Contact

j.<lastname>(at)lingua(dot)uni-frankfurt(dot)de

FB10 - Institut für Linguistik, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1, 60629 Frankfurt am Main

Room 4.256 | Tel.:  (+49) (0)69 798 32384

Recent

• Anke Himmelreich and I have a paper on information structure in the DP to appear in Linguistic Variation.

• In March 2025, we organized GLOW 47 here in Frankfurt. Since the conference, I am also a member of the GLOW board. For information on the conference proceedings, please check the GLOW website.

• In January 2025, Katharina Hartmann and I published a paper on Subject Relative Clauses in Dagbani in Glossa.

• Starting in April 24, I am Co-PI (together with Katharina Hartmann) of Project B03 of the newly established SFB/CRC 1629 NegLaB at Goethe-University Frankfurt. [project proposal]

• Together with Susi Wurmbrand and Katharina Hartmann, we are co-editing a new Handbook on the Syntax of Germanic Languages for de Gruyter.

Output

Publications

Mursell, Johannes & Anke Himmelreich (t.a.) Information-structural constraints on linearization in the DP. To appear in Linguistic Variation.

Mursell, Johannes & Katharina Hartmann (2025). Subject relative clauses in Dagbani. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 10(1). https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.10572

Himmelreich, Anke, Melissa Jeckel and Johannes Mursell (2024). Agreement patterns of coordination. In Anke Himmelreich, Daniel Hole and Johannes Mursell (Eds.), To the left, to the right, and much in between: A Festschrift for Katharina Hartmann (pp. 71-87). Frankfurt: Goethe University Frankfurt. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/3FX4M [paper]

Himmelreich, Anke, Daniel Hole and Johannes Mursell (Eds.) (2024). To the left, to the right, and much in between: A Festschrift for Katharina Hartmann. Frankfurt: Goethe University Frankfurt. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/3FX4M. [volume]

Mursell, Johannes (2021). The syntax of information-structural agreement. Amsterdam: Benjamins. [publisher]

Mursell, Johannes & Katharina Hartmann (2020). Review of: Bodomo, Adams, Hasiyatu Abubakari and Samuel Alhassan Issah (2020). Handbook of the Mabia Languages of West Africa. Glienicke: Galda Verlag. Journal of West African Languages 47(2), 108-115. [pdf, volume]

Smith, Peter W., Johannes Mursell & Katharina Hartmann (2020). Agree to Agree: Agreement in the Minimalist Programme. Berlin: Language Science Press. 

Mursell, Johannes (2020). Long distance agreement and information structure. In: P. W. Smith,  J. Mursell & K. Hartmann. Agree to Agree: Agreement in the Minimalist Programme. Berlin: Language Science Press. [pdf]

Mursell, Johannes & Jennifer Tan (2019). Ang-marking and Givenness in Tagalog.  Proceedings of ConSOLE XXVII.

Mursell, Johannes (2018). Object marking in Swahili is topic agreement. Jezikoslovlje 19(3), 427-455. [pdf]

Tan, Jennifer & Johannes Mursell (2018).  Embedding Evidence: On Two Types of Evidentials. In: D. Ayoun, A. Celle & Ḷ. Lansari (eds.). Tense, Aspect, Modality, and Evidentiality. Crosslinguistic perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 185-213. [pdf, volume] 

Egg, Markus & Johannes Mursell (2017). The syntax and semantics of discourse particles. In: J. Bayer & V. Struckmeier (eds.). Discourse Particles. Berlin: de Gruyter, 15-49. [pdf, volume]

Mursell, Johannes (2016). Syntactic association with focus - an agreement-based approach. In: K. Bellamy, E. Karkovskaya & G. Saad (eds.). Proceedings of ConSOLE XXIV. Leiden: Leiden University Center of Linguistics, 324-351. [pdf, volume]

Manuscripts

Mursell, Johannes (2014). Discourse Particles and Their Interactions in the Clause. MA Thesis. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, supervised by Markus Egg and Katharina Hartmann. [pdf]

• • I argue that discourse particles interact with focus and the illocutionary force in the left periphery of the clause

  • I model this interaction via agreement based on focus features

Talks - upcoming

2025-08. [with Katharina Hartmann and Anke Himmelreich] Clause-medial focus marking – the perspective from West-African languages. SLE 2025, Bordeaux. 

2025-05. [with Katharina Hartmann and Anke Himmelreich] Clause-medial focus marking – the perspective from West-African languages. BieLeiCoS 2025, Bielefeld.

Talks/Posters - past

2024-06. [with Katharina Hartmann and Anke Himmelreich] Information Structure in the Mabia Languages. Syntactic Cartography and African Languages at Collège de France, Paris. 

2024-02. [with Anke Himmelreich] Information-structural constraints on linearization in the DP. ConLin, AG8 at DGfS2024, Bochum.

2023-12. [with Katharina Hartmann and Anke Himmelreich] Conditions on object drop in Mabia languages. NOCroDeP, Frankfurt. [website]

2023-06. vP as a phase – evidence from information structure. Verbal Domains, Newcastle

• I show that different information-structural processes visible in the CP can also be found in the vP

• I take this as evidence for the phase-hood of vP

2023-04. [with Katharina Hartmann] Subject relative clauses in Dagbani (Mabia) as double-headed structures. CGG32, Vitoria-Gasteiz

• we argue that subject relatives in Dagbani are best analyzed as double-headed structures in the framework provided by Cinque (2020)

2023-04. [with Katharina Hartmann and Anke Himmelreich] When long distance dependencies are actually short: the case of Mabia languages. CGG32, Vitoria-Gasteiz

• a poster-version of our GLOW talk

2023-04. [with Katharina Hartmann and Anke Himmelreich] When long distance dependencies are actually short: the case of Mabia languages. GLOW46, Vienna

• we argue that some Mabia languages lack long-distance movement based on various tests

2022-10. [with Jennifer Tan] Patterns in the expression of information source: a German and Spanish sample. EviStRom, Alcalá

• an updated version of our GGS talk

2022-06. [with Katharina Hartmann and Anke Himmelreich] Morphological marking of in-situ focus: Evidence from the Mabia languages. CGG31, Palma de Mallorca

• we discuss different ways of marking in-situ focus in the Mabia languages

• the most common strategies were based on either low focus projections or adjunction

2022-06. [with Jennifer Tan] The Tagalog ang puzzle - Information structure at the vP edge. CGG, Palma de Mallorca

• we argue that 'subject' marking in Tagalog is actually Givenness marking

2022-05. [with Jennifer Tan] How do we know in German? GGS, Stuttgart

• we compared different evidentials in Spanish and German

2022-02. [with Anke Himmelreich] The optionality and non-optionality of syntactic movement. DGfS 2022, Tübingen

• we organised a workshop at the DGfS meeting about the same topic

• the talk provided some introduction

2022-01. [with Katharina Hartmann and Anke Himmelreich] Focus particles in Dagbani and Likpakpaanl. Vienna

• as part of our project on the Mabia VP, we met with Adams Bodomo in Vienna

• during the trip, we discussed differences in focus marking in these two languages

2021-07. [with Katharina Hartmann] The landscape of focus particles in Dagbani. Afrikanist*innentag, Frankfurt

• we discuss ex-situ and in-situ focus particles in this Mabia language

2021-06. A' in the vP mirrors A' in the CP. Move & Agree Forum, UBC & McGill

• I argue that the same properties of information-structural movement found in the CP can be found in the vP

2021-06. [with Katharina Hartmann] Selecting alternatives in Eton. WOCAL, Leiden

• we argue that the Augment in this Bantu language indicates the selection of alternatives

2021-04. [with Katharina Hartmann] Typing relative clauses in Dagbani. SAIAL, Potsdam

• we argue that we find head internal but ex-situ relative clauses in this Mabia language

2019-04. Focus markers with phi-probes: the case of Lavukaleve. DISCO, Leipzig  [handout]

• • focus markers in Lavukaleve show agreement with person, number, and gender of the focussed constituent

  • I argue that they, and a particular agreement morpheme can be seen as a bundled phi-/information-structural probe

2019-03. [with Sophie Repp] Encoding varieties of topic and focus: The role of contrast and information status. DGfS 2019, Bremen [slides]

• • we organized a workshopat the DGfS meeting about the same topic

  • the talk provided some introduction

2019-02. [with Jennifer Tan] Ang-marking and Givenness in Tagalog. ConSOLE XXVII 2019, Berlin [handout]

• • Jenny and I argue that verbal morphology in Tagalog is influenced by information structure

2018-11.  Bundling φ-and δ-features: The impact of information structure on Agreement. MAD2018, Berlin [handout]

• • summarizing my observations and analyses of LDA and Swahili

  • I discuss the locality of the agreement processes in more detail

2018-05.  Givenness-Marking and Contrastive Focus in Swahili and Tagalog. Frankfurt Colloquium [handout]

• • I argue that in contrastive focus contexts in both Swahili and Tagalog, a marker for Givenness surfaces

2017-10. Object Marking in Swahili is Topic Agreement. SinFonIJA 10, Dubrovnik [handout]

• • I argue that object marking in Swahili, a Bantu language, is best analysed as agreement with a low aboutness topic

  • to capture this, I assume a topic projection in the left periphery of vP, in which the topic head is bundled with phi-features

2017-05. [with Jennifer Tan] (Non-)modal evidentials: the German wohl vs. the Tagalog yata. 27th Colloquium on Generative Grammar, ​Universidad de Alcalá [slides]

• • an updated version of the talk from the TAM-E conference, with a more detailed analysis

2017-02. Long distance agreement and information structure. 43rd Incontro di Grammatica Generativa, IUSS Pavia [handout]

• • I argue that long distance agreement in certain cases is conditioned by information structure

  • I assume a cyclic agreement process in which an information structural head in the CP of the embedded clause is bundled with phi-features and provides the intermediate agreement step to connect higher V or D with the embedded information structurally marked DP

2016-11. [with Jennifer Tan]  Embedding evidence: on two types of evidentials. TAM-E, Paris Diderot University [slides]

• • we compare Tagalog yata with German wohl and analyse both as evidentials

  • we characterise the the former as a modal evidential and the latter as a speech act operator

2016-04. A syntactic analysis of association with focus. 26th Colloquium on Generative Grammar, Universidad de Extremadura Cáceres. [handout]

2016-01. A syntactic analysis of association with focus.  ConSOLE XXIV, York [handout]

• • in both talks, I argue for an analysis of association with focus based on agreement of focus features, see the proceedings above

2014-03. [with Markus Egg] Syntax and semantics of discourse particles . 36. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft, Marburg [handout]

• • we present work originating in the project A8 on Discourse Particles as part of the SFB 632

  • the talk is partly based on my MA thesis, see the thesis and the proceedings above

Workshop and Conference Organization

2025. [with Anke Himmelreich and Katharina Hartmann] GLOW47 in Frankfurt

2022-02. [with Anke Himmelreich] Optionality and non-optionality of syntactic movement
Workshop at the meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS)

2019-07. GGS in Frankfurt

2019-03. [with Sophie Repp] Encoding varieties of topic and focus: The role of contrast and information status
Workshop at the meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS)

Teaching

I've taught a variety of courses from a basic general introductory lecture to advanced MA research seminars. For questions related to teaching, please email me!

Current courses in Frankfurt:

Summer Term 2025: Syntax II (advanced BA Seminar, German)

Summer Term 2025: Typologie (introductory BA Seminar, German)

Supervision and Staatsexamen

I'm available for Staatsexamen exams, please contact me via email. The same holds for BA and MA theses: please send me an email for an appoitment. In general, I'm happy to supervise any syntactic topic written about in German or English. As a general guidline, please look at this website. Some theses I have supervised:

• Multiples Wh-fronting in den slawischen Sprachen

• Ursachen des doppelten Possessivs im andinen Spanisch

• Interrogativity and the left periphery in Jola Keerak

• Vorkommen von Weil-V2 Nebensätzen im Kontinuum von gesprochener Sprache zu geschriebener Sprache

• Die Schwierigkeiten bei der Übersetzung von Modalpartikeln für Deutsch-Lernende

• Towards a unifying analysis of varieties of the Person-Case-Constraint

• Focus realization in Ìkálẹ̀ and Àkúré

As part of the CRC project, I am also supervising the PhD theses of Kwaku Sasu and Adelaide Banafo. Other PhD committees I have been part of:

• Samuel O. Acheampong: Ellipsis constructions in Likpakpaanl

• Daniel Aremu: Focus Sensitivity in Mabia and Yoruboid

Other things I do at the department

• I'm taking care of the IT-infrastructure

• Together with Katharina Hartmann, we're trying to establish a better connection to our department library

• I'm a representative of the mid-level faculty group (Mittelbau) in our department and also involved in various committees 

• I'm a member of the Fachbereichsrat (faculty-level council) and involved in various faculty-level committees

• I'm organizing the weekly Syntax Reading Group (email me if you are interested)