Kategorie: Talks

We are happy to announce a talk by Camila Antônio Barros (Berlin) and Vinicius Macuch-Silva (Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk 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: October 23, 2025 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: Time commitment: ways gesture can be placed in time Abstract:  In this talk, we discuss different types of synchrony between gesture and speech, an issue that has been at the center of work on gesture-speech coordination. Based on McNeill (1992), we present an empirical investigation of how gesture and speech can be synchronized at the phonological, semantic, and pragmatic levels, drawing on a corpus study as well as on an experimental study. In the corpus study, we investigate the overlap between gesture and speech in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, looking at representationality and the synchrony of gesture relative to phonological anchors. The results show that the overlap between a word and a stroke...

We are happy to announce a talk by Lennart Fritzsche (Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk 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 24, 2025 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: Modified head nods as a window into gradable assertion Abstract:  An interlocutor who asserts a proposition p takes on responsibility for its truth (Krifka, 2014; Viebahn, 2021). Commitment-based approaches to assertion propose that such commitments can be gradable (Marsili, 2014; Greenberg & Wolf, 2018). For example, intensified response particles such as Hebrew legamrey! ('absolutely!') express maximal commitment, whereas German voll! (lit. 'full!') conveys high but non-maximal commitment (Gotzner, 2022). Yet, experimental evidence for gradable commitment in assertions remains scarce. In this talk, I present experimental data from visual communication indicating that intensified head nods systematically influence perceived speaker commitment. Building on Greenberg and Wolf’s (2018) gradable analysis of the ASSERT operator, I outline a preliminary analysis accommodating visual...

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....

We are happy to announce a talk by Stephanie Solt (ZAS) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk 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 10, 2025 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: Three classes of polarity (in)sensitive degree modifiers (joint work with Andreea Nicolae) Abstract:  Among degree modifiers that compose with relative gradable adjectives, we observe three patterns of polarity sensitivity. Modifiers such as fairly and pretty are positive polarity items; those such as (all) that are negative polarity items; and those such as very are acceptable in both positive and negative contexts. (1)  Aliona is / *isn’t fairly tall. (2)  Bona *isn’t / is (all) that tall. (3)  Clea is / isn’t fairly tall. These patterns can be observed in a range of typologically related and unrelated languages. Items such as fairly and (all) that can be classified as attenuating polarity items (Israel 1996), a broad class that is not well accounted for...