Publications

Work in progress

1. Becker, Laura. Under Review. Frequency effects in verbal argument indexing: A spoken typology approach.
2. Becker, Laura, Marvin Martiny & Matías Guzmán Naranjo. Submitted. The effect of mistakes in typological datasets: A cautionary tale.
   (Appendix )
3. Bisang, Walter, Becker, Laura, Malchukov, Andrej & Marvin Martiny. Submitted. Grammaticalization scenarios: constraining typological variation.

Monographs

1. Becker, Laura. 2021. Articles in the world’s languages. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Journal articles

1. de Moura Alves, Luiza, Becker, Laura & Johannes Helmbrecht. 2025. The intangible demonstrative yu- in Hup: A versatile marker of discourse relations. STUF - Language Typology and Universals. 75(3). 403-433.
2. Guzmán Naranjo, Matías, Becker, Laura, Schiele, Miriam L. & I-Ying Lin. 2025. Why modelling space is hard: No evidence for a serial founder effect in Polynesian phoneme inventories. Linguistics, aop.  
3. Target Paper:
   Becker, Laura & Matías Guzmán Naranjo. 2025. Replication & methodological robustness in typology. Linguistic Typology. 29(3). 463-505.
   (Appendix )
   Authors' response:
   Becker, Laura & Matías Guzmán Naranjo. 2025. Authors' response to "Replication and methodological robustness in quantitative typology”. Linguistic Typology. 29(3). 591-625.
4. Becker, Laura. 2024. Zero marking in inflection: A token-based approach. Journal of Language Modelling. 12(2). 349–413.
5. Peck, Naomi & Laura Becker. 2024. Syntactic pausing? Re-examining the associations. Linguistics Vanguard. 10(1). 223-237.
6. Laura Becker & Andrej Malchukov. 2022. Semantic maps and typological hierarchies: Evidence for the Actionality Hierarchy. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft. 41(1). 31-66.
7. Norder, Sietze, Laura Becker, Hedvig Skirgård, Leonardo Arias, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich & Rik van Gijn. 2022. glottospace: R package for language mapping and geospatial analysis of linguistic and cultural data. Journal of Open Source Software. 7(77). 4303.
8. Guzmán Naranjo, Matías & Laura Becker. 2022. Statistical bias control in typology. Linguistic Typology. 26(3). 605-670.
9. Guzmán Naranjo, Matías & Laura Becker. 2021. Coding efficiency in nominal inflection: expectedness and type frequency effects. Linguistics Vanguard. 7(s3).
10. Becker, Laura & Gertrud Schneider-Blum. 2020. Morphological marking of contrast in Tima. Glossa 5(1). 1–35.
11. Becker, Laura & Matías Guzmán Naranjo. 2020. Psych predicates in European languages: A parallel corpus study. STUF - Language Typology and Universals. 73(4). 483–523.
12. Dąbrowska, Ewa, Laura Becker & Luca Miorelli. 2020. Is adult second language acquisition defective? Frontiers in Psychology. 11. 1–14.

Book chapters & confence proceedings

1. Becker, Laura, Guzmán Naranjo, Matías & Samira Ochs. 2023. Socio-linguistic effects on conditional constructions: A quantitative typological study. In Silvia Ballarè & Guglielmo Inglese (eds.), Sociolinguistic and Typological Perspectives on Language Variation, 121-154. Berlin: De Gruyter.
2. Becker, Laura, Driemel, Imke & Jude Nformi. 2019. Focus in Limbum. In Samson Lotven et al. (eds.), African linguistics across the disciplines: Selected papers from the 48th Annual Conference on African Linguistics (Contemporary African Linguistics), 219–237. Berlin: Language Science Press.
3. Guzmán Naranjo, Matías & Laura Becker. 2018. Quantitative word order typology with UD. In Proceedings of the 17th International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories (TLT 2018), December 13–14, 2018, Oslo University, Norway, 91–104. Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press.
4. Becker, Laura. 2018. Aspectuality in Hungarian, German, and Slavic. A parallel corpus study. In Beata Trawinski et al. (eds.), Grammar and Corpora 2016, 183–207. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.

Reviews

1. Laura Becker. 2024. Natalia Levshina. 2022. Communicative Efficiency: Language Structure and Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Linguistic Typology.

Working papers and unpublished manuscripts

1. Becker, Laura. 2017. Vowel-consonant harmony in Uyghur. Leipzig.
2. Becker, Laura & Jude Nformi. 2016. Focus and verb doubling in Limbum. In Replicative Processes in Grammar, vol. 93 (LAB), 57–84. Leipzig: Institut für Linguistik der Universität Leipzig.

Invited talks

• Spoken typology: Incorporating the speech signal into grammatical typology. Journées scientifiques du réseau thématique LIFT2 - linguistique informatique, formelle et de terrain, CNRS, LLF, Paris, 16 October 2025
• Spoken typology: Integrating phonetics and grammar. Emerging Topics in Typology (ETT), University of Stockholm, 10 June 2024
• Zero argument indexing on verbs. University of Mainz, 8 May 2023
• Zero argument indexing on verbs: Patterns and explanations. University of Potsdam, 18 January 2023
• Zero marking in inflectional morphology: Patterns and explanations. Vielfaltslinguistik IV, University of Bremen, 5 June 2021
• The crosslinguistics distribution and development of articles. University of Bamberg, 20 November 2019
• The crosslinguistics distribution and development of articles. University of Mainz, 3 November 2019
• Articles in the world's languages. Nordic Night Seminar for linguistics, Helsinki, 15 December 2018
• Articles in the world's languages. University of Cologne, 29 November 2018
• A typology of articles. University of Jena, 25 January 2018

Conference talks

2025

• Clausal boundaries and silent pauses: Does prosody reflect syntactic structure? [with Naomi Peck, Saida Asvarova, Marlene Kaminski, Christian Klöckner, Ronja Potstawa & Anja Spasovski] Syntax of the World’s Languages X, University of Potsdam, 8 September 2025
• Frequency effects in verbal argument marking: A spoken typology approach. Transalpine Typology Meeting, University of Pavia, 2 July 2025

2022

• Towards typologising silent pauses. [with Naomi Peck] 14th Conference of the Association of Linguistic Typology, University of Austin, TX, 16 December 2022
• Zero argument indexing on verbs: Patterns and explanations. 14th Conference of the Association of Linguistic Typology, University of Austin, TX, 17 December 2022
• The distribution of zero marking in inflectional morphology. International Morphology Meeting, Budapest, 2 September 2022
• Phoneme inventory size in Polynesian language. [with Matías Guzmán Naranjo and Miriam Schiele] 55th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europea, University of Bucharest, 25 August 2022
• How many types of definites? Evidence from typology. 1st meeting of the Network "Definiteness across domains", Berlin, 30 June 2022

2021

• Syntactic Pausing? Re-examining the associations. [with Naomi Peck] Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory 6, SOAS, 16 December 2021
• Areal, family, and sociolinguistic effects on conditional constructions. [with Matías Guzmán Naranjo & Samira Ochs] 54th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 1 September 2021
• Controlling for geographical, areal, and family biases in typology. [with Matías Guzmán Naranjo] 43th DGfS meeting, Freiburg, 25 February 2021

2020

• Can experience with written language change mental grammar? [with Ewa Dąbrowska] UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference 2020, University of Birmingham, 29 July 2020

2019

• The development of nonspecific articles. 13th Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology, University of Pavia, 4 September 2019
• What do grammaticality judgements tell us about grammar? [with Ewa Dąbrowska & Luca Miorelli] Conference: What is grammaticality?, University of Bamberg, 29 June 2019
• The contrast marker =i/=ɪ in Tima (Niger-Congo). [with Gertrud Schneider-Blum] 41st Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), University of Bremen, 6 March 2019

2018

• Quantitative word order typology with UD. [with Matías Guzmán Naranjo] 17th International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theory, Oslo, 14 December 2018
• Expressing referentiality in languages with and without articles. Grammar and Corpora, Paris, 16 November 2018
• Word order correlations from a quantitative perspective. [with Matías Guzmán Naranjo] Grammar and Corpora, Paris, 15 November 2018
• A typology of articles. Syntax of the world's languages 8, Paris, 5 September 2018
• The typology of article inflection. 18th International Morphology Meeting, Budapest, 13 May 2018

2017

• Definiteness in languages with and without articles., 12th Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology, Canberra, 15 December 2017
• The Form-frequency hypothesis and case systems., 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Zurich, 10 September 2017
• Limbum focus strategies. [with Imke Driemel and Jude Nformi]. TripleA 4, University of Gothenburg, 10 June 2017.
• Two types of focus in Limbum. [with Imke Driemel & Jude Nformi]. Annual Conference on African Linguistics 48, Bloomington, 30 March 2017.
• Testing the Form-Frequency Hypothesis. [with Matías Guzmán Naranjo]. 39. Jahrestagung der DGfS, Saarbrücken, 8 March 2017.

2016

• Discourse reference in languages with and witout articles. [with Jingting Ye]. Conference on Typology and Grammar for Young Scholars, St Petersburg, 24 November 2016.
• Does Hungarian have grammatical aspect? A parallel corpus study. Grammar and Corpora, Mannheim, 11 November 2016.
• Psych predicates from a cross-linguistic perspective. [with Matías Guzmán Naranjo]. Syntax of the World's Languages VII, Mexico City, 17 August 2016.
• Focus constructions in Limbum (Grassfields Bantu). [with Jude Nformi]. Syntax of the World's Languages VII, Mexico City, 19 August 2016.
• Aspect in Hungarian and Slavic. 2nd Usage-based Linguistics Conference, Tel Aviv, 16 June 2016.
• A typology of psych-verbs. A parallel corpus study. Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium, Olomouc, 10 June 2106.

2015

• The existential-construction in Hungarian. Budapest Linguistics Conference, Budapest, 20 June 2015.

2014

• The pragmatic functions of Hungarian preverbs. Syntax of the World's Languages VI, Pavia, 8 September 2014.

Conference posters

• MultiSub: a multi-parallel corpus of movie subtitles. [with Fahime Same & Alessia Cassarà]. 41st Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), University of Bremen, 6 March 2019
• Quantitative methods in African linguistics - Predicting plurals in Hausa. [with Matías Guzmán Naranjo]. Annual Conference on African Linguistics 48, Bloomington, 29 March 2017.
• Vowel-consonant harmony in Uyghur. Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics 13, International Christian University, Tokyo, 27 May 2017.

Teaching

Winter 2025/26

• Typology and cognition (B.A.)
• Oceanic languages (M.A.)
• Current theories of language: typology (M.A.)

Summer 2025

• Language change (B.A.)
• Field methods (B.A.)
• Statistics with R for linguists (B.A./M.A./PhD)
• Silent pauses in spontaneous speech (M.A.)

Winter 2024/25

• Language contact (M.A.)
• Endangered languages and language documentation (M.A.)
• Introduction to typology (B.A./M.A.)
• Verbal person marking in the world's languages (M.A.)

Summer 2024

• Sign languages (M.A.)
• Linguistics: Current research (M.A./PhD)
• Lecture series (M.A./PhD)

Winter 2023/24

• Diversity in the world's languages (M.A.)
• Efficiency in language and communication (M.A.)
• Linguistics: Current research (M.A./PhD)

Summer 2022

• Sign languages (M.A.)
• Linguistics: Current research (M.A./PhD)

Winter 2022/23

• English-lexifier creoles (M.A.)
• Artificial grammar learning (M.A.)
• Linguistics: Current research (M.A./PhD)

Winter 2020/21

• The structure of Australian languages (M.A.)

Summer 2020

• Introduction to English linguistics I (B.A.)
• Ultimate attainment in SLA. Introduction to R for psycholinguistics (B.A.)
• Extra-linguistic factors shaping grammar (M.A.)

Winter 2019/20

• Introduction to English linguistics II (B.A.)
• The influence of written and spoken modalities on language (B.A.)
• Functional and diachronic explanations in language typology (M.A.)

Summer 2019

• Introduction to English linguistics I (B.A.)
• Automatic and controlled processes in language use (B.A.)
• English-based pidgins and creoles (M.A.)

Summer 2017

• Die Struktur des Ungarischen (B.A.)

Summer 2015

• Typologie (B.A.)

Winter 2014/15

• Syntaktische Theorien (B.A.)

(last updated: January 2026)