Talk by Muyi Yang (UConn)

By Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Muyi Yang (UConn) 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: Iffy if: Japanese moshi in conditionals and related constructions Date: January 21 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: Across languages, conditional antecedents can often be marked by elements that signal the speaker's sense of "iffiness" about the antecedent proposition, such as English if (von Fintel and Iatridou 2002), German falls (Hinterwimmer 2014)  and sollte (Sode and Sugawara 2019). This talk concerns Japanese moshi, a marker in conditional antecedents that has been traditionally described as a signal of supposition. I will first investigate the distribution of moshi in various types of conditionals such as factual conditionals and unconditionals, and show that the iffiness expressed by moshi has to do with whether the antecedent proposition is in the common ground. I will propose a presuppositional account of moshi, and further extend the analysis to capture its use...
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Talk by Jeremy Kuhn (CNRS)

By Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Jeremy Kuhn (CNRS) 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: Boundaries in space and time: Iconic biases across modalities Date: January 14 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: In cognition, spatial and temporal boundaries have been theorized to be central to humans' perception of objects and events. In language, a related semantic property has characterized the mass/count and telic/atelic oppositions, which have been argued to be grounded in these non-linguistic conceptual representations. Intriguingly, boundarihood has also been shown to be involved in a motivated mapping in sign language: telic verbs are associated with gestural boundaries. In a series of experiments, we investigate the origin of this mapping bias. We show that non-signing subjects show an iconic bias to associate bounded forms with bounded meanings, and unbounded forms with unbounded meanings. The representations involved are abstract and domain general: the bias is found both for...
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Talk by Ahmad Al-Bitar (GU Frankfurt)

By Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Ahmad Al-Bitar (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: 'Average': A unique modifier Date: December 17 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: The modifier average has interestingly different uses, among which the ‘abstract’ use is the most well-studied. Carlson & Pelletier (2002), Kennedy & Stanley (2009) and Morzycki (2016) provide analyses of the famous example in (1-a). This sentence can be true without there being an individual with the impossible property of having 2.3 children. Hence the naming ‘abstract’. (1) a. The average American has 2.3 children. (Abstract use)       b. The average age of the students is 21. (Abstract use) This use is differentiated from another use called the ‘concrete’ use as in (2). While this use is compatible with both the definite and indefinite articles, the abstract use seems to (always) prefer the definite article; see (3-a) and (3-b). This preference can be unambiguously observed in Arabic...
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Talk by Viola Schmitt (Wien)

By Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are very happy to announce the next talk in our syntax colloquium this term. Viola Schmitt (Wien) will talk about "Distributive conjunctions and plurality — two cross-linguistic asymmetries", presenting joint work with Nina Haslinger (Göttingen), Eva Rosina (Vienna), Magdalena Roszkowski (Budapest) and Valerie Wurm (Vienna). The talk will take place online, please see the information below on how to participate. Title: Distributive conjunctions and plurality — two cross-linguistic asymmetries Time : 14.12.2020, 4pm Place: Zoom (If you are not a regular member of the syntax colloquium and if you would like to listen to this talk, please contact Katharina Hartmann. You will be sent a link / ID to Zoom.) You are all, as always, cordially invited! Abstract: We argue that the conjunctive coordinating morpheme COORD denotes a plurality-forming operation cross-linguistically and across categories. We first present two cross-linguistic generalizations which strongly suggest that the basic meaning of COORD in individual conjunctions (e.g.`Ada and Bea’) is not intersective, as in `classical' analyses of conjunction, but...
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Talk by Kathryn Davidson (Harvard University)

By Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Kathryn Davidson (Harvard University) 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: Domain selection and the role of sign language loci Date: December 10 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: In the study of the formal semantics of sign languages, significant attention has been given to the analysis of sign language loci, or the use of signing space to keep track of discourse referents. Notably, within formal frameworks, sign language loci have been used as evidence in favor of dynamic semantics as a case of overt variable indices, and they also share several properties in common with phi features. In this talk, I will focus on their pragmatic behavior, notably their low frequency in sign language corpora and production studies, and argue that the role of loci in contextual domain selection (for quantification, focus alternatives, and questions) has been overlooked. I will suggest an analysis...
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