Talk by Stefan Baumann (IfL Phonetik, University of Cologne)

by Tina Bögel Comment Closed
We are happy to announce the next talk in the Phonology Colloquium by Stefan Baumann (IfL Phonetik, University of Cologne). Title: Are highlighted words always informative? On the complex relationship between prosodic prominence and meaning Date: Wednesday, 11.05.2022 Time: 16-18 Location: in person on campus IG 4.301 (in addition, we will stream the talk via Zoom, see below) Abstract: When speakers communicate with each other, relevant parts of an utterance may either be actively highlighted through prosodic and syntactic means, or they are informative in themselves, such as novel or important discourse topics and uncommon words. As a result of both prosodic and syntactic highlighting and semantic-pragmatic informativeness, listeners perceive certain elements of an utterance as more or less prominent. The talk will examine the basic assumption that there is a direct correspondence between the two levels, such that (prosodically) highlighted elements should at the same time be more informative, and vice versa. This relationship has been shown to be much more complex, however, given the...
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Talk by Imke Driemel (Humboldt University Berlin)

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Imke Driemel (Humboldt University Berlin) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title:Implicit arguments and their morpho-syntactic effects Date: May 9 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: Implicit arguments are covert elements whose syntactic representations questioned in some way or another (Bhatt and Pancheva 2017). While much of the literature of implicit arguments is focused on thematic arguments such as PRO, pro, or the agent of passives, this talk will present two case studies on implicit non-thematic arguments: i) the perspectival center of the come/go alternation in the Northwest Caucasian language Adyghe, and ii) the speaker/hearer representation in allocutive marking languages of East Asia and South America. For i), it will be shown that the licensing of the perspectival center matches the language's strategy to signal PCC effects. For ii), we will investigate an interaction of gender and honorific marking which runs parallel to DOM effects. Not only will the case...
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Talk by Nadine Bade (University of Potsdam)

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Nadine Bade (University of Potsdam) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: Word learning with visual animations as a window into the Triggering Problem — introducing a new paradigm Date: May 5 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: In this talk, I will discuss a new methodology using a word learning task with visual animations to approach the triggering problem for presuppositions, which is the long standing theoretical issue of predicting which entailments of natural language expressions end up presupposed. Recent literature discusses the need of an algorithm do determine what parts of meanings become presuppositions, that is an explicit rule that predicts a trivalent output (T,F, #) of a bivalent input (T, F) (Abrusán, 2011; Schlenker, 2021). Earlier arguments involving iconic presupposition triggers suggest that presuppositions are generated productively from iconic expressions, which could not encode the presupposition conventionally (Schlenker, 2019; Tieu et al., 2019; Schlenker, 2021). We conducted two pilot experiments using a word learning task with a change...
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Talk by Kat Barnes (GU Frankfurt)

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Kat Barnes (GU Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: Subjectivity in iconicity: Ideophones and predicates of personal taste Date: April 28 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: The perception of iconicity appears to be influenced by multiple factors including social and cultural conventions (cf. Dingemanse 2011), language experience (cf. Occhino et al. 2017; Sehyr & Emmorey 2019), and mostly notably speaker judgement. Kawahara (2020) noted the subjective nature of ideophones in Japanese and this also appears to be the case in German, where contradicting an ideophone appears to result in faultless disagreement as in (1). (1) a. Peter läuft die Treppe holterdiepolter herunter.           Peter runs the stairs IDEO down           'Peter is running helterskelter down the stairs.'     b. Naja, er läuft die Treppe nicht holterdiepolter herunter. Er läuft sie eher rumpeldipumpel runter.         INT he runs the stairs not IDEO down he runs them rather IDEO...
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Talk by Cécile Meier (GU Frankfurt)

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Cécile Meier (GU Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: Arbitrary mapping and object frequency: On cars and airplanes  Date: April 21 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: Usually, the meaning-form relation of count nouns is thought to be arbitrary. This paper argues that object frequency in image data sets correlate with the type of reading of count nouns (taxonomic reading and specimen referring reading). If an object is rare in image data sets it is accessible to a taxonomic reading and an atomic kind reading derived from that reading. If an object is frequent in image data sets (and the objects are not similar to each other) a taxonomic reading is not available. If object frequency is relevant for visual perception and its reflex in semantic memory is relevant for the range of semantic types of count nouns then the semantic type (a formal linguistic feature) must be iconic....
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