Phonology Colloquium: Fuchs: “Some considerations on hand-mouth coordination in speech

We are very happy to announce the next talk in our phonology colloquium this term. Susanne Fuchs (ZAS Berlin) will talk about "Some considerations on hand-mouth coordination in speech" The talk will take place online, on Zoom. Please register beforehand (Kuegler@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom! Susanne Fuchs: Title: Some considerations on hand-mouth coordination in speech Time: 16. June 2021, 4 pm ct...
Read More

Talk by Maximilian Berthold (GU Frankfurt)

We are happy to announce a talk by Maximilian Berthold (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: The anaphoricity of German temporal adjectives Date: June 10 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: German offers a rich inventory of temporal adjectives that serve to locate the time at which the property denoted by the noun hold of its referent. This talk investigates the semantic properties of the German adjective damalig (‘at the/that time’) which appears to have an anaphoric meaning component. Such anaphoricity would require any noun phrase modified by damalig to be supplied with a reference time by the context. This raises the questions how these noun phrases are temporally interpreted and how damalig is analyzed in a semantic framework. I provide empirical evidence that the interpretation of damalig-noun phrases is contextually determined which motivates my hypothesis that damalig should be analyzed as a time pronoun. The investigation of an anaphoric...
Read More

Joint syntax and phonology colloquium (31.05.21 – 4-6pm)

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...
Read More

Talk by Florian Schwarz (University of Pennsylvania)

We are happy to announce a talk by Florian Schwarz (University of Pennsylvania) 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: Presupposition Projection and Linear Order – Variation Across Connectives Date: May 27 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: The role of linear order for presupposition projection is a long-standing matter of theoretical controversy and empirical confusion. On the one hand, there’s a natural association of the `left-to-right’ unfolding of the linguistic signal and the gradual update of the contexts relative to which subsequent expressions are interpreted. On the other hand, connectives seem to display varying behavior in terms of whether later material can affect presuppositions of earlier expressions. In particular, conjunction has often been taken to be asymmetric with regards to projection, only allowing `left-to-right’ filtering (e.g., with the first conjunct supporting a presupposition in the second conjunct), whereas disjunction seems to also allow the reverse `right-to-left’ filtering (as in Partee’s `bathroom sentences’)....
Read More

Talk by Rick Nouwen (Utrecht University)

We are happy to announce a talk by Rick Nouwen (Utrecht 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: Intensified vagueness: semantics and pragmatics Date: May 20 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: What, if anything, is the semantic content of intensifiers like 'very', 'extremely', 'pretty', etc.? In this talk, I'll explore this question from the perspective of recent probabilistic approaches to degree semantics (Lassiter and Goodman, 2017). According to such approaches, vague predicates involve lexical uncertainty that is partially resolved through pragmatic reasoning. A sentence like "Scarlett is tall" is interpreted as `height(s)>=t`, where the value of t is inferred. How can a framework like this be extended to deal with sentences like "Scarlett is very / extremely / surprisingly tall"? Starting point is the model of Bennett and Goodman (2018). In this model, the intensifier is semantically vacuous, but its presence in the utterance triggers a manner implicature, which constitutes the...
Read More