Talk by Maya Cortez (Graz University) in the Phonology Colloquium

We are happy to announce the next talk in the Phonology Colloquium by Maya Cortez (Graz University) Title: Intonating Pragmatically Diverse Rising Declaratives. Evidence from a German Production Experiment Date: Wednesday, 28.10.2026 Time: 16:30-18:00 (note: we will start 15 min later than usual) Location: on ZOOM; possibility to meet in the seminar room (IG 4.301) If you are registered in Olat you'll find the Zoom link there. If you want to participate via Zoom and do not have the link yet, please send an email to: gregori@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de...
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Corinna Langer und Anna Pressler verteidigen erfolgreich ihre Dissertationen

Am 26.06.2026 wurden zwei Dissertationen aus dem Phonologie-Lehrstuhl erfolgreich verteidigt. Corinna Langer verteidigte ihre Thesis mit dem Titel Focus and Prosody in Hungarian - investigating syntactically unmarked focus am Morgen und Anna Pressler verteidigte ihre Thesis zu Prosodic factors at the phrase level: the positioning of French adjectives am Nachmittag. Wir gratulieren beiden herzlich zu diesem Erfolg! Corinna Langers Dissertation untersuchte zwei Fälle von Fokusmarkierung im Ungarischen in den keine syntaktische Disambiguierend des Skopus von Fokus möglich ist. Durch eine Kombination von Produktions- und Perzeptionsstudien fand sie heraus, dass Prosodie den Skopus von solchen ungarischen Fokuskonstruktionen disambiguieren kann. Sie diskutiert ihre Ergebnisse im Hinblick auf existierende Syntax-Prosodie Mappings. Anna Presslers Dissertation untersuchte die Positionierung von französischen Adjektiven (prä- oder postnominal), welche keine syntaktische oder semantische Präferenz für eine Position haben. In vier empirischen Studien erforschte sie den Einfluss von den prosodischen Faktoren Relative Länge und Rhythmische Alternation, mit der Erkenntnis, dass diese die Positionierung der Adjektive beeinflussen. Sie schlägt Anforderungen für ein Sprachmodell vor,...
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Talk by Caroline Féry

We are happy to announce a talk by Caroline Féry in the Phonology Colloquium. Room: IG 4.301 Date: Wednesday January 28th Time: 16-18 ct. Title: On Negative Verum Answers Abstract: Höhle (1988, 1992) introduced the notion of Verum Fokus, nowadays often called Polarity Focus, see also (Lohnstein 2012, Goodhue 2018 and many others). The focus is put on the affirmative or negative content of a sentence and is expressed by a nuclear accent on the finite part of the verb (or on Comp), see (1B). (1) A: I asked Hanna what Karl is doing these days and she made the silly claim that he is writing a screenplay. B: Das stimmt. Karl schreibt ein Drehbuch. ‘It is true. Karl is writing a screenplay.’ I am interested in cases such as (2B), also from Höhle (1988), in which the sentence is negated, but the nuclear accent is still on the finite verb. (2) A: I hope Anna finally writes a book. B: Aber Karl sagte mir, sie schreibt nicht an einem Buch. ‘But Karl told me she...
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Talk by Christoph Bracks (GU, Southeast Asia Studies)

We are happy to announce a talk by Christoph Bracks in the Phonology Colloquium. Room: IG 4.301 Date: Wednesday January 14th Time: 16-18 ct. Title: Phonetics, Segmental and Suprasegmental Phonology of Totoli Abstract: This talk presents key aspects of the phonetics, phonology, and prosody of Totoli, an Austronesian language, based on a forthcoming Illustration of the IPA paper to appear in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association (JIPA). As a novelty within the Illustration of the IPA genre, the paper places particular emphasis on prosody. Totoli exhibits several typologically unusual features for the region, including phonemic length contrasts in both vowels and consonants, as well as distinct allophonic realizations of /l/. These include, among other features, compensatory lengthening when in word-final position, which may give rise to potential triple-length contrasts. Furthermore, the prosodic systems of Austronesian languages remain comparatively understudied. Hence, the prosodic features observed in Totoli may offer a useful point of departure for further comparative research toward a more comprehensive understanding...
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