Ekkehard König (born 15 January 1941) is a German linguist and Professor Emeritus at the

Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public university, public research university in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in West Berlin in 1948 with American support during the early Cold War period a ...

, specializing in linguistic typology, semantics, and the linguistics of English.

Education and career

Ekkehard König was born in Jäschkittel in the

Province of Lower Silesia The Province of Lower Silesia (; Silesian German: ''Provinz Niederschläsing''; ; ) was a province of the Free State of Prussia from 1919 to 1945. Between 1938 and 1941 it was reunited with Upper Silesia as the Province of Silesia. The capita ...

(now Poland) and grew up in

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

. He studied general linguistics and modern languages at the

University of Kiel Kiel University, officially the Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, (, abbreviated CAU, known informally as Christiana Albertina) is a public research university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 as the ''Academia Holsator ...

(1960–1967), as well as the University of Newcastle (1963–1964) and the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

(1965–1966). He was an assistant lecturer at the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public research university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as the University Extension College, Reading, an extension college of Christchurch College, Oxford, and became University College, ...

in 1967–68. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Stuttgart in 1970, and completed his

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excelle ...

qualification in 1973 at the same university, while working as an assistant professor. König became full professor of English linguistics at the University of Hanover in 1973, and moved on to the

in 1988. He retired in 2009, and has since then been affiliated with the

University of Freiburg The University of Freiburg (colloquially ), officially the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (), is a public university, public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The university was founded in 1 ...

Scientific contributions

König's main contributions are in the area of semantics, linguistic typology (especially the typology of European languages), and the contrastive linguistics of English and German. Between 1990 and 1995, he was the director of a

European Science Foundation The European Science Foundation (ESF) is an association of 11 member organizations devoted to scientific research in 8 European countries. ESF is an independent, non-governmental, non-profit organization that promotes science in Europe. It was e ...

coordination programme on the typology of the languages of Europe (EUROTYP), which brought together over a hundred linguists from many different countries of Europe. Other prominent members of this project were Simon Dik, Giuliano Bernini, Östen Dahl, Gilbert Lazard, Frans Plank, Anna Siewierska, Johan van der Auwera, Harry van der Hulst, Henk van Riemsdijk, Nigel Vincent, as well as König's junior collaborator (and doctoral student) Martin Haspelmath. The project results were published in nine volumes by De Gruyter, and one of the consequences of this coordination programme was the founding of the Association for Linguistic Typology, with its journal ''

Linguistic Typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

''. König investigated a wide range of grammatical phenomena, especially from a semantic-pragmatic, typological, and diachronic perspective. Some topics that stand out in his contributions are adjectives, focus particles, concessive and concessive conditional clauses, self-intensifiers, manner demonstratives, and definite articles.König (2018) König has coedited a large number of books, including an important handbook on linguistic typology and universals, and he served as a panel member for the

and the

European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...

. He is a former president of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (1997–2000). He is currently one of the editors of the journal '' Studies in Language''.

Honours

* Max Planck Research Award for International Cooperation (2002) * Member of

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

* Corresponding member of

Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres The () is a French learned society devoted to history, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the . The academy's scope was the study of ancient inscriptions (epigraphy) and historical literature (see Belles-lettres). History ...

Selected works

Books

*König, Ekkehard. 1971. ''Adjectival constructions in English and German: A contrastive analysis.'' Heidelberg: Julius Gross *König, Ekkehard. 1977. ''Form und Funktion: Eine funktionale Betrachtung ausgewählter Bereiche des Englischen.'' Tübingen: Niemeyer. *König, E., D. Stark & S. Requardt. 1990. ''Adverbien und Partikeln. Ein deutsch-englisches Wörterbuch''. Heidelberg: Julius Gross. *König, Ekkehard. 1991
''The meaning of focus particles: A comparative perspective.''
London: Routledge. *König, Ekkehard & van der Auwera, Johan (eds.). 1994. ''The Germanic languages.'' London: Routledge. *Haspelmath, Martin & König, Ekkehard (eds.). 1995. ''Converbs in cross-linguistic perspective.'' Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. *Haspelmath, Martin & König, Ekkehard & Oesterreicher, Wulf & Raible, Wolfgang. 2001. ''Language typology and language universals: An international handbook'' (Handbücher Zur Sprach- Und Kommunikationswissenschaft, Vol. 1–2.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. *König, Ekkehard & Gast, Volker. 2007. ''Understanding English-German contrasts.'' Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag. *König, Ekkehard & Gast, Volker (eds.). 2008. ''Reciprocals and reflexives: Theoretical and typological explorations.'' Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Articles

*König, Ekkehard & Eisenberg, Peter. 1984
Zur Pragmatik von Konzessivsätzen.
In Stickel, Gerhard (ed.), Pragmatik in der Grammatik, 313–332. Düsseldorf: Schwann. *König, Ekkehard. 1985
On the history of concessive connectives in English: Diachronic and synchronic evidence.
Lingua 66(1). 1–19. *Haspelmath, Martin & König, Ekkehard. 1998. Concessive conditionals in the languages of Europe. In Auwera, van der (ed.), Adverbial constructions in the languages of Europe (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology/EUROTYP, 20–3), 563–640. Berlin. *König, Ekkehard & Haspelmath, Martin. 1998
Les constructions à possesseur externe dans les langues d’Europe.
In Feuillet, Jack (ed.), Actance et valence dans les langues de l’Europe, 525–606. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. *König, Ekkehard & Haspelmath, Martin. 1999. Der europäische Sprachbund. Eurolinguistik: Ein Schritt in die Zukunft: Beiträge zum Symposion. 111–127. *König, Ekkehard & Siemund, Peter. 1999. Intensifiers and reflexives: A typological perspective. In Frajzyngier, Zygmunt & Curl, Traci S. (eds.), Reflexives: Forms and functions, 41–74. Amsterdam: Benjamins. *Daniel Hole and Ekkehard König. 2002. Intensifies and Reflexivit: Eurotype vs. Asiatype. In: Kennosuke Ezawa, Wilfried Kürschner, Karl H. Rensch Manfred Ringmacher, ''Linguistik jenseits des Strukturalismus,'' 349-368''.'' Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. *König, Ekkehard & Vezzosi, Letizia. 2004. The role of predicate meaning in the development of reflexivity. In Bisang, Walter & Himmelmann, Nikolaus & Wiemer, Björn (eds.), What makes grammaticalization?: A look from its fringes and its components, 213–244. Berlin: de Gruyter. *König, Ekkehard & Gast, Volker. 2006. Focused assertion of identity: A typology of intensifiers. Linguistic Typology 10(2). 223–276. *König, Ekkehard & Kokutani, Shigehiro. 2006. Towards a typology of reciprocal constructions: Focus on German and Japanese. Linguistics 44(2). 271–302. *König, Ekkehard & Siemund, Peter. 2000. Locally free self-forms, logophoricity, and intensification in English. English Language & Linguistics 4(2). 183–204. () *König, Ekkehard & Siemund, Peter & Töpper, Stephan. 2013. Intensifiers and reflexive pronouns. In Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology. (http://wals.info/chapter/47) *König, Ekkehard. 2018
Definite articles and their uses.
In Van Olmen, Daniël & Mortelmans, Tanja (eds.), Aspects of linguistic variation, vol. 324, 165–184. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. () *König, Ekkehard & Umbach, Carla. 2018. Demonstratives of manner, of quality and of degree. In: Marco Coniglio et al. (eds) ''Atypical Demonstratives: Syntax, semantics and pragmatics.'' Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. ()

Notes

External links

Page at Free University of BerlinPage at FRIAS Freiburg
{{DEFAULTSORT:König, Ekkehard 1941 births Academic staff of the University of Stuttgart Academic staff of Leibniz University Hannover Academics of the University of Edinburgh University of Stuttgart alumni Linguists from Germany Members of Academia Europaea Members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres Semanticists Living people