Talk by Eva Zimmermann (U Leipzig)

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
Dear colleagues, we are very happy to announce the next talk in our phonology colloquium this term. Eva Zimmermann (U Leipzig) will talk about "Gradient Symbolic Representations and the Typology of Phonological Exceptions". The talk will take place online. Title: Gradient Symbolic Representations and the Typology of Phonological Exceptions Time: 02. December 2020, 4 pm ct Place: Zoom Abstract below: Gradient Symbolic Representations and the Typology of Phonological Exceptions The assumption of Gradient Symbolic Representations that phonological elements can have different degrees of activity (Smolensky and Goldrick, 2016; Rosen, 2016; Zimmermann, 2018, 2019) allows a unified explanation for the typology of phonological exceptions. Exceptional (non)triggers and (non)undergoers of otherwise regular phonological processes are predicted from gradient constraint violations: The activation of a phonological element in an underlying morpheme representation determines 1) how much the element is preserved by faithfulness constraints and 2) how much it is visible for markedness constraints. I argue that this simple mechanism predicts the attested typology of phonological exceptions and that the predictions made...
Read More

Talk by Nicole Gotzner (ZAS)

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Nicole Gotzner (ZAS) at the Semantics Colloquium. Please note that the talk will already begin at 3 pm sharp. Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday shortly before the talk starts. Title: The use and interpretation of gradable adjectives Date:December 3 Time: 3 pm - 5 pm st Abstract: The use and interpretation of gradable adjectives Gradable adjectives like tall are well studied in semantics (e.g., Kennedy, 2007) but the pragmatic inferences associated with such adjectives remain underexplored. The present talk targets the role of different semantic and contextual factors in the use and interpretation of bare and negated adjectives.  In the first part, I will demonstrate an interplay between the properties of the measurement scale underlying the semantics of adjectives and their associated implicatures (Gotzner, Solt & Benz, 2018a,b; Leffel, Cremers, Gotzner, & Romoli, 2019). Then, I present a novel experimental paradigm (Gotzner & Kiziltan, to appear) indicating that participants use distinct portions of a scale...
Read More

Talk by Fenna Bergsma (Frankfurt)

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are very happy to announce the next talk in our syntax colloquium this term. Fenna Bergsma will talk about "A typology of case competition in headless relatives". The talk will take place online, please see the information below on how to participate. Please not the change from our usual time! Title: A typology of case competition in headless relatives Time : 30.11.2020, 2 pm Place: Zoom (If you are not a regular member of the syntax colloquium and if you would like to listen to this talk, please contact Katharina Hartmann: k.hartmann@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de. You will be sent a link / ID to Zoom.) Please see below for the abstract. You are all, as always, cordially invited! ============================ A typology of case competition in headless relatives   In case competition in headless relatives two aspects play a role. The first one is which case wins the case competition. It is a crosslinguistically stable fact that this is determined by the case scale in (1). A case more to the right on...
Read More

Talk by Vesela Simeonova (University of Tübingen)

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Vesela Simeonova (University of Tübingen) at the Semantics Colloquium. Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday at 4 pm. Title: The logophoric side of reportative evidentials Date: November 26 Time: 4 pm - 6 pm Abstract: Evidentiality and logophoricity have been known to be in a typological complementary distribution (Aikhenvald, A. 2004. Evidentiality. OUP). The explanation defended by this talk is that they contain the same element - a pronoun referring to an attitude holder - realized differently: overt in logophoric languages, covert in evidential ones. I present novel data on evidentiality, which demonstrate striking parallels between reportative evidentials and logophors as well as drastic differences between reportative and direct evidentials. The formal account is couched within decompositional semantics, with a new syntax to host the proposed evidential argument structure....
Read More

Talk by Frank Sode (GU)

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Frank Sode (GU) at the Semantics Colloquium. Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday at 4 pm. Title: A Unified Semantics for Hidden and Complement Fulfilling Conditionals in Desire reports Date: November 19 Time: 4 pm - 6 pm Abstract: The topic of this talk is the semantics of desire reports, as illustrated by the examples in (1). (1) a. I want you to be here.       b. I wish you were here.       c. I would be glad if you were here.       d. I'm glad that you are here. The focus will be on the interpretation of the sentences in (1) at the syntax-semantics interface. Heim (1992) argues that sentences like (1-a) and (1-b) hide a conditional on some level of semantic interpretation. Williams (1974) has argued that the "if"-clauses in examples like (1-c) is "complement fulfilling". Typically, predicates that license complement fulfilling conditionals are classified as factive when they combine with a "that"-clause, as in (1-d). I will argue...
Read More