Category: Semantics

We are happy to announce a talk by Corien Bary and Harriet Yates (Nijmegen) 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: May 22, 2025 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: fEMG as a window into conversational commitments: validating the method and further applications (joint work with Bob van Tiel and Peter de Swart) Abstract:  This presentation explores the assignment of commitments in conversation. While theoretical work has explored the range of commitment-bearing acts, key questions remain unresolved, such as the role of addressees, the gradability of commitment, and the effect of evidentials. To empirically address these questions, we propose facial electromyography (fEMG) as a novel method in this field, to detect implicit affective reactions to commitment violations. We present our proof-of-method study which demonstrates that commitment violations elicit strong ‘frowning’ corrugator muscle activation (associated with negative affect). In an ongoing follow-up study we apply...

We are happy to announce a talk by Sebastian Walter (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: May 15, 2025 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: Adding to the expressive typology: Emblematic gestures as visual expressives (joint work with Cornelia Ebert) Abstract:  Emblematic gestures are gestures with a conventionalized form and meaning within a linguistic community. For example, if a speaker in the German-speaking community taps their index finger on their temple, it indicates that they believe the person being referred to is crazy (CRAZY-gesture, henceforth). These gestures differ significantly from iconic gestures, which are typically unconventionalized and depict specific aspects of their referent. While recent work in gesture semantics has largely focused on iconic gestures and their contribution to the meaning of the utterance they co-occur with (e.g., Ebert & Ebert, 2014; Schlenker, 2018), emblems have received comparatively little attention (but see Esipova, 2019)....

We are happy to announce a talk by Karen De Clercq (LLF/Université Paris Cité/CNRS) (work with Guido Vanden Wyngaerd, KU Leuven) 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: May 8, 2025 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: *NEG-NEG: an argument against lexicalism from negation stacking View abstract...

We are happy to announce a talk by Prarthanaa Bharadwaj (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: February 6, 2025 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: Deconstructing Modal Necessity in Kannada Abstract: The study of modality in semantics has long focused on modal flavour (epistemic vs. root modality; Kratzer 1977, 1991) and modal force (possibility vs. necessity; Rullmann et al. 2008). More recent research has explored the previously understudied dimension of modal strength, particularly the distinction between weak and strong readings (Vander Klok and Hohaus 2020; Weingartz and Hohaus 2024). Languages employ diverse strategies to denote modal strength distinctions (von Fintel and Iatridou, 2008). Certain languages (English, German) mark this distinction lexically, while others employ morphological means, such as counterfactual constructions (Greek, French) or specialized derivational suffixes (Javanese). In some cases, this distinction remains unmarked (Afrikaans, Samoan). Kannada presents a novel case where strong...

We are happy to announce a talk by Alexander Turtureanu (Berlin) 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: January 30, 2025 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: Homogeneity from an MRT perspective Abstract: I my PhD dissertation, I develop a psychologistic approach to natural language semantics (MRT), which opens up a novel perspective on some traditional semantic topics and problems. In this talk, I will introduce some basic notions of MRT and describe how they give rise to an understanding of homogeneity that differs structurally from conventional truth-conditional-semantic accounts of this phenomenon: Instead of rooting homogeneity in the “lexical semantics” of definite plurals, I derive its emergence from the more basic question of how different semantic contexts determine the way speakers interpret the application of predicates to sets of individuals. ...