Annika Tjuka
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig
e-mail: annika_tjuka@[>>> Please remove the text! <<<]eva.mpg.de
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About me
Curriculum Vitae
Publications
About me
My main goal is to answer questions about linguistic diversity with a focus on language variation in word meanings. I have a BA and MA degree in linguistics from the Humboldt University Berlin and submitted my PhD dissertation to the Friedrich Schiller University Jena in August 2023. I am a language scientist studying patterns and causes of words with multiple meanings. For my work, I use data from language documentation, large-scale databases, and computational methods. In my Master’s thesis, I conducted the first systematic study of body part extensions such as table leg and foot of the mountain. I examined the frequency of 95 expressions in 13 languages and the preferences for underlying analogy patterns based on similarity in shape, spatial orientation, and function. The first project of my doctoral research established the Database of Cross-Linguistic Norms, Ratings, and Relations for Words and Concepts (NoRaRe), which contains 98 datasets from linguistics and psychology across 40 languages including 65 word properties.
Curriculum Vitae
Academic Degrees
| in progress | Ph.D. in Linguistics at International Max Planck Research School for the Science of Human History (IMPRS-SHH) and Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena Dissertation: Language variation in word meanings: Cross-linguistic patterns and causes of colexifications Supervisors: Johann-Mattis List and Stephen C. Levinson |
| 2019 | Master of Arts in Linguistics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Master's thesis: Body-part metaphors as a window to cognition: A cross-linguistic study of object and landscape terms Supervisors: Elisabeth Verhoeven and Kilu von Prince |
| 2016 | Bachelor of Arts in German Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Bachelor's thesis: Emotionalisation through texts Supervisors: Katharina Spalek and Manfred Krifka |
Academic Positions
| 2023 - Present | Postdoctoral Researcher at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Leipzig. |
| 2019 - 2023 | Doctoral Researcher at Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Jena. |
| 2019 | Research Associate at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in the FAHMRRR project, funded by ERC. |
| 2017 - 2019 | Student research assistant at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in the MelaTAMP project, funded by DFG. |
| 2016 - 2019 | Student research assistant at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in the FAHMRRR project, funded by ERC. |
| 2018 | Internship and student research assistant at Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig. |
Publications
Tjuka, A. (2023). Body part extensions with mặt ‘Face’ in Vietnamese. In K. Pattillo, & M. Waśniewska ( |
Tjuka, A., Forkel, R., & List, J.-M. (2022). Linking norms, ratings, and relations of words and concepts across multiple language varieties. Behavior Research Methods, 54, 864-884. |
Open Access2023
Tjuka, A., Forkel, R., & List, J.-M. (2023). Curating and extending data for language comparison in Concepticon and NoRaRe. Open Research Europe, 2: 141. |
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Tjuka, A. (2023). Body part extensions with mặt ‘Face’ in Vietnamese. In K. Pattillo, & M. Waśniewska ( |
2022
Tjuka, A., Nguyen, H. T. T., van de Vijver, R., & Spalek, K. (2022). Pitch contours of Northern Vietnamese tones vary with focus marking. PsyArXiv. |
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Tjuka, A., Forkel, R., & List, J.-M. (2022). Linking norms, ratings, and relations of words and concepts across multiple language varieties. Behavior Research Methods, 54, 864-884. |
2021
Tjuka, A., Nguyen, H. T. T., & Spalek, K. (2021). Correction: Foxes, deer, and hedgehogs: The recall of focus alternatives in Vietnamese. Laboratory Phonology, 12(1): 2. |
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Tjuka, A. (2021). The representation of foot/leg polysemy in the mind: insights from Vietnamese body part extensions with chân. In Humanities Commons. New York: Modern Language Association. |
2020
Tjuka, A. (2020). General patterns and language variation: Word frequencies across English, German, and Chinese. In M. Zock, E. Chersoni, A. Lenci, & E. Santus ( |
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Tjuka, A., Nguyen, H. T. T., & Spalek, K. (2020). Foxes, deer, and hedgehogs: The recall of focus alternatives in Vietnamese. Laboratory Phonology, 11(1): 16. |
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Tjuka, A., Weißmann, L., & Prince, K. v. (2020). Habitual aspect as a property of text spans. In Human language technologies as a challenge for computer science and linguistics: Proceedings of 9th Language & Technology Conference (pp. 195-199). Poznań: Wydawnictwo Nauka i Innowacje. |
2019
Tjuka, A. (2019). Body-part metaphors as a window to cognition: A cross-linguistic study of object and landscape terms. Master Thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin. |
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Tjuka, A., Weißmann, L., & Prince, K. v. (2019). Tagging modality in Oceanic languages of Melanesia. In Proceedings of the 13th Linguistic Annotation Workshop (pp. 65-70). Florence, Italy: Association for Computational Linguistics. |