Talk by Philipp Weisser (University of Potsdam)

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Philipp Weisser (University of Potsdam) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: The Limits of Umlaut in Sinhala: Matching domains across the syntax, morphology, and phonology (joint work with Paula Fenger, Leipzig University) Date: May 16 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: In this talk we study the patterns of verbal umlaut in the Indo-Aryan language Sinhala (spoken in Sri Lanka), which seems to be constrained by an intricate combination of (i) lexical, (ii) morphosyntactic, and (iii) phonological factors. We study this phenomenon and show that it can be used as a window into the morphological makeup of complex words. In particular, we defend  the following claims: 1. Contrary to some claims in the literature (see e.g. Garland 2005), we argue that the limits of umlaut show that Sinhala verb morphology is, underlyingly, concatenative and in order to describe where umlaut appears and where it doesn’t, we need to refer to the notion of the morpheme. 2....
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Talk by Imke Driemel (Humboldt University Berlin)

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Imke Driemel (Humboldt University Berlin) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title:Implicit arguments and their morpho-syntactic effects Date: May 9 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: Implicit arguments are covert elements whose syntactic representations questioned in some way or another (Bhatt and Pancheva 2017). While much of the literature of implicit arguments is focused on thematic arguments such as PRO, pro, or the agent of passives, this talk will present two case studies on implicit non-thematic arguments: i) the perspectival center of the come/go alternation in the Northwest Caucasian language Adyghe, and ii) the speaker/hearer representation in allocutive marking languages of East Asia and South America. For i), it will be shown that the licensing of the perspectival center matches the language's strategy to signal PCC effects. For ii), we will investigate an interaction of gender and honorific marking which runs parallel to DOM effects. Not only will the case...
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Talk by Johannes Mursell (Goethe University Frankfurt)

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Johannes Mursell (Goethe University) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place in person. Title: Evidentials in German Date: April 25 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Room: IG 4.301 Abstract: In this talk, I discuss various properties of elements in German that have been argued to encode evidential meaning, i.e. meaning related to information source, such as the discourse particle wohl and modals sollen/wollen. Starting with the discourse particle wohl, various authors (Modicom, 2012; Göbel, 2018; Eckardt and Beltrama, 2019) argue that it serves as inferential evidential, suggesting that the source of the information expressed is based on reasoning from one’s knowledge. ✓ You’re asked where your keys are. You hear the noise of keys inside your bag. ✗ You’re asked where your keys are. You usually leave them in your bag but you can’t quite remember if you did this time. (1) Sie sind wohl in meiner Tasche.      they are WOHL in my bag     ‘They’re in my bag (I...
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Phonology Colloquium 26.01.22 Fabian Schubö (U Stuttgart) „Givenness and stress rejection“

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce the next talk in the phonology colloquium by Fabian Schubö (U Stuttgart). Abstract below. The talk will take place online. However, we will have the hybrid kit working in the seminar room as well. If you are registered in Olat you'll find the Zoom link there. If you want to participate via zoom, please register via email to Alina Gregori: gregori@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de Title: Givenness and stress rejection Date: January 26, 2022 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Place: Online Zoom / IG 4.301 (hybrid setting) Everybody is cordially invited! Abstract: This paper addresses the impact of givenness on phrasal stress assignment in German. It has been observed for English that nuclear stress is rejected on given elements that are part of the focused material if another focused word is available to bear nuclear stress (e.g., Ladd 1996). It is  shown that the same effect applies to German. There are various proposals of constraints that militate against prosodic prominence on given elements. The present...
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Phonology Colloquium – 19.01.22 Pia Bergmann (Jena) „The prosody of discourse markers“

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce the next talk in the Phonology Colloquium by Pia Bergmann (U Jena). Abstract below. The talk will take place online. However, we will have the hybrid kit working in the seminar room as well. If you are registered in Olat you'll find the Zoom link there. If you want to participate via zoom, please register via email to Alina Gregori: gregori@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de Title: The prosody of discourse markers – Prosodic prominence on the level of discourse Date: January 19, 2022 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Place: Online Zoom / IG 4.301 (hybrid setting) Everybody is coridially invited! Abstract: The prosody of discourse markers – Prosodic prominence on the level of discourse Pia Bergmann (pia.bergmann@uni.jena.de) The talk deals with the prosody of so-called discourse markers in contemporary German, which are often placed in the context of grammaticalization or pragmaticalization processes (cf. Auer & Günthner 2005). While on the one hand it is assumed that grammaticalization processes are or at least can be accompanied by phonetic...
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