Talk by Maria Aloni (Amsterdam) in the Semantics Colloquium

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Maria Aloni (Amsterdam) 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: February 12, 2026 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: Nothing is Logical  Abstract: People often reason in ways that deviate from classical logic. An influential idea introduced by Grice is that these deviations are not logical mistakes but rather consequences of pragmatic enrichments derived as the product of rational interactions between cooperative language users. Challenging the Gricean tradition, the core hypothesis behind this research is that many of the enriched interpretations we observe in everyday conversation are not derived by Gricean reasoning, but rather result from biases due to our [human] preference to minimise cognitive effort. I will present two such biases that on our hypothesis affect both reasoning and interpretation: (i) a tendency to avoid emptiness (neglect-zero); and (ii) a negative bias towards the...
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A talk by Philipp Rauth (Saarland)

by Nelli Kerezova Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Philipp Rauth (Saarland) in the Historical Linguistics Colloquium. The talk will take place in person. Date: 12.02.2026 Time: 2pm - 4pm c.t. Place:  IG 2.201 Title:  "Restitutive Adverbien im Deutschen" Abstract:  Die Ambiguität des Adverbs wieder (und vergleichbaren Adverbien in anderen Sprachen) zwischen der restitutiven (1a) und repetitiven Lesart (1b) wurde in den letzten Jahrzehnten intensiv erforscht (z.B. von Stechow 1996, Fabricius-Hansen 2001).  (1) a. Hannah schließt das FENSter wieder.      b. Hannah schließt das Fenster WIEder. Die historische Entwicklung und die dialektale Variation stellen jedoch bisher noch ein Desiderat dar. In meinem Vortrag stelle ich eine historisch-dialektale Korpusstudie vor, die (i) zeigt, dass die erstmals im Althochdeutschen belegte restitutive Lesart von wieder nicht zwingend eine Lehnübersetzung aus dem Lateinischen ist (vgl. Dückert 1957: 6–8), (ii) dass der Pfad des semantischen Wandels bei solchen Adverbien nicht universell von restitutiv zu repetitiv verläuft (vgl. Zwarts 2019), (iii) dass wieder insbesondere an der westlichen und südlichen Peripherie des deutschen Sprachraums durch eine Vielzahl anderer Lexeme...
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Talk by Christopher Saure (Wuppertal) in the Semantics Colloquium

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Christopher Saure (Wuppertal) 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: February 5, 2026 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: The multiperspectival potential of indirect discourse  Abstract:  There is an overall consensus in the literature on perspectivization in language that indirect discourse (ID) does fundamentally not allow perspective shift of deictic expressions in its scope, which are thus obligatorily interpreted from the speaker’s context (e.g., Schlenker 2004). Consequently, research on perspective shift has been primarily focused on free indirect discourse (FID) for its seemingly unique display of multiperspectivity.  In this talk, I provide theoretical and empirical evidence that this prevalent view of ID does not accurately capture its true perspectival potential. Specifically, I argue that ID allows for the same indexicals to shift to the perspective of the reported utterance’s or thought’s original author as FID, namely spatio-temporal...
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Tokyo-Frankfurt Phonetics-Phonology Colloquium: 2nd edition

by Tina Bögel Comment Closed
We are happy to announce the second edition of the Tokyo-Frankfurt Phonetics-Phonology Colloquium Room: Online (please contact Alina at gregori@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de for access) Date: February 6th Time: 9-12 The colloquium is a collaboration between the Phonology groups at International Christian University in Tokyo and Goethe University Frankfurt, lead by Seunghun Lee and Frank Kügler. It brings together Early Career Researchs to exchange and discuss about the Phonological topics. Program: 09.00 Seunghun J. Lee (ICU) & Frank Kügler (GU) Opening 09.05 Ren Hasegawa (ICU) Tonal Iconicity Study of Xitsonga: observing correlation of weight, speed and height 09.30 Manuel Lipstein (GU) Timing or privativity? New perception data on the representation of Urban East Norwegian tonal accents 10.00 Haruka Yatabe (ICU) Disyllabic words in Niigata Japanese follow a Prosodic Template 10.30 Sotaro Arakaki (ICU) The Phonetic Analysis of...
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A talk by Heidi Klockman (University of Agder)

by Nelli Kerezova Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Heidi Klockman (University of Agder) in the Historical Linguistics Colloquium. The talk will take place online and in English. Date: February 5th, 2026 Time: 2pm - 4pm c.t. Place:  https://uni-frankfurt.zoom-x.de/j/68838298277?pwd=e8ONY8oIWw7ani8jprI3bkhdUD8FCy.1  Title:  "The noun-to-quantifier shift in English and Polish quantificational pseudopartitives" Abstract:  This talk will reflect on the process by which a noun becomes a quantifier, drawing empirically on ongoing corpus work into English and Polish quantificational pseudopartitives (QPsPs). The QPsP refers to a binominal construction in which one noun (N1) quantifies over another noun (N2), as in English an ocean of ideas and lots of money or Polish kupaNOM robotyGEN ‘a heap/lot of work’. The QPsP has been a source of interest for cognitive-functional and generative linguists alike: how does a quantificational meaning arise? What changes do the N1 and QPsP undergo as grammaticalization progresses? What is the underlying syntactic structure producing the morphosyntactic properties of QPsPs? Work on English has investigated such questions primarily through advanced N1s such...
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