Talk by Philipp Weisser (University of Potsdam)

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Philipp Weisser (University of Potsdam) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: The Limits of Umlaut in Sinhala: Matching domains across the syntax, morphology, and phonology (joint work with Paula Fenger, Leipzig University) Date: May 16 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: In this talk we study the patterns of verbal umlaut in the Indo-Aryan language Sinhala (spoken in Sri Lanka), which seems to be constrained by an intricate combination of (i) lexical, (ii) morphosyntactic, and (iii) phonological factors. We study this phenomenon and show that it can be used as a window into the morphological makeup of complex words. In particular, we defend  the following claims: 1. Contrary to some claims in the literature (see e.g. Garland 2005), we argue that the limits of umlaut show that Sinhala verb morphology is, underlyingly, concatenative and in order to describe where umlaut appears and where it doesn’t, we need to refer to the notion of the morpheme. 2....
Read More

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...
Read More

Phonology Colloquium 26.01.22 Fabian Schubö (U Stuttgart) „Givenness and stress rejection“

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce the next talk in the phonology colloquium by Fabian Schubö (U Stuttgart). Abstract below. The talk will take place online. However, we will have the hybrid kit working in the seminar room as well. If you are registered in Olat you'll find the Zoom link there. If you want to participate via zoom, please register via email to Alina Gregori: gregori@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de Title: Givenness and stress rejection Date: January 26, 2022 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Place: Online Zoom / IG 4.301 (hybrid setting) Everybody is cordially invited! Abstract: This paper addresses the impact of givenness on phrasal stress assignment in German. It has been observed for English that nuclear stress is rejected on given elements that are part of the focused material if another focused word is available to bear nuclear stress (e.g., Ladd 1996). It is  shown that the same effect applies to German. There are various proposals of constraints that militate against prosodic prominence on given elements. The present...
Read More

Phonology Colloquium – 19.01.22 Pia Bergmann (Jena) „The prosody of discourse markers“

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce the next talk in the Phonology Colloquium by Pia Bergmann (U Jena). Abstract below. The talk will take place online. However, we will have the hybrid kit working in the seminar room as well. If you are registered in Olat you'll find the Zoom link there. If you want to participate via zoom, please register via email to Alina Gregori: gregori@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de Title: The prosody of discourse markers – Prosodic prominence on the level of discourse Date: January 19, 2022 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Place: Online Zoom / IG 4.301 (hybrid setting) Everybody is coridially invited! Abstract: The prosody of discourse markers – Prosodic prominence on the level of discourse Pia Bergmann (pia.bergmann@uni.jena.de) The talk deals with the prosody of so-called discourse markers in contemporary German, which are often placed in the context of grammaticalization or pragmaticalization processes (cf. Auer & Günthner 2005). While on the one hand it is assumed that grammaticalization processes are or at least can be accompanied by phonetic...
Read More

Phonology Colloquium – Ludger Paschen, 24.11.21, 16-18, on campus!

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
Dear all, We are happy to announce the next talk in the phonology colloquium by Ludger Paschen (Leibnitz ZAS, Berlin & Potsdam University) Title: Final Lengthening – a universal phenomenon? Insights from 25 languages Date: November 24, 2021 Time: 16-18 ct Location: IG 4.301 Abstract: Final Lengthening – a universal phenomenon? Insights from 25 languages. Lengthening of segments in the vicinity of prosodic boundaries is often considered a universal phonetic process (Fletcher 2010). However, language-specific variation with respect to the scope and extent of lengthening is also attested, especially in languages that have a phonological vowel length contrast (Hyman 2009, Nakai et al. 2009). In this talk I will present results from a cross-linguistic study investigating final lengthening of vowels in 25 languages from a worldwide sample. The data are taken from DoReCo, a corpus containing annotated and time-aligned recordings from language documentation projects (Seifart et al. 2021). Results indicate that while final lengthening is widespread, it is not without exceptions, and the presence of phonological quantity may indeed...
Read More