Talk by Viktor Köhlich (Frankfurt) in the Syntax Colloquium

By Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Viktor Köhlich (Goethe University) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: Merging Position and Size of Indirect Modifiers in Japanese Date: May 30 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: This talk takes a look at the questions what the size ob indirect modifiers in Japanese is, or rather what size it can be, and where they merge in the DP. Adopting a cartographic understanding of the DP (Cinque 2010. 2020), in principle adjectives are expected to merge as reduced relative clauses of size IP in a dedicated functional projection and verbal modifiers to merge in a functional projection for finite relative clauses. Japanese is an interesting case, as the size of the modifier, which is often argued to correlate with finiteness, cannot be readily determined. Modifiers in attributive position only exhibit one surface form and are in their morphological mark-up (mostly) identical to their counterparts in predicative position. While it...
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Talk by Georg Höhn (Göttingen University) & Alain N. Hien (Tohoku) in the Syntax Colloquium

By Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Georg Höhn (Göttingen University) & Alain N. Hien (Tohoku) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: Pronominal a and aspects of nominal syntax across three Mabia/Gur languages Date: May 23 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: Abstract_Hoehn_Hien...
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Talk by Philipp Weisser (University of Potsdam) in the Syntax Colloquium

By Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Philipp Weisser (University of Potsdam) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title: The Limits of Umlaut in Sinhala: Matching domains across the syntax, morphology, and phonology (joint work with Paula Fenger, Leipzig University) Date: May 16 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: In this talk we study the patterns of verbal umlaut in the Indo-Aryan language Sinhala (spoken in Sri Lanka), which seems to be constrained by an intricate combination of (i) lexical, (ii) morphosyntactic, and (iii) phonological factors. We study this phenomenon and show that it can be used as a window into the morphological makeup of complex words. In particular, we defend  the following claims: 1. Contrary to some claims in the literature (see e.g. Garland 2005), we argue that the limits of umlaut show that Sinhala verb morphology is, underlyingly, concatenative and in order to describe where umlaut appears and where it doesn’t, we need to refer to the notion of the morpheme. 2....
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Talk by Imke Driemel (Humboldt University Berlin)

By Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Imke Driemel (Humboldt University Berlin) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. Title:Implicit arguments and their morpho-syntactic effects Date: May 9 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: Implicit arguments are covert elements whose syntactic representations questioned in some way or another (Bhatt and Pancheva 2017). While much of the literature of implicit arguments is focused on thematic arguments such as PRO, pro, or the agent of passives, this talk will present two case studies on implicit non-thematic arguments: i) the perspectival center of the come/go alternation in the Northwest Caucasian language Adyghe, and ii) the speaker/hearer representation in allocutive marking languages of East Asia and South America. For i), it will be shown that the licensing of the perspectival center matches the language's strategy to signal PCC effects. For ii), we will investigate an interaction of gender and honorific marking which runs parallel to DOM effects. Not only will the case...
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Joint syntax and phonology colloquium (31.05.21 – 4-6pm)

By Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
Dear all, We are happy to announce a joint syntax and phonology colloquium with two WOCAL talks (http://2021.wocal.net/): Date: Monday,  31.05.2021 Time: 16-18 Location: Zoom:  Please register beforehand (k.hartmann@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom. Daniel Aremu & Frank Kügler: On the suspension of downstep – the case of Yoruba polar question intonation Abstract: In this talk, we present an analysis of tonal downstep in Yoruba declaratives and polar questions. Polar questions are formed in two different ways, either with sentence-initial question particles, or string-identical to statements. We show that downstep is not suspended in question intonation, which holds for all polar question formation strategies. This finding is contrary to claims made on downstep in questions (Hyman 2001).  Johannes Mursell & Katharina Hartmann: Selecting Alternatives in Eton Abstract: In this talk,  we provide a novel analysis of the augment in the Bantu language Eton, based on original fieldwork. We argue that in contrast to previous analyses, the augmentin Eton not only marks local modification of the noun but does...
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