Talk by Elin McCready (Tokyo) in the Semantics Colloquium

By Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Elin McCready (Tokyo) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. If you wish to participate virtually via Zoom, please contact Lennart Fritzsche for the link.  Date: January 16, 2025 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: Norms of Language Use and Perspective Abstract: In this talk I argue that the perspectives agents hold — their ideologies, beliefs, and identities — can be extracted from their linguistic behavior. Specifically, because social meanings relate to speaker values and social beliefs, their language use tends to reflect these values. Taking such meanings and treating them in terms of self-ascription, together with norms of speech relating to how particular pieces of language are properly used, yields a `public perspective’ in partial correspondence to the notion of agential identity proposed in the recent philosophical literature....
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Talk by Janek Guerrini (Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium

By Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce another talk by Janek Guerrini (Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. If you wish to participate virtually via Zoom, please contact Lennart Fritzsche for the link.  Date: December 19, 2024 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: Similatives as inherent generics Abstract: In this paper, I give an account of constructions expressing similarity such as like John and like a lawyer. The main point of the paper is that in like a lawyer, the indefinite receives a generic interpretation, which explains why under its most available reading, John looks like a lawyer is equivalent to John looks like a typical lawyer. However, this indefinite is generic in a surprising way. Generic quantification is standardly thought to be brought about by a silent quantificational adverb, Gen, bearing a meaning akin to generally (see e.g. Krifka et al. 1995). It is therefore expected, on the standard picture, that an indefinite that can receive generic interpretations should...
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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 Alla Paslawska (Lwiw) in the Semantics Colloquium

By Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Alla Paslawska (Lwiw) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. If you wish to participate virtually via Zoom, please contact Lennart Fritzsche for the link.    The talk will be held in German.  Date: December 5, 2024 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: Wie viele Gesichter hat die Negation? Abstract: Jede der Wissenschaft bekannte Sprache verfügt über morphologische Mittel, die Negation zum Ausdruck bringen können. Dazu werden Partikeln, Affixe, Konjunktionen etc. zugerechnet. Bedeutet das, dass die Negation eine morphologische Kategorie ist? Bei näherem Hinsehen merkt man, dass im Fall der Negation die Morphologie uns oft im Stich lässt. Denn was bedeutet eigentlich niemand? Man denkt wohl nicht an Odysseus, der unter dem Namen „Niemand“ dem Polyphem einen glühenden Pfahl in das einzige Auge gerammt hat. Niemand bedeutet vielmehr jemand, nichts ist etwas etc., d.h. die Antwort nach dem kategorialen Status der Negation ist im Bereich der Semantik zu finden. Trotzdem haben auch die Syntax, Prosodie...
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