Category: Talks

We are happy to announce a talk by Carolin Reinert (Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: The compositionality of adjective noun constructions – Investigating the comparison property of skillful-type adjectives Date: June 23 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: In the last talk I gave in the colloquium, I addressed the core assumption of my thesis, namely that skillful-type adjectives - apart from being dependent on a comparison class, which makes them similar to tall-type adjectives - are dependent on an additional parameter, a comparison property. Given a value for these parameters, skillful-type adjectives turn out to be complex predicates after all, not modifiers, and therefore are able to combine with the noun via Intersection. I argued for a “context dependence only” approach to adjective denotations. In this talk, I will present the next chapter of my thesis. I will address further issues in connection with the comparison property of skillful-type adjectives and will argue that the comparison property is present as an actual argument to the adjective, not as...

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,...

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...