Category: Semantics

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...

We are happy to announce a talk by Nico Löffler (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 3, 2025 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: The Meaning of the Russian Instrumental Case Abstract:  The instrumental case is probably the hardest case of the Russian language to be analysed semantically. Up to approximately 20 distinct uses have been assigned to it. Among them are the agent in passive constructions, a tool used in an action, a timeframe, and a property of an individual. It is this great variation in uses that makes it hard to give a concise formal analysis of the Russian instrumental. In my Bachelor’s thesis, I subsume the uses of the Russian instrumental under two distinct semantic classes and provide a syntactic and semantic analysis of each class. To achieve this, I preclude semantically deviant uses, namely internal arguments, frame-setting adjuncts,...

We are happy to announce a talk by Sotaro Kita (Warwick) 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: June 26, 2025 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: Gesture, metaphor, and spatial language Abstract:  I will discuss how co-speech (i.e., speech-accompanying) gestures relate to language and conceptualisation underlying language.  I will focus on “representational gestures”, which can depict motion, action, and shape or can indicate locations (i.e., “iconic” and “deictic” gestures in McNeill’s 1992 classification). I will provide evidence for the following two points. Various aspects of language shape co-speech gestures. Conversely, the way we produce co-speech gestures can shape language. I will discuss these issues in relation to manner and path in motion event descriptions, clause-linkage types in complex event descriptions, and metaphor. I will conclude that gesture and language are parts of a "conceptualisation engine”, which takes advantage of unique strengths of spatio-motoric...