Author: Anke Himmelreich

We are very happy to announce a guest talk, which will take place on Friday, June 14, 4 – 6 pm in IG 4.301. Hans-Martin Gärtner (HAS-RIL Budapest) „Varieties of Dependent V2 and Verbal Mood: A View from Icelandic“. Abstract: I will discuss varieties of "dependent V2" with "broad" (bDV2) and "narrow" (nDV2) distribution − aka "generalized" and "limited embedded V2" − arising within Icelandic. This pattern is taken to correlate with construals of verbal mood as "dominant" in the former and "non-dominant" in the latter case, where dominance of verbal mood allows disregarding the illocutionary impact of V2. I further show that the variation fits into a model of historical stages with earlier variants "recruiting" verbal mood for clause combining and drift in later stages toward "autonomous" mood, i.e., toward a mood system with enhanced semantico-pragmatic transparency. You are cordially invited!...

We are very happy to announce a guest talk, which will take place on Friday, June 14, 2 – 4 pm in IG 4.301. Viola Schmitt (University of Vienna) and Frank Sode (Goethe University Frankfurt) „An anti-intellectualist treatment of German wissen (‘know’)“. Abstract: German wissen (‘know’) can embed both finite clauses (’wissen-FIN’) as well as infinitives (’wissen-INF ’). Based on novel empirical observations, we argue that wissen-INF cannot be reduced to the standard analysis of wissen-FIN , i.e. that wissen with infinitival complements does not involve a propositional attitude. As cross-linguistic evidence suggests that German wissen is not ambiguous, it follows that wissen-FIN cannot denote a propositional attitude, either. Accordingly, we require a new, uniform meaning for wissen. We derive this meaning by first considering wissen-INF, arguing that it combines semantic properties of ability modals with semantic properties of implicative verbs and enough to-constructions. We then show that these properties can also be used to characterize wissen-FIN , as long as certain non-standard...

We are very happy to announce the next talk in the Semantic Colloquium, which will take place on Thursday, June 13, 4 – 6 pm in IG 4.301. Kai von Fintel (MIT) will present „The "only" connectives“. Abstract: We present work in progress on an understudied phenomenon: the use of exclusives and exceptives as sentential coordinators. Some examples from English:   (1) He is a very nice man, only he talks too much. (2) I would have helped you, except I had a meeting at work.   Constructions of this kind are attested in several languages.   We explore importing results from the study of adversative coordinators such as English *but*, French *mais*, German *aber*. Questions arise about the relation between the occurrences in (1) and (2) and ordinary uses of exclusives and exceptives as in (3) and (4):   (3) Heather only had one shot on goal. (4) Every student passed the test except Gordon.   Among other things, we discuss what happens to the focus-sensitivity and the presuppositional asymmetry of ordinary exclusives...

We are very happy to announce the next talk in the Phonology Colloquium, which will take place on Wednesday, June 12, 4 – 6 pm in IG 4.301. Emilie Destruel (University of Iowa) will present „The pragmatics of French (non-)prototypical clefts: Influence of the type of question on naturalness and interpretation“. Abstract: This paper investigates the interpretative properties of two clefts in French; the well-known c’est-cleft and the under-studied y’a-cleft. A prevalent assumption is that, when they signal narrow-focus, these two clefts differ with respect to exhaustivity; the former specifies a unique referent for the focus variable, but not the latter. Empirical evidence from a forced-choice task suggests that this analysis is going down the right path. Yet, the paper argues for a refined understanding of the conditions of use for these two clefts, positing that c’est- and y’a-clefts do not occur in the exact same narrow-focus context. Rather, their alternation is linked to the type of question asked—a feature absent from past studies. In a nutshell, I argue that c’est-clefts...

We are very happy to announce the next talk in the GK Colloquium, which will take place on Tuesday, June 11, 4 – 6 pm in SH 5.105. Zorica Puškar Gallien (ZAS, Berlin) will present „Disassembling and reassembling pronouns“. Abstract: Looking at personal pronouns in the Slavic family, local-person (1st and 2nd person) can be taken to differ from 3rd person in the following respects: (i) local-person pronouns have a unique form for every person+number combination (ii) 3rd person pronouns have an invariable base, to which affixes for gender and number are added; (iii) these suffixes are the typical affixes found on nouns as well. Moreover, despite lacking overt gender distinctions, local-person pronouns control gender agreement, indicating that (natural) gender must also be a part of their feature inventory. The goal of this talk is to provide a unified model of the form, locus and function of phi-features of pronouns that will account for their morphological distinctions and agreement properties. Following recent proposals that...