Category: Semantics

We are happy to announce a talk by Jan Köpping (GU Frankfurt) at the Semantics Colloquium. Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday shortly before the talk starts. Title: Transparent Negation in Dynamic Semantics Date: April 29 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: Dynamic semantic systems are designed to capture the truth-conditions of complete sentences as well as certain facts about anaphoricity. The second aspect is described in terms of discourse referents and accessibility: possible antecedents introduce discourse referents which may or may not be accessed by 3rd person pronouns, resulting in an interpretation that lets pronouns covary with their antecedent's contribution and hence, allowing for bound readings even with indefinite antecedents behind the clause boundary. Within these systems, negation usually plays the role of a plug: it blocks the projection of discourse referents within its scope and thus reders them inaccessible to subsequent anaphoric elements. But, as is well known, this leads to some predictions that are not bourne out:...

We are happy to announce a talk by Julien Foglietti (GU Frankfurt) at the Semantics Colloquium. Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday shortly before the talk starts. Title: Some consequences of proper names as predicates Date: April 22 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: The literature on proper names is divided between two main analyses: referentialism and predicativism. The first analysis considers that proper names should be treated differently from other referring expressions as they have the property to refer rigidly (Kripke 1980) (i.e. they pick out the same individual across possible worlds). The second analysis takes proper names to be no different from other NPs. It assumes that proper names enter the syntax as property denoting expressions (Geurts 1997, Fara 2015, Matushansky 2008) (e.g. ⟦NPJohn⟧ = λxe. x is called John) and that they get their referential interpretation by combining with covert elements. In my research, I side with the predicative analysis as I believe that it can...

We are happy to announce a talk by Patrick Grosz (University of Oslo) at the Semantics Colloquium. Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday shortly before the talk starts. Title: What face emojis can teach us about language Date: February 18 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: Face emojis are a means to integrate features of multimodal communication into written digital communication (exemplified for the happy face in the written message "is there coffee? 😀"). They appear to be digital counterparts of facial expressions, intonation in speech, or natural language expressions such as the interjections "wow", "ugh", and "yuck". Based on a semantic analysis of text-accompanying face emojis, this talk raises the question of what they can teach us about the accompanying text itself. In other words: what can we learn about language (as the traditional object of study in linguistics) from looking at face emojis? A particular focus in this talk will be on the anaphoricity of face emojis...

We are happy to announce a talk by Sebastian Walter (GU) at the Semantics Colloquium. Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday shortly before the talk starts. Title: Asymmetric mood marking in German conditionals Date: February 11 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: Research on conditionals has focused on conditionals with so-called symmetric mood marking (cf. (1)), meaning that they are marked either with indicative mood or subjunctive mood in the antecedent as well as in the consequent. (1) a. Wenn Emma am Marathon teilgenommen hat (ind), hat (ind) sie gewonnen.           ‘If Emma participated in the marathon, she won.’      b. Wenn Birgit bei dem neuen Italiener essen gewesen wäre (subj), hätte (subj) sie sich eine Pizza bestellt.          ‘If Birgit had been at the new Italian restaurant, she would have ordered a pizza.’ However, in German there are also conditionals with so-called asymmetric mood marking, as in (2): (2) a. Wenn Julian sich einen Hund kauft (ind), würde (subj) Markus...

We are happy to announce a talk by Roumyana Pancheva (USC) at the Semantics Colloquium. Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday shortly before the talk starts. Title:Temporal reference without tense Date: February 4 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: Some languages do not have to mark tense explicitly: they either do not have overt tense morphemes or the overt tense morphemes are optional. The question arises: is tense universal? The answer, within formal semantics, has so far been "yes". The formally explicit semantic analyses that have been proposed for languages without obligatory overt tense morphemes all posit tense in one form or another. We aim to develop a different type of account altogether that does not rely on tense to derive temporal reference. We propose that evaluation time shift, a mechanism independently attested in the narrative present in languages with tense, can be more widely used for encoding temporal meaning in the absence of tense. We illustrate this account...