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Maik Thalmann

Mail Thalmann is PostDoc in the DFG-Projekt At-issueness as propositional prominence since Januar 2026.

Education
  • 2026 – PhD, University of Göttingen: English Linguistics
  • 2021 – M.A., University of Göttingen: Linguistics
  • 2017 – B.A., University of  Göttingen: German Philology and Englisch Philology
Forschungsschwerpunkte
  • Formal semantics/pragmatics: scalar implicatures, presuppositions and projection behavior (local accommodation, metalinguistic negation, Strong Kleene)
  • Experimental linguistics: truth value- und acceptabilty judgments, (distributed) data modelling 
  • L1 acquisition: semantic und pragmatic aspects of meaning
  • Thalmann, Maik and Matticchio, Andrea. 2025. How to be mistaken and still happy: Belief-relative presuppositions and factivity illusions. Proceedings of the 48th Penn Linguistics Conference. 174–183. https://repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/61551
  • Sasmita, Andrew O., Ong, Erinne C., Nazarenko, Taisiia, Mao, Shuying, Komarek, Lina, Thalmann, Maik, Hantakova, Veronica, Spieth, Lena, Berghoff, Stefan A., Barr, Helena J., Hingerl, Maximilian, Börensen, Friederike, Hirrlinger, Johannes, Simons, Mikael, Stevens, Beth, Depp, Constanze and Nave, Klaus-Armin. 2025. Parental origin of transgene modulates amyloid-β plaque burden in the 5xFAD mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Neuron 113. 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2024.12.025
  • Thalmann, Maik and Matticchio, Andrea. 2024. On being certain that presuppositions don’t project universally. Proceedings of the 24th Amsterdam Colloquium. https://platform.openjournals.nl/PAC/article/view/21865
  • Depp, Constanze, Sun, Ting, Sasmita, Andrew Octavian, Spieth, Lena, Berghoff, Stefan A., Nazarenko, Taisiia, Overhoff, Katharina, Steixner-Kumar, Agnes A., Subramanian, Swati, Arinrad, Sahab, Ruhwedel, Torben, Möbius, Wiebke, Göbbels, A., Saher, Gesine, Werner, Hauke B., Damkou, Alkmini, Zampar, Silvia, Wirths, Oliver, Thalmann, Maik, Simons, Mikael, Saito, Takashi, Saido, Takaomi, Krueger-Burg, Dilja, Kawaguchi, Riki, Willem, Michael, Haass, Christian, Geschwind, Daniel, Ehrenreich, Hannelore, Stassart, Ruth and Nave, Klaus-Armin (2023). Myelin dysfunction drives amyloid-β deposition in models of Alzheimer’s disease. Nature 618 (7964), 349–357. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06120-6
  • Chen, Yuqiu, Thalmann, Maik and Antomo, Mailin (2022). Presupposition triggers and (not-)at-issueness: Insights from language acquisition into the soft-hard distinction. Journal of Pragmatics 199. 21–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2022.06.014
  • Paul, Katharina, Thalmann, Maik, Coniglio, Marco and Steinbach, Markus (2022). Gehen as a new auxiliary in German. In Catasso, N., Coniglio, M. and de Bastini, C. (eds.) Language change at the interfaces: Intrasentential and intersentential phenomena. 165-188. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/la.275.05pau
  • Antomo, Mailin, Chen, Yuqiu and Thalmann, Maik (2021). (Un)Selbstständigkeit von Sätzen und main point of utterance: Appositive Relativsätze und deren Erwerb. Sonderheft Linguistische Berichte. 257–280. https://doi.org/10.46771/978-3-96769-170-2
  • Thalmann, Maik, Chen, Yuqiu, Müller, Susanne, Paluch, Markus and Antomo, Mailin (2021). Against PCI-GCI uniformity: Evidence from deceptive language in German and Chinese. Linguistische Berichte 267. 355–385. https://doi.org/10.46771/2366077500267_3
  • Thalmann, Maik and Panizza, Daniele (2019). Present to the eye, away from the mind: Dissociating online comprehension and offline judgments of indirect scalar inferences. In Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 667–678. https://www.lingref.com/bucld/43/BUCLD43-52.pdf
  • Antomo, Mailin, Müller, Susanne, Paul, Katharina, Paluch, Markus and Thalmann, Maik (2018). When children aren’t more logical than adults: An empirical investigation of lying by falsely implicating. Journal of Pragmatics 138, 135–148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.09.010
  • Thalmann, Maik & Matticchio, Andrea. 2024. On being certain that presuppositions don’t project universally. Gaps and Imprecision in Natural Language Semantics Workshop, ZAS Berlin.
  • Thalmann, Maik & Matticchio, Andrea. 2024. How to be mistaken and still happy. Konstanz Linguistics Conference, University of Konstanz.
  • Thalmann, Maik & Matticchio, Andrea. 2024. No hard feelings if hard presuppositions project. Konstanz Linguistics Conference, University of Konstanz.
  • Thalmann, Maik & Matticchio, Andrea. 2024. How to be mistaken and still happy. Penn Linguistics Conference 48, University of Pennsylvania.
  • Thalmann, Maik. 2024). Definite singulars presuppose uniqueness, not existence. Collaborative RTG Meeting (Frankfurt/Göttingen).
  • Thalmann, Maik. 2024). The presupposition of singular definites: On existence and uniqueness. Console 32, Queen Mary University of London.
  • Thalmann, Maik. 2022). When undefinedness goes missing: The case of presupposition failure. Oberseminar English Linguistics, University of Göttingen.
  • Thalmann, Maik. 2022). An experimentalist’s perspective on corpus data. Language Change and Linguistic Analysis, University of Göttingen.
  • Thalmann, Maik & Panizza, Daniele. 2019. Adults are not always faster than children: An eye-tracking study on the online comprehension of indirect scalar implicatures. XPRAGIT 3.
  • Thalmann, Maik. 2019. Presuppositions at-issue: Soft and hard triggers in language acquisition. Invited talk, University of Vienna.
  • Antomo, Mailin et al. 2019. Deceptive language: A new methodology in language acquisition and implicature theory. DGfS Workshop “Post-truth”.
  • Thalmann, Maik. 2018. Soft and hard presupposition triggers in language acquisition. Göttingen Summer School on Form-Meaning Mismatches.

Protrait of Maik Thalmann

Maik Thalmann

Germanistische Linguistik/Sprachsystem
Germanistisches Institut
Raum GB 6/145
maik.thalmann@rub.de