Talk by Fabian Heck (Leipzig University) in the Syntax Colloquium

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Fabian Heck (Leipzig University) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place in person. Room IG 4.301 Date: January 16 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: Empty expletives and the EPP Abstract: Since its introduction in Chomsky (1981), the EPP has remained a mistery. In particular, there is no consensus on what the EPP could derive from, or why it should exist (but cf. Haider 2010 for an interesting approach). Within the last 20 years, various proposals have been made that try to connect the EPP to some phonological property. In particular, there is a class of approaches claiming that the EPP requires that SpecT be filled by some *phonologically overt* category (e.g. Holmberg 2000, Bobaljik 2002, Landau 2007, Richards 2016, McFadden & Sundharesan 2018). Such a view appears to be incompatible with the very concept of an empty expletive. In my talk, I argue that there are reasons to assume that empty expletives exist. If...
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Talk by Maximilian Berthold (Frankfurt)

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Maximilian Berthold (Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title:  Nominal aktionsarten: a formal account Date: January 12 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: During my last presentation, I proposed that nouns separate into two classes: stative nouns (person, child) and eventive nouns (murderer, dancer). At the center of the theory is the hypothesis that eventive nouns are characterized by having an event argument that can be anaphoric to salient events in the context. This allows us to account for previously unexplained cases in the literature on the temporal interpretation of nominals. The aim of the present talk is to (i) bring together the theory on eventive nouns with a theory on aktionsarten, (ii) propose a formal analysis for the semantics of each aktionsart, and (iii) test the predictions with respect to their temporal interpretations....
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Talk by Wolf Peter Klein (Universität Würzburg)

by Melanie Hobich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce the next talk in the Historical Linguistics Colloquium by Wolf Peter Klein (Universität Würzburg).  The talk will be in German. Title: Leitfäden für geschlechtergerechte Sprache als Beispiel für ambitionierte Sprachbetrachtung. Eine linguistische Einordnung Date: Wednesday, 11.1.2023 Time: 16-18 Location: in person on campus IG 0.457   abstract: Seit einigen Jahren entstehen zunehmend metasprachliche Texte, die in institutionellen Kontexten sog. "geschlechtergerechte" (o.ä.) Sprachformen präsentieren und explizit zum Gegenstand öffentlicher Sprachreflexion machen. Mit diesen Texten wird unter Leitbegriffen wie "Leitfaden" oder "Handreichung" der Sprachgebrauch der jeweiligen Institution mehr oder weniger offensichtlich in eine bestimmte Richtung gelenkt. Solche Texte gibt es oft an Universitäten, aber auch in kommerziellen Unternehmen sowie in regionalen wie überregionalen Verwaltungskontexten. Im Vortrag wird ein grober Überblick zum Inhalt und zur Stoßrichtung diese Texte und ihrem spezifischen Zugriff auf Sprache angestrebt. Dabei wird auch danach zu fragen sein, wie ihr Status im gegenwärtigen gesellschaftlichen Bewusstsein näher bestimmt werden kann, ob es historische Vorläufer gibt und welche Konsequenzen sich aus ihnen...
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Talk by Daniel Aremu (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Daniel Aremu (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place in person. Room IG 4.301 Date: January 09 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: Association with Focus Sensitive Particle only in Kasem and Kusaal Abstract: The syntactic properties and distribution of Focus Sensitive Particles (FSPs) (alternative-sensitive particles, à la Hartmann & Zimmermann 2008) like only, also, even, too, almost, etc., have been a cross-linguistic conundrum for some decades. Although two approaches/analysis have been muted: adnominal analysis (the adjunction of the FSP to the focused DP) (Ross & Cooper 1979), and adverbial analysis (adjunction to the Extebded Verbal Projections (EVPs)) (Jackendoff 1972; Jacobs 1983; Büring & Hartmann 2001; Mursell 2020), the choice of analysis is not an easy one to make. In fact, languages which seems to show an adnominal positionon the surface, have been argued to involve an EVPs adjunction (eg. German, Büring& Hartmann 2001; Mursell 2020) (cf. König 1991). Even what seems to be a clear dichotomy in...
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Talk by Ruby Sleeman (Crete University) and Nicolas Lamoure (Goethe Universität), Tuesday December 20, 2022

by Melanie Hobich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce the next talk in the Historical Linguistics Colloquium by Ruby Sleeman (University of Crete) and Nicolas Lamoure (GU).  Title: Aller is not an intensifier but defines the domain of the superlative Date: Tuesday, December 20, 2022 Time: 14-16 Location: in person on campus IG 2.301 Abstract: In this paper we claim that Dutch and German aller (allerbeste, ‘the best of all’) is not an intensifying prefix or an excessive as is commonly claimed in the literature (e.g. Kiefer 1998: 277, Van der Wouden 2020) but rather the universal quantifier that attaches to the left of superlatives, defining the relevant domain in which the superlative should be interpreted (‘the best of all’), yielding what we would like to call a domain defining superlative compound (DDSC).  More specifically, we argue that aller is an argument of the superlative, and that it is an overt expression of Heim’s (1999) ‘domain argument’ or the comparison class C....
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