Talk by Klaus von Heusinger (Cologne)

By Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
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

By Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
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)

By Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
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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Talk by Daniel Aremu (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium

By Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Daniel Aremu (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place in person. Room IG 4.301 Date: January 09 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: Association with Focus Sensitive Particle only in Kasem and Kusaal Abstract: The syntactic properties and distribution of Focus Sensitive Particles (FSPs) (alternative-sensitive particles, à la Hartmann & Zimmermann 2008) like only, also, even, too, almost, etc., have been a cross-linguistic conundrum for some decades. Although two approaches/analysis have been muted: adnominal analysis (the adjunction of the FSP to the focused DP) (Ross & Cooper 1979), and adverbial analysis (adjunction to the Extebded Verbal Projections (EVPs)) (Jackendoff 1972; Jacobs 1983; Büring & Hartmann 2001; Mursell 2020), the choice of analysis is not an easy one to make. In fact, languages which seems to show an adnominal positionon the surface, have been argued to involve an EVPs adjunction (eg. German, Büring& Hartmann 2001; Mursell 2020) (cf. König 1991). Even what seems to be a clear dichotomy in...
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