Talk by Philipp Weisser (University of Potsdam) in the Syntax Colloquium
We are happy to announce a talk by Philipp Weisser (University of Potsdam) in the Syntax Colloquium.
The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301.
Title: The Limits of Umlaut in Sinhala: Matching domains across the syntax, morphology, and phonology (joint work with Paula Fenger, Leipzig University)
Date: May 16
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct
Abstract:
In this talk we study the patterns of verbal umlaut in the Indo-Aryan language Sinhala (spoken in Sri Lanka), which seems to be constrained by an intricate combination of (i) lexical, (ii) morphosyntactic, and (iii) phonological factors. We study this phenomenon and show that it can be used as a window into the morphological makeup of complex words. In particular, we defend the following claims:
1. Contrary to some claims in the literature (see e.g. Garland 2005), we argue that the limits of umlaut show that Sinhala verb morphology is, underlyingly, concatenative and in order to describe where umlaut appears and where it doesn’t, we need to refer to the notion of the morpheme.
2....