Talks by Sebastian Walter (Wuppertal) and Cécile Meier (Frankfurt)

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce two talks by Sebastian Walter (Wuppertal) and Cécile Meier (Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Date: June 22, 2023 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct   Sebastian Walter Title: Are there salience differences between character and observer viewpoint gestures? Abstract: The present study investigates salience differences between character viewpoint gestures (CVGs) and observer viewpoint gestures (OVGs). Since co-speech gestures usually contribute not-at-issue meaning by default (cf. Ebert et al., 2020) and are thus backgrounded, it was hypothesized that there is no salience difference between CVGs and OVGs. A forced-choice study was conducted to investigate this hypothesis. The results show that there is no significant difference between CVGs and OVGs. Although further research is needed to fully clarify this matter, it is tentatively concluded that there is no difference in salience between the two gesture types. Therefore, the results of previous studies that found an overall preference for CVGs compared to OVGs (Hinterwimmer et al., 2021)...
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Talk by  Johannes Mursell and Anke Himmelreich (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by  Johannes Mursell and Anke Himmelreich (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place in person. Room IG 4.301 Date: June 19, 2023 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: Imperfective marking in Sisaali and Gurene Abstract: In this talk we present patterns of imperfective marking in two Mabia languages: Gurene and Sisaali. In both languages, the morphology of the imperfective depends on its interaction with movement. The generalization is that the imperfective marker takes on a special form if material inside the VP (objects or adverbials) undergoes A-bar movement (wh-movement or focus movement) to the sentence-initial position. If there is no A-bar movement or if the subject undergoes A-bar movement, the default imperfective marker is chosen. Additionally, in the Tumulung dialect of Sisaali, the form depends on the linearly preceding element: A pronominal subject or a focus marker are followed by a special kind of imperfective marker, while non-pronominal subjects trigger the default marker. In...
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Talk by  Daniel Hole (Universität Stuttgart) in the Syntax Colloquium

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by  Daniel Hole (Universität Stuttgart) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place in person. Room IG 4.301 Date: June 12, 2023 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: Towards explaining clause structure Abstract: This talk sets out to explain the overall structure of clauses in natural language. In the syntactically lowest portion of clauses, the event is built up. On top of that follow aspectual and modal specifications, closed off by deictic tense. Then follow speaker/hearer-dependent categories. A hierarchy of indexical categories is determined according to the level in the syntactic structure from which on upwards an indexical category is available for interpretation. This hierarchy is then reduced to generalizations about actual language use in dialogue. In later portions of the article, anaphoric context dependence is integrated into the picture. It is a characteristic of the work reported on here to bring together strands of research from generative syntax and formal semantics that do not usually...
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Talk by Jan Köpping (Bochum)

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Jan Köpping (Bochum) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: (Non-)Existence entailments of predicates (joined work with Dolf Rami) Date: June 15, 2023 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: Based on systematic observations of entailments in natural language, we argue for the distinction of three different types of predicates: existence entailing, (existence) neutral, and nonexistence entailing predicates. Existence entailing predicates are those predicates that can only truthfully apply to existent entities, while nonexistence entailing predicates can only truthfully apply to nonexistent objects. Existence neutral predicates truthfully apply to both kinds of entities, thus do not give rise to (non-)existence entailments. We provide linguistic tests as well as examples to motivate this distinction.  In order to do so, we need to argue for a certain perspective e.g. on the alleged truth of sentences featuring in fiction. Then, we develop a multi-domain predicate logic inspired by certain versions of free logics in order...
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