Sarah Zobel

sarahzobel I am a linguist at the Department of German Studies and Linguistics at Humboldt University in Berlin, specializing in formal semantics, pragmatics, and their interfaces, as well as experimental and corpus linguistic methods in these areas.

 

 

My current research interests in theoretical semantics and pragmatics:

  • discourse particles and their contributions inside questions and antecedents of conditionals
  • semantics of German adverbs of quantity, specifically größtenteils
  • impersonal pronouns and non-referential uses of personal pronouns in connection with genericity
  • semantics of German deverbal adjectives formed with -bar
  • syntax and semantics of Indonesian necessity modals
  • accent and prosodic patterns of the particle schon

In addition to my theoretical work, I am interested in corpus linguistic and experimental methods and how they can be applied fruitfully to semantic and pragmatic research and how they can inform theoretical considerations. A further interest of mine is regional and dialectal variation, which I aim to integrate in my theoretical and empirical investigations.

Last modified: 2026-11-05 18:00:00+01:00
Latest article

Circumstantial possibility with degrees: the case of German bar-adjectives.
Sode, Frank and Sarah Zobel. 2026. Circumstantial possibility with degrees: the case of German bar-adjectives. In: Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 30, 1023-1040.

Recent presentations
  • @ APLL: on Indonesian modals
  • @ TripleA-SULA: on Indonesian modals
  • @ HU Berlin: größtenteils inside attributive APs
Recent teaching
  • Winter 26: SE German grammar
  • Winter 26: SE German verb forms
  • Winter 26: SE Intro Semantics
  • Winter 26: SE Plural semantics
  • Winter 26: SE Textstructure