Principal Investigator
Mailin Antomo’s research investigates phenomena at the interface of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics with a focus on German. She has worked, both theoretically and empirically, on embedded root phenomena, (not-)at-issueness, implicatures, presuppositions, lying and deceiving, and the acquisition of these phenomena. Furthermore, she is interested in educational linguistics. She obtained her PhD from the University of Göttingen in 2015, after being part of the DFG-funded research training group “Sentence types: Variation and Interpretation” at the university of Frankfurt a.M. She is currently a permanent lecturer for German linguistics at the University of Göttingen. During the first phase of ViCom, she was the principal investigator of the project “Lying, deceiving, misleading: are we committed to our gestures?”, in the second phase, together with Emanuel Viebahn, she is a principal investigator of the project “Lying and commitment in the visual modality”.
About
University of Göttingen
mailin.antomo@phil.uni-goettingen.de
Selected Publications
Antomo, M., Müller, S., Paluch, M., Paul, K. & Thalmann, M. (2018): When children aren’t more logical than adults: An empirical investigation of lying by falsely implicating. In: Journal of Pragmatics 138, 135-148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.09.010
Antomo, M. (2025). Lying with gestures. Wiegmann, A. (ed.): Lying, Fake News, and Bullshit. Bloomsbury: Advances in Experimental Philosophy, 169-193. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350377837.ch-7
Antomo, M. & Chen, Y. (2025). Lying and commitment. The case of pointing gestures. Longo, F. & Panizza, D. (ed.): Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 29, 59-76. https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2025.v29.1193
Antomo, M., Fricke, L., Grosz, P. & Scheffler, T. (2025). Lying with at-issue and not-at-issue emojis. Longo, F. & Panizza, D. (ed.): Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 29, 77-97. https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2025.v29.1195
Antomo, M., Taigel, S., Staratschek, N. (2025): Pragmatic writing in contemporary German: toward a typology of context-sensitive written devices. Written Language & Literacy 27.2, 178-218. https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00088.tai
Chen, Y. & Antomo, M. (2024): Presuppositions cross-linguistically: a comparison of soft and hard triggers in Mandarin Chinese and German. Intercultural Pragmatics 21.2, 149 – 191. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2024-2001
Chen, Y., Thalmann, M., & Antomo, M. (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