Autor: Anke Himmelreich

We are very happy to announce the next talk in the Phonology Colloquium, which will take place on Wednesday, June 26, 4 – 6 pm in IG 4.301. Franziska Krüger will present „Exploring the perception and production patterns of second dialect learners -- An investigation into the laryngeal contrast for word-initial stops when perceived and produced by Upper Saxon dialect and Standard German speakers“. Abstract: Exploring the perception and production patterns of second dialect learners -- An investigation into the laryngeal contrast for word-initial stops when perceived and produced by Upper Saxon dialect and Standard German speakers Standard German (SGer) maintains a contrast between lenis (voiceless unaspirated) stops and fortis (voiceless aspirated) stops. For the non-standard German variety Upper Saxon (USax), traditional accounts report that only lenis stops are retained. Thus, <Bass> (bass) and <Pass> (passport) are a minimal pair in SGer but homophones in USax. However, more recent phonetic investigations suggest that USax speakers might produce fortis stops with aspiration just like SGer. My research...

We are very happy to announce the next talk in the Semantic Colloquium, which will take place on Thursday, June 27, 4 – 6 pm in IG 4.301. Bartosz Wieckowski will present „Modes of assumptions and moods of implications“. Abstract: We define a natural deduction system for factual and counterfactual implication IFC on top of an intuitionistic natural deduction system S which serves as a reference system for making assumptions in IFC. Intuitively, the set of formulae canonically derived in S comprises what is counted as a fact in the IFC-system based on it. In IFC-systems one may distinguish three modes of making assumptions. A formula can be assumed factually in case it is contained in the set of facts, it can be assumed counterfactually in case it is not so contained, and it can be assumed in an independent mode, that is, regardless of whether it is a fact or not. Factual (counterfactual, standard) implications are derived by appeal to factual (counterfactual,...

We are very happy to announce the next talk in the Syntax Colloquium, which will take place on Monday, June 24, 4 – 6 pm in IG 254. Gert Webelhuth will present „Über die Rolle des c-Kommando im Deutschen“. Abstract: Seit Reinhart (1983) findet sich in der Literatur die Hypothese, dass gebundene Variablen von ihren Quantoren auf der Oberfläche c-kommandiert werden müssen. Barker (2012) hat systematische Evidenz gegen diese Hypothese aus dem Englischen präsentiert. Dieser Vortrag untersucht die Rolle des c-Kommando in drei grammatischen Phänomenen des Deutschen: Quantorenskopus, Variablenbindung und negative Polarität.     You are cordially invited!...

We are very happy to announce a guest talk, which will take place on Thursday, June 27, 4 – 6 pm in NG 1.701. Prof. Adams Bodomo (University of Vienna) will present „Serial Verb Reduplication in the Mabia Languages of West Africa“. Abstract (English) Verb serialization and verb reduplication are widely analyzed grammatical constructions in the languages of Africa and other parts of the world. However, to this day there is no known published extensive study on the interaction between the two grammatical constructions. This paper investigates the interaction between the two phenomena that produces what is referred to in the paper as serial verb reduplication. The study focuses particularly on outlining constraints under which the verbs can be reduplicated within the serial verb construction, showing how these can be formally represented, and pointing to what meanings such reduplications deploy. Kyɛngmááó (Dagaare) Vɛ́ɛ́beré táá túúbó ané vɛ́ɛ́beré laborong yélúú é lá gerááma yɛ́lɛ́ nóbanańg kaa a yɛ́lɛ́ yága a Áféréka kɔkɔ́rɛ́ɛ́ póɔ́ ané a tendaá...

We are very happy to announce the next talk in the Phonology Colloquium, which will take place on Wednesday, June 19, 4 – 6 pm in IG 4.301. Christian Uffmann (Universität Düsseldorf) will present „Caught a cool call? Phonetic Change, Splits, and Mergers in Southern England“. Abstract:   Caught a cool call? Phonetic Change, Splits, and Mergers in Southern England This talk has three aims. Firstly, it reports a series of phonological changes in London English, triggered by a phonetic change. In London, as in many other varieties of English, /u:/ undergoes a gradient process of fronting – but not before tautosyllabic /l/. Thus the vowel in cool is phonetically back while the vowel in coop is phonetically front. This has led to a merger of the cool and call sets. In a subsequent step, we are witnessing a phonemic split where the cool-call set is for some speakers realised differently from the caught set (while for more conservative speakers all three are the same). Secondly, I am going to propose a...