Esther Seyffarth

My name is pronounced like this: [ɛstər za͜ɪfərt]. I typically use she/her pronouns, unless I’m hanging out on oulipo.social, where established pronouns are invalid.

I work in the DFG-financed project Unsupervised Frames Induction: Event Type Hierarchies and Complex Event Types (FInd), together with Prof. Laura Kallmeyer. The project is concerned with unsupervised semantic frame induction for events described by verbs, using techniques from probabilistic frame modeling and from machine learning. It grew out of the DFG-financed SFB 991, project B08, which ended in 2020.

My research focus is on verb alternations and how they relate to (and complicate) frame induction. My PhD thesis titled Computing the semantics of verb alternations: A constructional approach (2023) has been graded as summa cum laude.

In my teaching, I follow a set of guidelines detailed here (in German) and here (in English). If you participate in one of my classes, please read this document at least once and make sure you’ve understood everything in it.