguistique Cognitive (AFLiCo), Lille, May 10, 2007. [see below for handout]

Branchini, Chiara, Caterina Donati, Roland Pfau & Markus Steinbach (2007), A typological perspective on relative clauses in sign languages. 7th Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT 7), Paris, September 25, 2007.

Pfau, Roland (2007), Claiming territory within the left periphery: Evidence from prosodic non-manual markers. International Workshop "Current Issues in Sign Language Research", Cologne, July 6, 2007.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2007), Excluding each other: Spatial modulations in German Sign Language reciprocals. Conference on "Reciprocals cross-linguistically", Berlin, November 30, 2007.

Schuit, Joke & Roland Pfau (2007), De typologische classificatie van gebarentaalmorfologie [On the typological classification of sign language morphology]. Morfologiedagen 2007, Amsterdam, December 20, 2007.

b) Invited Talk

Perridon, Harry & Roland Pfau (2007), Taaltrotters Abroad - linguistic and cultural challenges in translating and adapting an educational multimedia project. Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication (ACLC) lecture, Amsterdam, April 13, 2007.

Pfau, Roland (2007), Topics and conditionals in sign languages. Workshop "What's the topic?", Nijmegen, January 23, 2007.

Pfau, Roland (2007),On common paths: Grammaticalization in signed and spoken languages. Talk given at Boston University, March 2, 2007.

Pfau, Roland (2007), Wh-questions without wh-words: Evidence from signed and spoken languages. Talk given at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, March 7, 2007.

2006

a) Conference

Pfau, Roland (2006), Visible prosody: spreading and stacking of non-manual markers. 25th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 25), Seattle, April 28, 2006. [see below for handout]

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2006), The development of auxiliaries in sign languages. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 9  (TISLR 9), Florianópolis (Brazil), December 8, 2006. [see below for handout]

b) Invited Talk

Aboh, Enoch O. & Roland Pfau (2006), What's a wh-word got to do with it? Syntax in Winter II, Tilburg, March 15, 2006.

Pfau, Roland (2006), The grammar of headshake: Microvariation in sign language negation. Invited evening lecture at the DGfS & GLOW Summer School on "Micro- and macrovariation", Stuttgart, August 17, 2006. [see below for handout]

Pfau, Roland (2006), Grammaticalization in sign languages: Following the same paths? Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication (ACLC), March 24, 2006. [see "Publications 2006" for article]

Pfau, Roland (2006), The grammaticalization of auxiliaries in sign languages. Talk given at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS), Wassenaar, January 24, 2006.

Pfau, Roland (2006), Wacky, weird, or widespread? Wh-questions without wh-words.  2nd Sign Language Week, Vitoria (Spain), May 23, 2006. [see below for handout]

2005

a) Conference

Aboh, Enoch, Roland Pfau & Ulrike Zeshan (2005), When a wh-word is not a wh-word: the case of Indian Sign Language. 5th Generative Linguistics of the Old World Asia Conference (GLOW Asia), Delhi, October 7, 2005. [see below for handout]

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2005), Hyperdetermination in German Sign Language plurals. 27th Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), Cologne, February 25, 2005. [see below for handout]

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2005), The grammaticalization of auxiliaries in sign languages. New Reflections on Grammaticalization (NRG3), Santiago de Compostela, July 19, 2005.

Shaffer, Barbara, Jill Morford, Pamela Perniss, Roland Pfau & Keri Holley (2005), From can to can't in four languages: An investigation of the factors influencing grammaticization. 9th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC 9), Seoul, July 18, 2005.

b) Invited Talk

Pfau, Roland (2005), Cheap repairs: a Distributed Morphology tool kit for sentence construction. LSA Workshop on the State of the Art in Speech Error Research, Boston, July 31, 2005. [see below for handout]

Pfau, Roland (2005), Grammaticalisatie in gebarentalen [Grammaticalization in sign languages]. Plenary lecture at 15th Student Conference of the Dutch Society for Applied Linguistics (AnéLA), Amsterdam, January 7, 2005.

Pfau, Roland (2005), Phrasal layers and prosodic spreading in sign languages. SIGNA VOLANT: Workshop on Sign Language Linguistics and the Application of Information Technology to Sign Languages. Milan, June 22, 2005. [see below for handout]

Pfau, Roland (2005),  Left periphery features and non-manual spreading in sign languages. Invited talk at 14th Conference of the Students Organization of Linguistics in Europe (ConSOLE). Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque Country), December 16, 2005.

Pfau, Roland (2005), Structure and position of relative clauses in German Sign Language. CLS Colloquium, Nijmegen, February 23, 2005.

2004

a) Conference

Pfau, Roland (2004), On grammaticalization: Do sign languages follow the well-trodden paths? TABU-dag, Groningen, June 4, 2004.

Pfau, Roland & Dik Bakker (2004), Defective and anti-agreement in Functional Discourse Grammar. 11th International Conference on Functional Grammar, Gijón, September 24, 2004.

Pfau, Roland & Josep Quer (2004), On the syntax of negation and modals in LSC and DGS. 26th Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), Mainz, February 27, 2004. [see below for handout]  

Pfau, Roland & Josep Quer (2004), Negative modals in signed languages: from T to Neg and further up. 14th Colloquium on Generative Grammar, Oporto, April 6, 2004.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2004), On grammaticalization: Do sign languages follow the well-trodden paths? Poster at 8th Conference on Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR 8), Barcelona, October 2, 2004. [see below for handout]  

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2004), Pluralization across modalities. 11th International Morphology Meeting, Vienna, February 16, 2004.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2004), Restrictive relative clauses in German Sign Language: Extraposition and reconstruction. 35th Conference of the North Eastern Linguistic Society (NELS 35), Storrs, October 23, 2004.

Pfau, Roland & Ulrike Zeshan (2004), Wh-movement and wh-split in Indo-Pakistani Sign Language. Taalkunde in Nederland (TIN-dag 2004), Utrecht, February 7, 2004.

b) Invited Talk

Pfau, Roland (2004), Disentangling modality-independent and modality-specific aspects of grammaticalization in sign languages. Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) seminar "Restricted linguistic systems as windows on language genesis", Wassenaar, November 2, 2004.

Pfau, Roland (2004), Doing it the right way: Wh-movement in Indo-Pakistani Sign Language. Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung (ZAS), Berlin, January 9, 2004

Pfau, Roland (2004), Phrasal layers and prosodic spreading in sign languages. Workshop on Sign Language Prosody, Nijmegen, July 11, 2004.

Pfau, Roland (2004), Sounds on the hands: translating abstract poetry into sign language. Poëzie in beweging, beweging in poëzie, Theater Perdu, Amsterdam, November 5, 2004.

Pfau, Roland (2004), Universal properties of wh-questions: Is Indo-Pakistani Sign Language doing it the right way? University of Barcelona, January 23, 2004.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2004), Restrictive relative clauses in German Sign Language. European Science Foundation (ESF) workshop "Modality effects on the theory of grammar: a cross-linguistic view from sign languages of Europe", Barcelona, November 17, 2004.

2003

a) Conference

Pfau, Roland & Josep Quer (2003), V-to-Neg raising and negative concord in three sign languages. XXIX Incontro di Grammatica Generativa, Urbino, February 13, 2003.

Pfau, Roland & Ulrike Zeshan (2003), Wh-movement and wh-split in Indo-Pakistani Sign Language. South Asian Language Analysis Roundtable (SALA 23), Austin, October 11, 2003. [see below for handout]

Zwitserlood, Inge, Roland Pfau & Ingeborg van Gijn (2003), A feature-based approach to agreement in signed languages. Workshop on Agreement, Lisbon, July 10, 2003.

b) Invited Talk

Pfau, Roland (2003), A constraint-based analysis of movement features in German Sign Language reduplication. University of Barcelona, January 16, 2003.

Pfau, Roland (2003), Zur Rolle von Akkommodation in der Sprachproduktion [On the role of accommodation in language production]. University of Mainz, January 23, 2003.

Pfau, Roland (2003), Freeze! Don't move! Constraints on reduplication in German Sign Language plurals.  University of Austin, October 14, 2003.

Pfau, Roland & Josep Quer (2003), On the co-occurrence of manual and nonmanual negation markers: A comparative study of three sign languages. Sign Linguistics Workshop, Nijmegen, May 10, 2003.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2003), Plural formation in German Sign Language: Constraints and strategies. Sign Language Research Group (SLRG) Meeting, Nijmegen, May 15, 2003.

2002

a) Conference

Pfau, Roland (2002), Phonological readjustment and prosodic spreading in German SignLanguage negation. Taalkunde in Nederland (TIN-dag 2002) , Utrecht, January 26, 2002.

Pfau, Roland (2002), The grammar of headshake. First Congress of the International Society for Gesture Studies, Austin, June 7, 2002.

Baker, Anne & Roland Pfau (2002), Iconic universals - do they exist? Linguistic Association of Great Britain (LAGB) Spring Meeting 2002, Ormskirk, April 9, 2002.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2002), Backwards and sidewards reduplication in German Sign Language. Conference on Reduplication, Graz, November 4, 2002.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2002), Optimal reciprocals in German Sign Language. Linguistic Association of Great Britain (LAGB)  Spring Meeting 2002, Ormskirk, April 11, 2002.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2002), Optimal reciprocals in German Sign Language. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL XXI), Santa Cruz, April 6, 2002.

b) Invited Talk

Pfau, Roland (2002), Anti-agreement in language production. Werkverband Amsterdamse Psycholinguïsten (WAP), Amsterdam, June 14, 2002.

Pfau, Roland (2002), Sentence types in German Sign Language: Topicalization, questions, and negation. LOT SummerSchool, Nijmegen, June 20, 2002.

Pfau, Roland (2002), Input-output interactions in German Sign Language: The case of reciprocals and nominal plurals.  Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao, December 5, 2002 .

2001

a) Conference

Pfau, Roland (2001), Defective feature copy and anti-agreement in language production. Conference of the Texas Linguistic Society 2001 (TLS 2001), Austin, March 3, 2001. [see "Publications" for pdf-file of paper]

Pfau, Roland (2001), A typological perspective on German Sign Language negation. 34th Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE 2001). Leuven, August 29, 2001.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2001), Reziproke Verben in Deutscher Gebärdensprache [Reciprocal verbs in German Sign Language]. 23rd Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), Leipzig, February 28, 2001.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2001), Konversion und Kopie: Reziprokmarkierung in DGS [Conversion and copy: Reciprocal marking in German Sign Language]. Generative Grammatik des Südens (GGS2001), Bochum, June 16, 2001.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2001), It takes two hands to KISS (but only one to HIT): A constraint-based analysis of reciprocals in German Sign Language. Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL 01), Seattle, October 26, 2001.

b) Invited Talk

Pfau, Roland (2001), Encoding the reciprocal function in German Sign Language: A constraint-based analysis. Leiden Center for Linguistics (ULCL), University of Leiden, November 7, 2001.

Hohenberger, Annette, Helen Leuninger & Roland Pfau (2001), Lexikalische Selektion in Laut- und Gebärdensprachen unter der Perspektive der Distribuierten Morphologie [Lexical selection in spoken and signed languages under the perspective of Distributed Morphology]. DFG-colloquium "Das mentale Lexikon in der Sprachproduktion: Gestörte und normaleProzesse". Freiburg, March 30, 2001.

Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach (2001), Optimal reciprocals in German Sign Language. Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication (ACLC), University of Amsterdam, September 21, 2001.

2000

a) Conference

Pfau, Roland (2000), Accessing nonmanual features in phonological readjustment: Sentential negation in German Sign Language. Conference of the Texas Linguistic Society 2000 (TLS 2000), Austin, February 25, 2000.

Pfau, Roland (2000), Local licensing and feature copy in language production. 9thConference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe (ConSOLE 9), Lund, December 8, 2000. [see "Publications" for pdf-file of paper]

Pfau, Roland & Susanne Glück (2000), Negative heads in German Sign Language and American Sign Language. 7th International Conference on Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR 7), Amsterdam, July 27, 2000.

1999

a) Conference

Pfau, Roland (1999), Nicht-manuelle Affigierung in Deutscher Gebärdensprache [Nonmanual affixation in German Sign Language]. Generative Grammatik des Südens (GGS99), Stuttgart, May 14, 1999.

Pfau, Roland (1999), Typologische und strukturelle Aspekte der Negation in Deutscher Gebärdensprache [Typological and structural aspects of negation in German Sign Language]. International Symposium "Gebärdensprachforschung im deutschsprachigen Raum", Frankfurt, June 13, 1999.

Pfau, Roland & Susanne Glück (1999),The pseudo-simultaneous nature of complex verb forms in German Sign Language. Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL 99), El Paso, October 29, 1999. [see "Publications" for pdf-file of paper]

b) Invited Talk

Pfau, Roland (1999), Jodeln - Von Tirol bis Tennessee [Yodelling - from Tyrol to Tennessee]. Series of talks organized by Radio X, Frankfurt, February 9, 1998.

Pfau, Roland (1999), The value of errors: Art, sounds, and gestures. Webcast No. 63: Internet Live Talk with Station Rose (www.stationrose.de), Frankfurt, July 29, 1999.

Pfau, Roland (1999), Verbal inflection in German Sign Language: Simultaneity through readjustment. Talk given at the Wiener Sprachgesellschaft, Vienna, December 6, 1999.

1998

a) Conference

Glück, Susanne & Roland Pfau (1998), A Distributed Morphology account of verbal inflection in German Sign Language. 7th Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe (ConSOLE 7), Bergen, December 10, 1998. [see "Publications" for pdf-file of paper]

b) Invited Talk

Pfau, Roland (1998), Computergestützte Modelle von Sprache und Sprachstörungen: Fallbeispiel Oberflächendyslexie [Computer-based models of language and language disorders: The case of surface dyslexia]. Interdisziplinärer Arbeitskreis Sprache und Sprachstörungen (IAS98), Frankfurt, June 25, 1998.

1997

a) Conference

Glück, Susanne & Roland Pfau (1997), Klassifikation in Deutscher Gebärdensprache [Classification in German Sign Language],  Generative Grammatik des Südens (GGS97), Vienna, May 10, 1997.

Glück, Susanne & Roland Pfau (1997), On classifiying classification as a class of inflection in German Sign Language. 6th Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe (ConSOLE 6), Lisbon, December 16, 1997. [see"Publications" for pdf-file of paper]

1996

a) Conference

Glück, Susanne & Roland Pfau (1996), Wortbildung und Inkorporation in Deutscher Gebärdensprache [Word formation and incorporation in German Sign Language]. Generative Grammatik des Südens (GGS 96), Berlin, May 19, 1996.

b) Invited Talk

Glück, Susanne, Daniela Happ, Gerald Koblitz, Helen Leuninger & Roland Pfau (1996), Gegen Vorurteile: Wie Gebärdensprache erforscht wird [Against prejudices: How sign language is researched]. Frankfurt - Stadt der Wissenschaften, Frankfurt, November 10, 1996.

Adolf Wölfli

Spending the largest time of his life in a mental asylum near Bern (Switzerland), Adolf Woelfli (1864-1930), a former farmhand and laborer, produced a unique, monumental 25.000 page oeuvre, consisting of texts, collages, drawings, and compositions. Strange and breathtakingly beautiful ...

"Wehe dem Schiffer, auf stuermischer See;
Winde und Wellen, ihm singen.
Heute ist Alles, im praechtigsten Chlee;
Aufgeloest ist das, Vollbringen. 
Irrenden Sinnes, ich trinke den Thee;
? Sehen Sie Dort, diese Schwingen.
Ist es ein Adler, so bluhtet das Reh;
? Wollt Ihr den Koenig, verdingen.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Diess ist auch eine Frage."
( Von der Wiege bis zum Graab , 1910)

Comte de Lautréamont

Isidore Ducasse (1846-1870), self-styled Comte de Lautréamont, is one of the earliest and most astonishing examples of surrealist writing. In his major work, Les Chants de Maldoror, his fantasy unveils a world - half vision, half nightmare - inhabited by angels, gravediggers, hermaphrodites, and lunatics.
According to André Breton, Maldoror is "the expression of a revelation so complete it seems to exceed human potential".

"It is not right that everyone should read the pages which follow;only a few will be able to savour this bitter fruit with impunity." ( Maldoror )