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We are very happy to announce the next talk in the Phonology Colloquium, which will take place on Wednesday, February 13, 4 – 6 pm in IG 4.301. Prof. Firmin Ahoua (University Félix Houphouët-Boigny) will present “ACO, The Secret language of the Cama people”. Abstract: Aco is a secret language spoken by the Ébrié (camancan) of Côte d’Ivoire that has never been documented, described or discovered by previous scholars who worked on the language and culture. This language is shared only by a closed circle of initiated speakers. The language is strongly ritualized and sacred and is performed with particular rhythms and songs during specific events. It is claimed to be used for incantations of protection against physical or spiritual enemies, songs for entertainment and also in traditional narratives. The initiated speakers are able to communicate on daily needs in this language as any regular native language. According to oral tradition, this language is assumed to have been created by a family in...

We are very happy to announce the next talk in the GK Colloquium, which will take place on Tuesday, February 12, 5 – 6 pm in IG 3.104. Emine Şahingöz (Goethe University) will present “Ossetic Phrasal Accent - A first Approach”. Abstract: In this talk I will first give a brief introduction to the accentuation rules of Ossetic (described below) and illustrate previous research on the Ossetic accent. Afterwards I will present my methodology and plans for upcoming fieldwork.  The accentuation rules are relatively comprehensible: the stress in Ossetic (resp. the Iron dialect, as in Digor the rules differ), in separate words as well as in syntagmas (resp. phrases), depends on the distribution of strong (a, e, i, o, u) and weak (æ, y) vowels; the first two vowels in a word or word group decide the stressed syllable. If the first vowel is a strong one, it is stressed. But if the first vowel is weak, usually the second syllable is stressed: 1) strong-strong  2) strong-weak  3) weak-strong  4) weak-weak  xábar (‘news’ sg.)  bíræ (‘many’)  xæʒár (‘house’)  fyldǽr (‘more’)  Affected syntagmas are connected and share a single stress, by which a considerable amount of words appear without an independent accent (Abaev 1949: 10 ff.). In the Iron...

We are very happy to announce the next talk in the GK Colloquium, which will take place on Tuesday, February 12, 4 – 5 pm in IG 3.104. Sebastian Bredemann (Goethe University) will present “Phonological agreement”. Abstract: Phonological agreement (PA) is a phenomenon under which agreement is determined by the phonological properties of a noun. Examples are given in (1) and (2) for the language Abuq (Nekitel 1986), where the final segment of the noun determines the agreement marking on adjectives and verbs. The noun almil ‘bird’ in (1) ends on [l] and accordingly the agreement morpheme on the verb and the adjective are realized as [l]. The noun ihiaburuh ‘butterfly’ in (2) has the final consonant [h], and thus the agreement on the verb and the adjective is realized as [h]. The final consonant of the noun can take any form allowed by the phonology in word-final position. Therefore, it must be assumed that noun-final consonants are not the exponents of a...

We are very happy to announce the next talk in the Recent Trends in Language Acquisition Colloquium, which will take place on Tuesday, February 12, 2 – 4 pm in IG 3.301. Tom Fritzsche will present "Data analysis with linear mixed models: A practical example from language acquisition". Abstract: Linear mixed-effects (LME) models have become the standard in analysing psycholinguistic and psychological data. Compared to t-tests and ANOVAs LME models offer numerous advantages but also require additional attention for specifying a model as each can (and needs to) be tailored to the structure (and the amount) of the data. Advantages and challenges will be discussed using a specific data set: Szendrői et al. (2017). The paper along with the code is available online (links below). The purpose of this presentation is to go through the analysis of this study in R and address questions regarding: - model specification - contrast coding - fixed & random components - factors & continuous predictors - model evaluation and selection - limits...

We are happy to announce the next talk in the Phonology Colloquium, which will take place on Wednesday, January 30, 4 – 6 pm in IG 4.301. You are all cordially invited. On the interaction of tone and intonation in some Eastern Bantu Languages Nancy C. Kula, University of Essex This talk looks at the implementation and effects of boundary intonational tones in different contexts in four Eastern Bantu languages: Bemba, Shingazidja, Chichewa, and Tumbuka. The goal is to look at the contrast in intonational tone implementation in local and global contexts. Global intonational effects target whole constituents and are good diagnostics for identifying larger prosodic constituents like maximal intonation phrases. Local intonational effects target smaller constituents – minimal and intermediate intonation phrases – embedded within maximal intonation phrases. A key focus will be to establish whether we can identify any emerging areal (Eastern Bantu) features in intonation patterns and specifically whether the punctual versus non-punctual implementation of boundary tones correlate to specific discourse...