We are happy to announce a talk by Cécile Meier (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: October 30, 2025
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t.
Title: Word-level TAM: the case of German Adjectives ending on „-lich“
Abstract:
I am going to present onging work from Project A02, a part of CRC 1629 NegLab. In the literature, there are different types of classifications mentioned for adjectives ending on „-lich“ in German. They differ in voice (active/passive), in modal force (necessity/possibility) and wrt actuality entailments (Bhatt, Hacquard on „be able to”). I am going to argue that „-lich“ lexicalizes parts of the clausal spine (TAM). Top down: The difference in actuality entailments follows from the assumption of a temporal habituality operator that heads all the other nodes (Paslawska/von Stechow). Modals are interpreted force variable (Rullmann et al.). And voice is related to a difference in point-of-view aspect (imperfective/perfective, Rapp). Affixal negation may intervene between the habitually operator and the modal meaning component. The theoretical account of structural enrichment below the word-level follows the LF architecture for times and events (Beck/von Stechow). Furthermore, two types of imperfectivity (point-of-view aspect / genericity) are assumed.