Klaus-Uwe Panther

Klaus-Uwe Panther Professor Emeritus of English Linguistics at Hamburg University He has long been interested in the question to what extent morphosyntactic form might be motivated by conceptual structure and/or pragmatic function.

In his early research, Panther’s work focused on the pragmatic and semantic basis of control theory and the conceptually motivated formal features of conditional clauses and the dative construction.

In the last ten years he has investigated conceptual metonymy—its functions as an inferential tool (“natural inference schema”) and its impact on language structure. These interests have led to cooperation with scholars in various countries, in particular, with Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza at the University of La Rioja, Antonio Barcelona at the University of Murcia., and last, but not least, to a life and research partnership with Linda L. Thornburg, who is a co-author of many of Klaus Panther’s publications.

Among Professor Panther’s recent and forthcoming books are: