Category: Syntax

We are happy to announce a talk by D. Aremu, K. Hartmann, A. Himmelreich, J. Mursell (GU Frankfurt) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place in person. Room IG 4.301 Date: November 21 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: When long distance dependencies are actually short: The case of Mabia languages  Abstract: Mabia languages (formerly Gur, Northern Ghana), all SVO, exhibit morpho-syntactic reflexes with short A'-movement. In this talk, we observe that these reflexes are absent in long distance (LD) A'-dependencies. We argue that this follows from the general absence of LD movement in Mabia languages. We propose that the extracted XP is base-generated at the phase edge of the embedded clause and that it moves clause-internally to the main clause periphery. We further discuss how this type of analysis fits to the presence or absence of long-distance A'-movement in other non-related languages and we point out some of the theoretical challenges that the data present....

We are happy to announce a talk by Samuel Acheampong (GU Frankfurt) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place in person. Room IG 4.301 Date: November 14 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: The syntax of sluiced constructions in Likpakpaanl  Abstract: This talk discusses a preliminary analysis of the syntax of sluicing in Likpakpaanl, a Mabia language spoken in the Eastern corridors of Ghana and Western Togo. The talk describes an ellipsis phenomenon in which an entire clause is deleted, but the wh- remnant survives. I show that while the overt focus markers wɛ̀ and o in wh-questions in Gungbe and Nupe, respectively, escape the ellipsis [e]-site, the focus marker lè in Likpakpaanl ex-situ wh-questions, is contained in the ellipsis site. Thus, Likpakpaanl sluices violate the ‘Wh-sluicing correlation hypothesis’ of Van Craenenbroeck and Lipták (2013), which proposes an obligatory movement to spec-FocP for languages with overt focus markers because the E-feature in such languages is on the Foco. Such an analysis does not...

We are happy to announce two talks by Marie-Joe Kallab (GU Frankfurt) and Melissa Jeckel (GU Frankfurt) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place in person. Room IG 4.301 Date: November 07 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title (Marie-Joe-Kallab): Negation in Lebanese Arabic Abstract: In this talk, I present my Thesis about Negation in Lebanese Arabic. I focus on sentential negation, their syntactic expression, and the interpretation of multiple negation in the Lebanese dialect, based on Zeijlstra’s (2004) research. I demonstrate the three different negative constructions in the language, which are single negation, bipartite negation, and enclitic negation. Furthermore, I argue that Lebanese Arabic is a Strict Negative Concord language as well as a Non-Strict Negative Concord language. There is a difference between positive and negative imperatives regarding person agreement, which suggests the usage of surrogate imperatives. Lebanese Arabic exhibits a diachronic change that argues in favor of Jespersen’s (1917) claim that languages develop regarding negation and how sentential negation is expressed.  I suggest that...

We are happy to announce a talk by Daniel Aremu (GU Frankfurt) and Chinedu Anyawu (University of Jos) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take online over Zoom. Please enroll in the OLAT course of the syntax colloquium to get the link or write to Katharina Hartmann. Titles: More is going on upstairs than downstairs: There is a penthouse in Kuce Date: October 31 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: In this talk, we investigate polar interrogatives in Kuce (Kuche) or Ce (Che), a minority Plateau (Benue-Congo) language spoken in north-central Nigeria. The language employs a clause-final vowel lengthening strategy in polar questions (1-2). We, therefore, argue that: (a) the vowel quality of the question marker is determined by the final vowel of the clause; (b) the polar interrogative marking follows a strict-finality constraint; (c) the phenomenon is a main clause phenomena and (d) it is unavailable in focus construction. We show that unlike many lax prosodic languages with a single/uniform vowel, polar question marking....

We are happy to announce a talk by Zorica Puškar-Gallien (ZAS Berlin) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Titles: On the theoretical and empirical challenges of multiple agreement with subjects and objects Date: October 24 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: This talk will focus on languages in which a finite verb agrees with the subject (S) and object (O), and in which O-agreement is argued to be conducted by a head high in the syntactic structure, such as T/Infl. Of particular interest are the verbal morphological templates in which O-agreement is realised by affixes closer to the verbal stem than S-affixes (Hungarian, Trommer 2003, E Kiss 2019; Tundra Nenets, Nikolaeva 2014; Khanty, Mansi, Mordvin, E Kiss 2019, Quechuan, Myler 2017, Nez Perce Deal 2017). Under Mirror Principle, this indicates that O-agreement applies before S-agreement, which is problematic for the standard Minimalist view of agreement, under which the subject should act as an intervener. The puzzle will...