Talk by Eva Zimmermann (U Leipzig)

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
Dear colleagues, we are very happy to announce the next talk in our phonology colloquium this term. Eva Zimmermann (U Leipzig) will talk about "Gradient Symbolic Representations and the Typology of Phonological Exceptions". The talk will take place online. Title: Gradient Symbolic Representations and the Typology of Phonological Exceptions Time: 02. December 2020, 4 pm ct Place: Zoom Abstract below: Gradient Symbolic Representations and the Typology of Phonological Exceptions The assumption of Gradient Symbolic Representations that phonological elements can have different degrees of activity (Smolensky and Goldrick, 2016; Rosen, 2016; Zimmermann, 2018, 2019) allows a unified explanation for the typology of phonological exceptions. Exceptional (non)triggers and (non)undergoers of otherwise regular phonological processes are predicted from gradient constraint violations: The activation of a phonological element in an underlying morpheme representation determines 1) how much the element is preserved by faithfulness constraints and 2) how much it is visible for markedness constraints. I argue that this simple mechanism predicts the attested typology of phonological exceptions and that the predictions made...
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Talk by Fenna Bergsma (Frankfurt)

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are very happy to announce the next talk in our syntax colloquium this term. Fenna Bergsma will talk about "A typology of case competition in headless relatives". The talk will take place online, please see the information below on how to participate. Please not the change from our usual time! Title: A typology of case competition in headless relatives Time : 30.11.2020, 2 pm Place: Zoom (If you are not a regular member of the syntax colloquium and if you would like to listen to this talk, please contact Katharina Hartmann: k.hartmann@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de. You will be sent a link / ID to Zoom.) Please see below for the abstract. You are all, as always, cordially invited! ============================ A typology of case competition in headless relatives   In case competition in headless relatives two aspects play a role. The first one is which case wins the case competition. It is a crosslinguistically stable fact that this is determined by the case scale in (1). A case more to the right on...
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Online-Talk by Jonathan Weinrich (GU) – April 23, Thursday 4-6 pm

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Jonathan Weinrich  (GU) next thursday at the Semantics Colloquium. Please find an abstract below. Since this talk will be held online, please note that you need to register beforehand. If you didn't do it yet, send an email to koepping@em.uni-frankfurt.de before April 22. You will receive a reply with the access data (to zoom) on thursday at 4pm (= immediately before the colloquium starts). Title: Gestural referents as SDRT anaphora Date: April 23rd Time: 4pm - 6pm Abstract: Lascarides & Stone (2009) outline a semantic approach to interpreting gestures. They integrate the gestures into the SDRT framework of Asher & Lascarides (2003) and allow them to combine by discourse relations. This involves the usage discourse referents in a DRT-like fashion. While they do not explicitly advocate the idea, a possible interpretation of their examples suggests that all gestural discourse referents are restricted in coreference by the same structural constraints as pronouns. As a start of my research into formal...
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Talk by Luisa Martí (Queen Mary, University of London) – Thursday 4-6 pm

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Luisa Martí  (Queen Mary, University of London) next Thursday at the Semantics Colloquium. Please find an abstract below. Title: The numeral+noun construction: typology and semantics Room: IG 4.301 Date: February 13th Time: 4pm – 6pm   Abstract: On the theoretical side, I show, building on previous work of mine, that putting together two theories, that of the typology of nominal number in Harbour (2014), and that of the syntax and semantics of numerals in Scontras (2014), leads to a number of predictions regarding how nouns will be marked for number when in the company of numerals (as in, e.g., English three apples, where apples is marked for plural) across languages. I consider two arguments for this proposal. The first argument is one of theoretical economy: in my proposal, one and the same set of tools accounts for both the number marking on the noun and the semantics of the construction. This is more economical than accounting for the semantics of...
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Talk by Silvia Schäfer, Monday 10th 4-6 pm

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are very happy to announce the last talk of this semester’s Syntax Colloquium, which will take place on Monday, February 10, 4 – 6 pm in IG 4.301. Silvia Schäfer will talk about „The variation of participle agreement in four Veneto dialects“. Abstract: In my research project, I deal with the (apparently) optional participle agreement in VS structures of four Veneto varieties (Italy). I conducted fieldwork in which I tested whether the nature of the postverbal DP affects the preferably produced and accepted participle agreement. In this talk, I will present my fieldwork, including research questions, methodology and the first quantitative results. I will outline the deducible generalisations and raise the controverse question of variation in generative syntax.   You are cordially invited!...
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