We are very happy to announce the first talk in the Semantic Colloquium, which will take place on Thursday, April 25, 4 – 6 pm in IG 4.301.
Ora Matushansky (Paris/Utrecht) will present „Doing without“.
Abstract:
Caritive PPs (without X) are characterized by their ability to appear without an article in Romance and Germanic, raising the question of the semantic type of their complement, which is likely to be kind-denoting. In addition, caritive PPs systematically introduce the presupposition that the absent entity should have been present at some level of reality. Whereas the latter fact can be handled by assuming that the complement of without is relational, this hypothesis runs into problems given the kind-denotation hypothesized to deal with the lack of the article. I will discuss a way of resolving this conflict and the theories advanced to deal with similar issues.
You are cordially invited!