It all depends on the question!
How do new words actually come about? Why do we say ‘two pizzas’ rather than ‘two pizze’? What makes language so malleable? And what exactly do linguists do?
Anyone who studies language repeatedly comes across fascinating questions – and it is precisely this curiosity that shapes the work of Anna Volodina, Senior Scientist at the Department of German Studies. Her popular science book ‘When Children Ask: Answers to 21 Children’s Questions about the German Language’ (2025, IDS-Verlag) shows that the best insights arise when we dare to ask questions.
Open to new ideas
Whether in conversation with children or in academic analysis, for Anna Volodina, asking questions is key. Her book grew out of real questions asked by children, collected during event days at the Leibniz Institute for the German Language (Mannheim). The answers are designed to open up new perspectives on the German language not only for children but also for adults. “Who invented gender-neutral language?”, “What is the longest word containing the letter ‘E’?” Anna Volodina answers these and many other questions openly, in a way that is easy to understand and, of course, in a manner that encourages further questioning. For Ms Volodina, this is the very essence of science: remaining curious, looking closely and being open to the unexpected.
Grammar and language change
In her academic research, Anna Volodina focuses primarily on two central themes: Firstly, she examines the grammar of spoken German, particularly structures that deviate from the standard. These include, for example, subordinate clauses with the verb in second position (“He is certainly not there, because his car is not parked outside the door.”), which she examined in greater detail in her doctoral thesis. A second focus of her research also highlights how important it is to look – or listen – closely and then ask the right questions. She researches connectives – that is, words such as ‘weil’, ‘obwohl’ or ‘denn’ that link sentences together. She is particularly interested in how the meaning and function of these connecting words change in everyday speech. For instance, the researcher has noticed that ‘weil’ is used not only as a connector but, with the appropriate intonation, also as an interrogative word. How this function of ‘weil’ has developed is examined in more detail in her latest article, ‘And you’re here because(?) On the interrogative ‘weil’ in German’.
Fostering curiosity, encouraging questions
In her teaching, too, Anna Volodina relies on the power of a good question. She encourages students to develop their own research questions and to work with corpus linguistic methods. The aim is not only to impart knowledge, but also to foster a love of discovery and critical inquiry. After all, those who ask questions remain curious – and play an active role in shaping the language of tomorrow.
Anna Volodina holds a PhD in German Studies from the University of Heidelberg and has been a Senior Scientist at the University of Graz since March 2025. Prior to this, she spent many years in the Grammar Department of the Leibniz Institute for the German Language in Mannheim, as well as holding various academic positions at the universities of Kassel, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig. As a co-author, she published her second monograph in 2014: the *Handbuch der deutschen Konnektoren-2* (de Gruyter). Her current research focuses on non-canonical structures in German, corpus linguistics and multilingualism research.