Alexander Zahrer
Dr. des.
Aegidiistraße 5
48143 Münster
Room 103
Phone: 0251/83-24497
a.zahrer@uni-muenster.de
Teaching
Summer semester 2025
Number Type of lecture Title of lecture 091125 lecture Linguistic typology 091126 seminar Tense, aspect, mood - verbal categories in language comparison
Winter semester 2024/25Number Type of lecture Title of lecture 099355 lecture Language and culture 099356 seminar
Summer semester 2024Number Type of lecture Title of lecture 097302 lecture Linguistic typology 097303 seminar Comparative language morphosyntax
Winter semester 2023/2024Number Type of lecture Title of lecture 095344 seminar Anthropological linguistics 095345 seminar The languages of New Guinea
Summer semester 2022Number Type of lecture Title of lecture 098926 lecture
Winter semester 2021/2022Number Type of lecture Title of lecture 097126 seminar Serial verb constructions
Summer semester 2021Number Type of lecture Title of lecture 095346 seminar Serial verb constructions Winter semester 2020/2021
Number Type of lecture Title of lecture 093995 lecture Languages of the World Summer semester 2020
Number Type of lecture Title of lecture 090813 seminar Basic Linguistic Theory. A framework for typologically informed fieldwork. 090814 seminar Anthropologische Linguistik Summer semester 2019
Number Type of lecture Title of lecture 096818 seminar Anthropological Linguistics Winter semester 2018/19
Number Type of lecture Title of lecture 094817 lecture Introduction to Prosody Professional career
2017 Project assistant at the Institute for Linguistics, University Graz 2016 Member in the project “Cross-layer pronunciation modeling for conversational speech“, Institut für Signalverarbeitung und Sprachkommunikation, Technical University Graz 2015–2016 Member in the project “Wissenschaftliches Schreiben. Die textlinguistische und erwerbstheoretische Bedeutung von wissenschaftlichen Textprozeduren“, Fachdidaktikzentrum der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät, University Graz Education
since 2018 Doctoral studies General Linguistics, University Muenster 2015–2018 Master's degree programme Linguistics, University Graz 2013–2015 Bachelor's degree programme Lingustics, University Graz 2010–2016 Teching degree programme (German and History) Doctoral thesis
A grammar of Muyu
Muyu (ISO: kti, kts) is an underdocumented language spoken by estimated 2000 people between the Kao and Muyu Rivers in the Boven-Digoel regency, Papuan Province, Indonesia. It belongs to Lowland Ok, a less studied branch of the Ok language family (Trans New Guinea). Documenting this language is an urgent task, due to its endangered status. Speakers of Muyu are usually over 40 years old. Children do not use their parents language anymore. A shift to the national language Indonesian seems inevitable.
My dissertation will comprise a grammar of Muyu, which includes the areas of phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatics. The description of the language will be based on data from 4 field trips which will be conducted over the following years. During my fieldwork I will compile a fully annotated audio-visual corpus of Muyu which will be available online to the scientific community.
Publications
2020 Zahrer, Alexander, Andrej Zgank, and Barbara Schuppler. 2020. Towards Building an Automatic Transcription System for Language Documentation: Experiences from Muyu. In: Proceedings of The 12th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, 2893-2900. 2017 Schuppler, B., Hagmüller M., & Zahrer A., 2017. A corpus of read and conversational Austrian German. In: Speech Communication 94.C, 62-74. Conference contributions
2020 Zahrer, Alexander. 2020. Chaining Clauses, Serializing Verbs? Ambiguities in the Status of Non-Finite Verbs in Muyu. (Presentation SLE2020 online conference, URL: https://osf.io/zhkew). 2019 Zahrer, Alexnader. 2019. Muyu Grammar Sketch. A lowland Ok language of New Guinea. (Presentation WLP5 Manokwari, URL: https://indoling.com/wlp/wlp5/) 2017 Zahrer, A., Petra Hödl & Dina El Zarka, 2017. Pitch accent types, question types and attitudes. A perceptual study of Austrian German. (Poster auf der Tagung "PundP13: Phonetik und Phonologie im deutschsprachigen Raum, 28.-29.9.2017, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) 2016 Zahrer, A., 2017. Zur Sprache kommen. Funktionsverbgefüge als Teil der Alltäglichen Wissenschaftssprache. (Vortrag auf der Tagung "Wissenschaftlich schreiben lernen. Diagnose und Förderung wissenschaftlicher Textkompetenz", 26.2.2016, Universität Graz)