Talk by Ahmad Al-Bitar, Thursday 5th 4-6 pm

By Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Ahmad Al-Bitar  (Goethe Universität) next Thursday at the Semantics Colloquium. Please find an abstract below. Title: An in situ account for (Syrian Arabic) superlatives? Room: IG 4.301 Date: December 5th Time: 4pm - 6pm Abstract: The sentence in (1) is given by Heim (1999, p. 7) and shown to have a reading that is problematic for any "in situ" analysis of the superlative. (1) John wants to climb the highest mountain. In addition to the absolute and relative readings, a third reading (called the "upstairs de dicto reading" by  Sharvit & Stateva (2000)), could be available for the superlative in (1). As Heim suggests, one can think of a survey conducted about "How high a mountain do you want to climb?". John says "I want to climb a mountain that is 6,000 m high"; Mary says "I want to climb a mountain that is 4,000 m high" and Bill says "I just want to climb a mountain that is 1,000...
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Talk by Katharina Hartmann, Monday 2nd 4-6 pm

By Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are very happy to announce the next talk of this semester’s Syntax Colloquium, which will take place on Monday, Dezember 2, 4 – 6 pm in IG 4.301. Katharina Hartmann will talk about „Generalizing MaxElide“. Abstract: In this talk I argue that the constraint MaxElide (Merchant 2008) is more general than originally assumed. I show for German that MaxElide constrains all types of ellipsis in coordination and comparative formation. I conclude that this is compatible with movement accounts, rather than with base-generation + deletion accounts, of the respective structures.   You are cordially invited!...
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Talk by Frank Sode, Thursday – November 28th, 4-6 PM

By Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Frank Sode. Please find an abstract below. Title: „Gut“ as a predicate of worlds Room: IG 4.301 Date: November 28 Time: 4pm – 6pm Abstract: In this talk I discuss the meaning of the evaluative adjective „gut“ when combined with finite „dass“ (‚that‘)- and „wenn“ (‚if‘)-clauses as in (1). (1)    a. Es ist       gut,  dass du   gehst.             It be.IND good that  you go.IND         b. Es ist       gut,   wenn du   gehst.             It be.IND good if        you go.IND         c. Es wäre     gut,   wenn du   gehen würdest.             It  be.SUBJ good if        you go      will.SUBJ The focus of this talk will be on the rules of use of these sentences against a given conversational background and how they can be derived from a semantics for „wenn“/“dass“ and IND/SUBJ under the assumption that „gut“ is a ‚regular‘ gradable adjective – with a twist: It takes a world argument in its subject position....
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Talk by Doreen Georgi, Monday 25th 4-6 pm

By Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are very happy to announce the next talk of this semester’s Syntax Colloquium, which will take place on Monday, November 25, 4 – 6 pm in IG 4.301. Doreen Georgi (Potsdam) will talk about „On two types of resumption in Igbo and the nature of islands“. Abstract: We provide novel data from Igbo (Benue-Kwa, Nigeria) which show that the languages has two types of resumptive pronouns (RPs) in A-dependencies: RPs that occur at the bottom of dependencies that involve (a) base-generation (topicalization) and (b) movement (wh/focus fronting). While it has been argued before that different kinds of RPs can co-exist in a language (a.o. Borer 1984, Aoun et al. 2001, Bianchi 2004, Sichel 2014), the evidence is usually based on subtle reconstruction effects in relative clauses. Igbo exhibits movement RPs in wh/fronting and provides additional evidence e.g. from morpho-phonological cyclicity effects. The use of RPs in movement dependencies is restricted to just a few contexts. We argue that these RPs surface in order to fulfill PF-requirements (realization of oblique case...
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