We are happy to announce a talk by Anke Himmelreich (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium.
The talk will take place in person. Room IG 4.301
Date: December 12
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct
Title: Locality in focus marking
Abstract:
In this talk, I present an application of Graf’s (2022) formalization of syntactic dependencies that suggests that (most) syntactic dependencies are based on adjacency, just like dependencies in phonology and morphology. Graf develops a tier-based strictly local language (TSL) for these purposes. The talk will provide an introduction into the complexity issue of language based on the Chomsky Hierarchy and then move on to explain Graf’s TSL. Finally, the talk will apply the formalization to focus data from Likpakpaanl trying to develop a diagnostic for the status of the focus particle. Concretely, I present an argument that the focus particle „le/la“ in Likpakpaanl is a head.