Talk by Nancy Kula (U Essex), Wednesday 30, 16-18

We are happy to announce the next talk in the Phonology Colloquium, which will take place on Wednesday, January 30, 4 – 6 pm in IG 4.301. You are all cordially invited. On the interaction of tone and intonation in some Eastern Bantu Languages Nancy C. Kula, University of Essex This talk looks at the implementation and effects of boundary intonational tones in different contexts in four Eastern Bantu languages: Bemba, Shingazidja, Chichewa, and Tumbuka. The goal is to look at the contrast in intonational tone implementation in local and global contexts. Global intonational effects target whole constituents and are good diagnostics for identifying larger prosodic constituents like maximal intonation phrases. Local intonational effects target smaller constituents – minimal and intermediate intonation phrases – embedded within maximal intonation phrases. A key focus will be to establish whether we can identify any emerging areal (Eastern Bantu) features in intonation patterns and specifically whether the punctual versus non-punctual implementation of boundary tones correlate to specific discourse...
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Talk by Markus Bader, Yvonne Portele, and Alice Schäfer, Tuesday 29th, 2-4 pm

We are very happy to announce the next talk in the Recent Trends in Linguistic Research Colloquium, which will take place on Tuesday, January 29, 2 – 4 pm in IG 0.251. Markus Bader, Yvonne Portele and Alice Schäfer will present "From word order to interpretation -- effects of referential form on language production and comprehension". Abstract: Our talk gives an overview of our recent research concerning the production and interpretation of different referential expressions. The main focus lies on the distinction between personal pronouns on the one hand and demonstrative and d-pronouns (dieser/der) on the other hand. With regard to sentence production, we show that the likelihood and acceptability of sentences with non-canonical word order does depend not only on the discourse status of the various referents (e.g., given versus new) but also on the referential form that is used to refer to them. In particular, under identical discourse conditions, objects are more easily preposed when they are realized as d-pronouns. With regard...
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Talk by Horst Lohnstein on January 24th, 4-6 pm

Horst Lohnstein will give a talk in the Semantics Colloqium on January 24th, 4-6 pm in IG 4.301. You are cordially invited! Title: (In-)Finitheit und die Konsequenzen Abstract: Finitheit ist eine grammatische Kategorie, die sich durch die Subkategorien Tempus, Modus und Agr konstituiert. Infinitheit weist diese Subkategorien nicht auf. Entsprechend werden infinite bzw. semi-finite (Imperative) Konstruktionen anders interpretiert als finite. In dem Vortrag geht es um die Charakterisierung selbstständiger Satztypen auf syntaktischer und semantischer Ebene und die entsprechenden flexionsmorphologischen Markierungen. Das Zusammenspiel der verschiedenen Komponenten führt zu einer Theorie der Verbzweit-Stellung und der linken Satzperipherie. Unter evolutionärer Perspektive deuten sich verschiedene Konsequenzen für die Entwicklung der Menschheit an....
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