I am a postdoctoral research fellow at Zurich Centre for Linguistics and the English Department. My main research interest is lexical categorisation and the interfaces of morphology, syntax, and semantics. I also like word formation, particularly compounding. Before Zurich, I completed PhD at the University of Edinburgh (2015-2019). My PhD project is published as research monograph (Sennrich, X. 2022. The Many Faces of English -ing. [Topics in English Linguistics]. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter). I am a member of ISLE (International Society for the Linguistics of English).

I am part of a SNF-funded project on prototypes and parts of speech, led by Marianne Hundt, Lena Jäger, Alexis Hervais-Adelman and Fernando Zuñiga. The main goal of our project is to use Natural Language Processing and neurolinguistic evidence from three typologically very different languages (Basque, Chinese and English) to verify whether adjectives as a prototypically structured category exist.

• MA seminar ‘English word classes’ (spring semester 2026)
• BA seminar focus on Language Structure ‘Parts of speech in English’ (spring semester 2026)
• BA seminar focus on Language Structure ‘English word classes’ (autumn semester 2023)