Sonja Riesberg

List of John Benjamins publications in which Sonja Riesberg is involved.

Titles

The Documentarist Turn: From observable linguistic behaviour to typological generalizations

Edited by Sonja Riesberg, Uta Reinöhl and Birgit Hellwig

The documentarist turn, i.e., the growing impact of documentary concepts and practices within general linguistics, has increased awareness of the empirical foundations of our discipline, accompanied by an appreciation of the value of observable linguistic behaviour. Today, there exist… read more

[Studies in Language Companion Series, 240] 2026. xii, 906 pp. + index | open access

Caused Accompanied Motion: Bringing and taking events in a cross-linguistic perspective

Edited by Anna Margetts, Sonja Riesberg and Birgit Hellwig

This volume investigates the linguistic expression of directed caused accompanied motion events, including verbal concepts like BRING and TAKE. Contributions explore how speakers conceptualise and describe these events across areally, genetically, and typologically diverse languages of the… read more

[Typological Studies in Language, 134] 2022. viii, 437 pp.

Gayler, Katharina and Sonja Riesberg 2026 Chapter 29. Grammaticisation of medial speech verbs: A case study from Yali (West-New Guinea) The Documentarist Turn: From observable linguistic behaviour to typological generalizations, Riesberg, Sonja, Uta Reinöhl and Birgit Hellwig (eds.), pp. 815–843 | Chapter

Reported speech constructions in many Papuan languages exhibit a range of functions that go beyond the primary function of representing an utterance. For some of these languages, it has been pointed out that a specific verb form — the so called medial-verb form — is required to introduce… read more

Hellwig, Birgit, Uta Reinöhl, Sonja Riesberg, Isabel Compes, Carmen Dawuda, Dagmar Jung, Felix Rau, Fritz Serzisko, Vera Szöllösi-Brenig, Katherine Walker, Helga Weyerts-Schweda and Lena Wolberg 2026 Chapter 1. Nikolaus Himmelmann and the documentarist turn The Documentarist Turn: From observable linguistic behaviour to typological generalizations, Riesberg, Sonja, Uta Reinöhl and Birgit Hellwig (eds.), pp. 1–26 | Chapter

Paul, Compensis, Marco García García, Birgit Hellwig, Sonja Riesberg and Gertrud Schneider-Blum 2026 Differential argument marking and discourse prominence Studies in Language: Online-First Articles | Article

Many languages exhibit some form of differential argument marking (DAM), where the same generalized argument role can be marked differently. Approaches explaining these phenomena have in common that they assume some form of ranking among linguistic elements of the same kind. While previous… read more

Hellwig, Birgit, Anna Margetts, Sonja Riesberg and Melanie Schippling 2022 Bringing and taking: A cross-linguistic perspective on caused accompanied motion events Caused Accompanied Motion: Bringing and taking events in a cross-linguistic perspective, Margetts, Anna, Sonja Riesberg and Birgit Hellwig (eds.), pp. 1–41 | Chapter

This chapter proposes a typology of expressions of directed caused accompanied motion (directed CAM): it introduces and defines this semantic domain, presents the corpus-based methodology used by the authors of this volume, and gives an overview of the results. It shows that directed CAM… read more

Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. and Sonja Riesberg 2022 Expressions of directed caused accompanied motion events in Totoli, a western Austronesian language of Indonesia Caused Accompanied Motion: Bringing and taking events in a cross-linguistic perspective, Margetts, Anna, Sonja Riesberg and Birgit Hellwig (eds.), pp. 219–242 | Chapter

This chapter discusses expressions of directed caused accompanied motion (directed CAM) events in Totoli, a western Austronesian language of eastern Indonesia. The most frequent strategy to express directed CAM events in Totoli is to combine a take verb with one of two directional clitics that… read more

Margetts, Anna, Katharina Haude, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, Dagmar Jung, Sonja Riesberg, Stefan Schnell, Frank Seifart, Harriet Sheppard and Claudia Wegener 2022 Cross-linguistic patterns in the lexicalisation of bring and take Studies in Language 46:4, pp. 934–993 | Article

This study investigates the linguistic expression of bring and take events and more generally of the semantic domain of directed caused accompanied motion (‘directed CAM’) across a sample of eight languages of the Pacific and the Americas. Unlike English, the majority of languages in our sample… read more

Riesberg, Sonja 2022 Expressions of directed caused accompanied motion events in Yali Caused Accompanied Motion: Bringing and taking events in a cross-linguistic perspective, Margetts, Anna, Sonja Riesberg and Birgit Hellwig (eds.), pp. 369–395 | Chapter

This chapter investigates expressions of directed caused accompanied motion (directed CAM) events in Yali, a Trans New-Guinea language of West Papua, Indonesia. The most frequent strategy to express these kinds of events in Yali is to build a clause chain consisting of a take verb in the… read more

Riesberg, Sonja, Maria Bardají i Farré, Kurt Malcher and Nikolaus P. Himmelmann 2022 Predicting voice choice in symmetrical voice languages: All the things that do not work in Totoli Studies in Language 46:2, pp. 453–516 | Article

Western Austronesian symmetrical voice languages exhibit at least two basic transitive constructions. This paper investigates what factors influence speakers’ choice of one voice over another in natural spoken discourse. It provides a thorough assessment of all factors that have been proposed to… read more