We are happy to announce two talks in the Semantics Colloquium: one by Kurt Erbach (Frankfurt/Saarbrücken), and another by Carolin Reinert (Frankfurt) and Carla Spellerberg (Amherst).
The talks will take place on campus in IG 4.301.
If you wish to participate virtually via Zoom, please contact Lennart Fritzsche for the link.
Date: July 17, 2025
Time: 4 pm – 7 pm c.t.
Kurt Erbach (Frankfurt/Saarbrücken)
Title: Singular gestures and plural individuals
Abstract:
As it stands, gesture semantics (e.g. Ebert 2024, i.a.) assumes a similarity predicate between an utterance and a co-speech gesture—e.g. if a round shape is gestured while simultaneously uttering window, then the similarity predicate is interpreted as the window being similar to the gesture—i.e. that both are round, and the roundness is not-at-issue content. What has not yet been systematically examined is the use of singular co-speech gestures with plural individuals, namely what interpretations the similarity predicate might give rise to in such an utterance, for example whether collective or distributive predication is acceptable in such a context. Because co-speech gestures are assumed to introduce not-at-issue content, we cannot rule out the possibility of a distributive reading even if the gestured individual is atomic. Therefore, a battery of tests is necessary to understand the contribution of meaning in such contexts.
Carolin Reinert (Frankfurt) and Carla Spellerberg (Amherst)
Title: Understanding non-default readings of adjective noun constructions
Abstract:
In this talk, we would like to discuss non-default readings of adjective noun constructions involving skillful type adjectives. Certain AN constructions have a default interpretation; for instance the default interpretation of skillful teacher can be paraphrased as ‘teacher that is skillful at teaching’. However, in a context where a teacher is juggling on a a stage during a school festival, someone who utters Wow, this is a skillful teacher! does not refer to the teacher’s teaching skills, but to his juggling skills. While the fact that such contextual interpretations of these AN constructions emerge is not new (Beesley 1983), via corpus research we observed that there seems to be a more fine-grained pattern. Specifically, what we observe is that some of the contextually emerging relevant properties are closer connected to the noun than in the teacher – juggling example above. For instance, a skillful bartender might be good at connecting people in the bar. We suggest that this can be captured with insights from psychology (Prasada & Dillingham 2006, 2009; Prasada et al. 2013), where so-called k-properties are distinguished from t-properties. We assume that the former are closer connected to the noun than the latter, which however are closer connected to the noun than purely contextually provided properties. We expect these differences to be reflected in the RTs of the respective AN constructions. In the talk, we would like to discuss the experiment design we developed to test this prediction. Feedback is very welcome.