Welcome to my homepage!
I am a postdoctoral researcher in the General Linguistics group at Bielefeld University, working with Prof. Dr. Jutta Hartmann. My research focuses on the syntax of information structure in natural language and its interface with morphology and semantics. I am particularly interested in phenomena such as focus and focus sensitivity, question formation, islandhood, resumption, and ellipsis in West African languages
By examining understudied languages (through original fieldwork), my research aims to motivate cross-linguistic generalizations as well as identify parameters that illuminate the human cognitive capacity of language.
Previously, I worked as a research assistant as part of the DFG-funded project on the “VP-periphery of the Mabia languages”, spoken in Ghana (PI: Prof. Dr. Katharina Hartmann). I received my PhD in linguistics from Goethe University Frankfurt in 2025, supervised by Katharina Hartmann and Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine.
News & Upcomings
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My doctoral dissertation on "Focus Sensitivity in Mabia and Yoruboid" is finally available!
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You can download it from LingBuzz.
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Publication alert!
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My paper on the "Focus marking in Ìkálẹ̀ and the Final-Over-Final Condition" has finally been published in Linguistic Variation! [you can download it here].
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My WCCFL42 proceeding paper on "Towards a Propositional Concord Approach for Exclusives in Kasem" is finally out! You can find the paper here.
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My paper on "The syntax of focus in Ìkálẹ̀" has been published by the Language Science Press as part of a collection titled Crossdisciplinary approaches to Information Structure in Niger-Congo languages, Eds: Akinlabi, A., S. Korsah, S. Rose, and A.-R. Sulemana.
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Upcoming Presentations
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02/06/2026: "Association with Focus Sensitive Particles in Mabia and Yoruboid". Invited talk, Morpho-Syntax-Semantics Colloquium, University of Potsdam.
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22/06/2026: tba. Invited talk, Syntax Colloquium, Goethe University, Frankfurt.
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02/07/2026: "Towards a propositional analysis for focus sensitivity". Invited talk, Department of Linguistics Colloquium, University of Konstanz.
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26–29/08/2026: "Multiple wh-questions in morphosyntactic focus marking languages: Kasem (Mabia/Gur) as a case study". 59th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE 59), Universität Osnabrück.