Talk by Chiara Marchetiello (Dublin) in a joint session of the Semantics and Syntax Colloquia

By Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a joint session of the Semantics and Syntax Colloquia, featuring a talk by Chiara Marchetiello (Dublin). The talk will take place on campus in IG 411. If you wish to participate virtually via Zoom, please contact Lennart Fritzsche for the link.  Date: July 9, 2026 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: To be or not to be integrated: A formal account on [PDO] in Campania Abstract: In this talk, I discuss some initial observations on the syntactic integration of gesture found in the rich gestural inventories of the local languages spoken in Campania region (Italy). Specifically, I present two case studies on the gesture called [PALM-DOWN-OPEN-HAND-PRONE] ([PDO]). Based on new data collected from primary fieldwork I conducted in Campania, I show that [PDO] can be syntactically integrated into the grammar of the languages of Campania in two different ways. When [PDO] accompanies speech, it can be interpreted as an epistemic marker which indicates the speaker's certainty towards the truth-value conditions of...
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Talk by Roland Hinterhölzl (Venice) in the Syntax Colloquium

By Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Roland Hinterhölzl (Venice) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talks will take place in person. Room IG 4.301 Date: December 16, 2024 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: "Privileged Access, Verb Second and the that trace effect" Abstract: In this talk, I present a novel approach to the that trace-effect that is based on the insight that subjects stand out in having privileged access to the C-domain. Paradoxically, this privilege of subjects that is visible in various effects appearing with local, that is, clause-internal movement leads to a handicap in long distance movement. I argue that the effect is due to an economy condition operative with flexible phase edges in the C-domain. Flexible phase edges are also visible in V2-languages, which distinguish each other between low and high V2, corresponding to a low (FinP) or high (ForceP) phase edge in the C-domain.  ...
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Talk by Alexandrine Dunlap (GU/Florida) in the Syntax Colloquium

By Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Alexandrine Dunlap (GU/Florida) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talks will take place in person. Room IG 4.301 Date: November 18, 2024 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: "Operator Agreement in Sentential Negation" Abstract: In this talk I will put forward possible analyses that can account for Gweno’s unique agreeing negation. In Gweno main clause sentential negation, a post-verbal negation particle is inflected for the phi features of the subject. Additionally, Gweno uses an alternate negation strategy for certain clause types, specifically relative clauses and conditionals which encode negation with a post-initial prefix. Given the strict relationship between the negation particle and subject inflection on the verb, I explore the possibility of movement of the entire TP into the specifier of NegP and the role an operator may play in facilitating this pattern....
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Talk by Samuel O. Acheampong and Anke Himmelreich (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium

By Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Samuel O. Acheampong and Anke Himmelreich (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talks will take place in person. Room IG 4.301 Date: November 11, 2024 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: "On the interaction between coordination and focus marking: The case of Mabia languages” Abstract: In this talk we present data from two Mabia languages, Likpakpaanl and Dagbani, that show that the marker for clausal coordination is identical to the ex-situ focus marker. Further, in a clausal coordination construction, focus marking is impossible in the second conjunct. We discuss the idea that the focus construction and the clausal coordination construction are structurally identical in the sense that the marker links two elements of different syntactic categories and we show how this can derive the empirical observations about clausal coordination in the Mabia languages....
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