Talk by Aremu, Hartmann, Himmelreich, Mursell (Frankfurt) in the Syntax Colloquium

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Daniel Aremu, Katharina Hartmann, Anke Himmelreich, and Johannes Mursell (Frankfurt) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: Morphological marking of focus in Mabia Date: June 13 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: In Mabia, focus is not marked by intonation but by focus particles and word order. We discuss the ex-situ and in-situ focus strategies in the four Mabia languages Dagbani, Dagaare, Likpakpaanl, and Kusaal. We demonstrate that some, but not all the languages provide morphological evidence for a low focus projection. Further we show that, despite the languages being closely related, the focus strategies differ a lot. We end with some speculations about how the strategies should be analyzed and end with some further questions....
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Talk by Markus Steinbach (Göttingen)

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Markus Steinbach (Göttingen) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: Once there was a gesture – now there is a sign. On the grammaticalization of gestures in sign languages Date: June 9 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: Sign languages, like spoken languages, are subject to diachronic changes due to external and internal factors. Recent studies on grammaticalization in sign languages have shown that, for the most part, the attested grammaticalization paths from lexical expressions to grammatical markers are modality-independent. In addition to these well documented grammaticalization processes, sign languages can also integrate and grammaticalize manual and nonmanual gestures. This special property results from the gestural basis of sign languages and the fact that gestures use the same articulatory channel that is also active in the production of signs. The visual-gestural modality of sign languages thus offers the unique property of developing grammatical markers on basis of manual and nonmanual co-speech gestures. In this talk,...
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Talk by Wim Pouw (Nijmegen)

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Wim Pouw (Nijmegen) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: Movements of signification: From physical origins to linguistic devices Date: June 2 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: Manual gestures are bodily postures in motion which signify in coordination with speech. Gestures have primarily gathered attention from cognitive psychologists, linguists, and anthropologists, who are united under the umbrella of ‘gesture studies’. Gestures studies aims to triangulate what meaning lies behind a mere movement, inferring their significance through meticulous interpretation, where whole worlds have been envisaged about what makes movements meaningful: e.g., Gestures are held to reflect an inner world of sensorimotor simulations; Gestures are schematizations of thought; Gestures are primordial symbols. Such views have emancipated gestures, as unique windows into the human mind. We are, it turns out, not merely moving about. In this talk I will however stop for a moment to peer through gesture, and appreciate gesture qua movement. What do we see? We...
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Talk by Fatima Hamlaoui (University of Toronto)

by Tina Bögel Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Fatima Hamlaoui in the Phonology Colloquium. Title: Prosodic Transfer in Contact Varieties: Vocative calls in Metropolitan and in Basaá-Cameroonian French Date: Wednesday, 01.06.2022 Time: 16-18 Location: Hybrid - Zoom and IG 4.301 If you want to participate via Zoom, please register via email to Alina Gregori: gregori@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de Abstract: The effect of context on the prosody of vocative calls has been a topic of growing interest (a.o., Borràs-Comes et al. 2015, Huttenlauch et al. 2016, Arvaniti et al. 2016, Kubozono & Mizoguchi 2019). In Metropolitan French, just as in a variety of intonation languages, sweet and friendly contexts are typically associated with a chanting contour, while urgent contexts have been described to elicit a rising-falling contour (a.o., Ladd 2008, Jun & Fougeron 1995, Fagyal 1997, Delais-Roussarie et al. 2015, Di Cristo 2016). Little is known however as to the extent of this form-meaning association and the effect of context on the prosodic realization of the different contours. What is also...
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Talk by Viktor Köhlich (Frankfurt) in the Syntax Colloquium

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Viktor Köhlich (Goethe University) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: Merging Position and Size of Indirect Modifiers in Japanese Date: May 30 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: This talk takes a look at the questions what the size ob indirect modifiers in Japanese is, or rather what size it can be, and where they merge in the DP. Adopting a cartographic understanding of the DP (Cinque 2010. 2020), in principle adjectives are expected to merge as reduced relative clauses of size IP in a dedicated functional projection and verbal modifiers to merge in a functional projection for finite relative clauses. Japanese is an interesting case, as the size of the modifier, which is often argued to correlate with finiteness, cannot be readily determined. Modifiers in attributive position only exhibit one surface form and are in their morphological mark-up (mostly) identical to their counterparts in predicative position. While it...
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