Talk by Chiara Marchetiello (Dublin) in a joint session of the Semantics and Syntax Colloquia

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a joint session of the Semantics and Syntax Colloquia, featuring a talk by Chiara Marchetiello (Dublin). The talk will take place on campus in IG 411. If you wish to participate virtually via Zoom, please contact Lennart Fritzsche for the link.  Date: July 9, 2026 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: To be or not to be integrated: A formal account on [PDO] in Campania Abstract: In this talk, I discuss some initial observations on the syntactic integration of gesture found in the rich gestural inventories of the local languages spoken in Campania region (Italy). Specifically, I present two case studies on the gesture called [PALM-DOWN-OPEN-HAND-PRONE] ([PDO]). Based on new data collected from primary fieldwork I conducted in Campania, I show that [PDO] can be syntactically integrated into the grammar of the languages of Campania in two different ways. When [PDO] accompanies speech, it can be interpreted as an epistemic marker which indicates the speaker's certainty towards the truth-value conditions of...
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Talks by Prince Asiedu (Frankfurt) and Jan Köpping (Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Prince Asiedu (Frankfurt) and a talk by Jan Köpping (Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium. The talks 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: July 2, 2026 Time: 4 pm – 7 pm c.t. Prince Asiedu (Frankfurt)  Title: Multimodal iconicity of ideophones and Co-speech gestures in Akan Abstract: Many spoken languages with diverse typological features have ideophones, a special class of words defined as “an open lexical class of marked words that depict sensory imagery” (Dingemanse 2019). Ideophones share certain morphological and semantic properties (Kita 1997, Dingemanse 2015, Barnes 2024, Ebert and Steinbach 2024). They are an open lexical class. They depict rather than describe. There is an iconic relationship between form and meaning. They are marked expressions with specific grammatical properties, such as reduplication. They lie in the domain of sensory imagery. Ideophones are often accompanied by a conventionalised co-speech gesture. In this presentation,...
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Corinna Langer und Anna Pressler verteidigen erfolgreich ihre Dissertationen

by Nelli Kerezova Comment Closed
Am 26.06.2026 wurden zwei Dissertationen aus dem Phonologie-Lehrstuhl erfolgreich verteidigt. Corinna Langer verteidigte ihre Thesis mit dem Titel Focus and Prosody in Hungarian - investigating syntactically unmarked focus am Morgen und Anna Pressler verteidigte ihre Thesis zu Prosodic factors at the phrase level: the positioning of French adjectives am Nachmittag. Wir gratulieren beiden herzlich zu diesem Erfolg! Corinna Langers Dissertation untersuchte zwei Fälle von Fokusmarkierung im Ungarischen in den keine syntaktische Disambiguierend des Skopus von Fokus möglich ist. Durch eine Kombination von Produktions- und Perzeptionsstudien fand sie heraus, dass Prosodie den Skopus von solchen ungarischen Fokuskonstruktionen disambiguieren kann. Sie diskutiert ihre Ergebnisse im Hinblick auf existierende Syntax-Prosodie Mappings. Anna Presslers Dissertation untersuchte die Positionierung von französischen Adjektiven (prä- oder postnominal), welche keine syntaktische oder semantische Präferenz für eine Position haben. In vier empirischen Studien erforschte sie den Einfluss von den prosodischen Faktoren Relative Länge und Rhythmische Alternation, mit der Erkenntnis, dass diese die Positionierung der Adjektive beeinflussen. Sie schlägt Anforderungen für ein Sprachmodell vor,...
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Talk by Andy Lücking (Chemnitz) in the Semantics Colloquium

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Andy Lücking (Chemnitz) 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: June 25, 2026 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: From Hand to Space: Decoding the Semantics of Iconic Gesture Abstract: Spatial gesture semantics takes seriously the dual nature of iconic gestures: they are both visuo-spatial events and objects of linguistic classification. The former is spelled out in terms of vector spaces, the latter in terms of classifiers. Linguistically classified gestures, in turn, can trigger the inference of implicatures, as is studied in discourse semantics. Hence, spatial gesture semantics draws on a range of standard semantic approaches, including (Davidsonian) event semantics, computational semantics, dynamic semantics, gesture studies, lexical and frame semantics, and -- of course -- vector semantics. This raises both concerns and aspirations for a unified formal account. The talk reviews (with a few improvements) spatial...
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Talk by Karen Emmorey (San Diego) in Göttingen (June 17) and Frankfurt (June 18)

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Karen Emmorey (San Diego State University). She will present the talk on June 17 in the LinG Colloquium in Göttingen and on June 18 in the Semantics Colloquium in Frankfurt. The talk will be held in English. On Wednesday, interpretation into German Sign Language (DGS) will be provided. Both talks can be attended either in person or via Zoom (see practical information below). Title: Linguistic and neural consequences of iconicity in American Sign Language Abstract: Iconicity (a resemblance between form and meaning) in sign languages appears to be much more pervasive and structured compared to spoken languages. Currently, however, we know very little about how iconicity might impact the structure of the lexicon or whether iconic signs are processed differently in the brain. My colleagues and I have been exploring the nature of the distribution of iconic forms in the American Sign Language (ASL) lexicon, what drives the iconic depiction of semantic features, and whether iconic signs are perceived and...
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