Autor: Lennart Fritzsche

We are happy to announce a talk by Markus Steinbach (University of Göttingen) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: Visual answers - response strategies in German Sign Language Date: November 11 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: Response particle systems vary cross-linguistically regarding the number and discourse functions of the response elements. Some languages have two particles (English yes, no), others have three (German ja, nein, doch). Traditional accounts of response systems distinguish truth-based and polarity-based systems (Pope 1976, Jones 1999). In truth-based systems, yes-type answers confirm the truth of the antecedent proposition and no-type answers reject it. In polarity-based systems, response particles signal the polarity of the response clause: positive (yes-type) or negative (no-type). Languages may also employ both systems and use no to reject the truth of a proposition or signal the negative polarity of the response. Languages with a three-particle system often have a dedicated response particle for rejecting negative propositions, although other dedicated particles exist, too (Roelofsen & Farkas 2015). Concerning the visual-gestural modality, very little...

We are happy to announce a talk by Marianne Huijsmans and Daniel Reisinger (University of British Columbia) in the Semantics Colloquium. Please note that the talk will place online. If you want to participate, please register via email to s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de beforehand. Title: Demonstratives in ʔayʔaǰuθəm: Managing joint attention through gesture and salience Date: November 4 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: In this talk, we provide the first detailed description and analysis of the demonstrative system in ʔayʔaǰuθəm (a.k.a. Comox-Sliammon; ISO 639-3: coo), a Coast Salish language spoken along the northern Strait of Georgia in British Columbia, Canada. Drawing from original fieldwork with five speakers, we show that the demonstratives in ʔayʔaǰuθəm not only encode deictic distance, evidentiality, gender, and number, but also whether or not joint attention (cf. Diessel 2006) has been established between the speech participants. The Gesture Demonstratives rely on the use of co-speech gesture to establish joint attention, while the Salience Demonstratives are used where joint attention is already established and, consequently, do not require...

We are happy to announce a talk by Narjes Eskandarnia (GU Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium. Please note that the talk will place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: Georgian and Persian linguistic contact in Fereidounshahr (Isfahan, Iran) Date: October 28 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: A variety of Georgian language—which is of Caucasian language family—is widely spoken in the city of Fereidounshahr in the Isfahan Province, Iran. Due to many centuries of close contact between the Georgian and Persian languages, the Georgian language spoken in the area has undergone some considerable changes. In this regard, the current fieldwork aims to deal with and describe the linguistic changes. The data were collected through the field research method by applying Iran’s Academy Questionnaire to the norm speakers of Fereidounshahr. The findings demonstrate that the Georgian language of Fereidounshahr is widely influenced by the Persian language at different linguistic fields such as phonology, morphology and semantics. ...

We are happy to announce a talk by Maciej Kłeczek (GU Frankfurt) at the Semantics Colloquium. Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday shortly before the talk starts. Title: Quine on variables Date: July 15 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: In this exegetical talk we reconstruct and critically discuss the Quine view on variable like symbols and first-order variables. This is a quintessential Quinean theme found in a series of papers [On the Logic of Quantification, Variables Explained Away, The Variable, Algebraic Logic and Predicate Functor Logic], and Quine’s seminal monograph Word Object. Quine has presented a rather coherent picture of variable like symbols and first-order variables. As a consequence, this picture generates a coherent interpretation of first-order languages conforming to an important Quine’s background philosophical assumption which is nominalism (or rather a propensity to nominalism).  We start our talk with Quine’s account of schematicity and contrast it with alternative more recent approaches. Next, we proceed to Quine’s explication of a first-order variable as a...

We are happy to announce a talk by Todor Koev (University of Konstanz) at the Semantics Colloquium. Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday shortly before the talk starts. Title: "Believe" as Gradable, Strong, and Subjective Date: July 1 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: The verb "believe" is standardly analyzed as a universal quantifier over possibilities, i.e. as stating that the prejacent is true across all the attitude holder’s doxastic alternatives (Hintikka 1969). This semantics (i) fails to capture the fact that "believe" is a gradable predicate (cf. "partially believe", "fully believe", etc.) and (ii) does not predict the intuition that "believe" implies some sort of weakness on the part of the attitude holder towards the prejacent proposition (cf. "I believe Kim is on vacation" vs. "I know Kim is on vacation"). In order to remedy the gradability problem, I propose a gradable semantics for "believe" within the framework developed for gradable adjectives (Cresswell 1976; Kennedy & McNally 2005; a.m.o.). As for the modal strength problem, I claim that "believe" has the...