Talk by Caroline Féry (GU)

We are happy to announce the next talk in the Phonology Colloquium by Caroline Féry (GU). Title: The recursive structure of the prosodic word in German Date: Wednesday, 25.01.2023 Time: 16-18 ct. Location: in person on campus IG 4.301 (we will stream the talk via Zoom) 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 Abstract: We will look at the interface between morphology and prosodic structure, i.e., how morphemes and words are mapped to prosodic constituents such as moras, syllables, feet and prosodic words. Beside a demonstration of the recursive prosodic structure of inflection, derivation and compounding – the typical concatenative morphological processes of German – the outputs of the non-concatenative part of morphology – usually a disyllabic trochee – will also be addressed. Ito & Mester’s (2012) min-max model of prosodic structure will be used and a formal OT approach will be sketched....
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Talk by Klaus von Heusinger (Cologne)

We are happy to announce a talk by Klaus von Heusinger (Cologne) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: Weak and strong definite articles in German and Evidentiality Date: January 26 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: German has a strong and a weak form of the definite article, which can be distinguished by their ability to merge with certain prepositions (strong: zu dem, weak: zum). The strong or full form is used in anaphoric and familiar contexts, and the weak or reduced form is used in contexts with a uniqueness condition (Ebert 1971, Schwarz 2009). The choice of one form in bridging contexts depends on the type of bridging: part-whole bridging contexts favor the weak form, and producer-product bridging prefer the strong form. We argue that the choice of the article form also depends on the way the speaker and hearer perceive the referent: if the referent is visible and touchable, the weak form is enhanced, while a less direct experience, say...
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Talk by Fabian Heck (Leipzig University) in the Syntax Colloquium

We are happy to announce a talk by Fabian Heck (Leipzig University) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place in person. Room IG 4.301 Date: January 16 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: Empty expletives and the EPP Abstract: Since its introduction in Chomsky (1981), the EPP has remained a mistery. In particular, there is no consensus on what the EPP could derive from, or why it should exist (but cf. Haider 2010 for an interesting approach). Within the last 20 years, various proposals have been made that try to connect the EPP to some phonological property. In particular, there is a class of approaches claiming that the EPP requires that SpecT be filled by some *phonologically overt* category (e.g. Holmberg 2000, Bobaljik 2002, Landau 2007, Richards 2016, McFadden & Sundharesan 2018). Such a view appears to be incompatible with the very concept of an empty expletive. In my talk, I argue that there are reasons to assume that empty expletives exist. If...
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Talk by Maximilian Berthold (Frankfurt)

We are happy to announce a talk by Maximilian Berthold (Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title:  Nominal aktionsarten: a formal account Date: January 12 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: During my last presentation, I proposed that nouns separate into two classes: stative nouns (person, child) and eventive nouns (murderer, dancer). At the center of the theory is the hypothesis that eventive nouns are characterized by having an event argument that can be anaphoric to salient events in the context. This allows us to account for previously unexplained cases in the literature on the temporal interpretation of nominals. The aim of the present talk is to (i) bring together the theory on eventive nouns with a theory on aktionsarten, (ii) propose a formal analysis for the semantics of each aktionsart, and (iii) test the predictions with respect to their temporal interpretations....
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