Talk by Andreas Pankau (FU Berlin) in the Historical Linguistics Colloquium

by Melanie Hobich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Andreas Pankau (Freie Universität Berlin) in the Historical Linguistics Colloquium. Date: Tuesday, December 5, 2023 Room: IG 2.301 Time: 2 pm – 4 pm ct Title: "The syntactic representation of ADDRESSEE - evidence from wh-drop in Berlin German" Abstract: Many German dialects allow a curious type of wh-question, namely one where the wh-phrase is absent. The classical approach to such wh-questions can be found in Bayer (2010) and Pankau (2020). They both assume that a wh-phrase was present at some stage of derivation, but that it gets elided after having been moved to SpecCP. Hence the name for this type of wh-question, wh-drop. In this talk, I want to challenge this approach with novel data from Berlin German. Based on the syntactic properties of wh-drop, I first argue that neither a wh-phrase nor wh-movement are ever present in wh-drop. Instead, what moves is an empty operator and the movement it undergoes is most likely some form of scrambling....
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Talks by Narjes Eskandarnia and Kim Tien Nguyen (Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce talks by Narjes Eskandarnia and Kim Tien Nguyen (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: November 30, 2023 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct   Narjes Eskandarnia Title: Ideophones and Reduplication in Persian: An Exploration of the Dingemanse Hierarchy and Linguistic Creativity Abstract: The Present thesis explores the properties of Persian ideophones, explicitly focusing on their reduplication patterns and adherence to the Dingemanse Hierarchy. The study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the role of reduplication in creating ideophones and to investigate the extent to which Persian ideophones align with the hierarchical framework proposed by Dingemanse. The methodology employed in this research is a corpus linguistics approach. Accordingly, a corpus of approximately 300 ideophones and reduplicated words were collected from diverse sources, ensuring a comprehensive representation across different contexts. A table was created to categorize the ideophones, along with translations,...
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Talk by Kathleen Jepson (LMU München): Encoding focus within noun phrases in a free word order language

by Tina Bögel Comment Closed
We are very happy to announce the next talk in the Phonology Colloquium by Kathleen Jepson (LMU München) on Wednesday, 29.11.2023, from 16-18 in IG 4.301. Abstract: Prosody often encodes focus and givenness at the utterance level. Within noun phrases (NPs), languages use phonological prosodic means such as accenting focused and new information, and deaccenting given information, as well as phonetic prosodic cues such as relative pitch height and alignment, and variation in intensity. Some languages, however, do not mark focus within NPs prosodically, or may have a number of other mechanisms to do the task such as syntactic movement or morphological markers. This talk is concerned with how focus and givenness are realised within NPs in Djambarrpuyŋu, an Australian Indigenous language. Like many Australian languages, Djambarrpuyŋu allows free word order at the utterance-level and within NPs, and additionally permits discontinuous nominal constituents in which the noun and modifiers occur distributed throughout the clause. In other Australian languages, the variability is found to be constrained by information structure both at the utterance...
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Talk by Gerd Carling (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Gerd Carling (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talks will take place in person. Room  NG 2.701 Date: November 27, 2023 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: "Perspectives on phylogenetic methods of syntax reconstruction: do they solve problems or create new ones?” Abstract: Perspectives on phylogenetic methods of syntax reconstruction: do they solve problems or create new ones? Syntactic reconstruction has a long history in linguistic literature. Beginning with models based on the comparative method, developed by Neogrammarians in the late 19 th century, syntactic reconstruction continued to follow the development of different theoretical approaches of the 20th century. An important model of reconstruction emerged from the typological approach in the mid 20 th century, and more recent models have been using, e.g., construction grammar as a basis for reconstruction. The use of phylogenetic modelling is the most recent approach in this area. Here, the uncertainty of the status of syntactic features at earlier language states is computed...
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Talk by Agnes Jäger (Uni Jena) in the Historical Linguistics Colloquium

by Melanie Hobich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Agnes Jäger (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena) in the Historical Linguistics Colloquium. The talk will be in German. Date: Tuesday, November 28, 2023 Room: IG 2.301 Time: 2 pm – 4 pm ct Title: "Der Ursprung des werden+Infinitiv-Futurs im Deutschen - ein alternatives Szenario" Abstract: Neben dem futurischen Präsens hat das Deutsche im Verlauf seiner Sprachgeschichte periphrastische Futurformen mit Auxiliaren auf der Basis von Modalverben (v.a. sollen und wollen) und der Kopula werden entwickelt. Das letztere Muster verdrängte seit dem 16. Jahrhundert die modalverbbasierten Futurformen. Während diese Entwicklung empirisch gut beschrieben ist, gilt der Ursprung der werden+Infinitiv-Futurperiphrase nach wie vor als ungeklärt. Dies betrifft insbesondere die Frage, wie es überhaupt zur Verwendung des Infinitivs mit werden kam. Die bisherigen Erklärungsansätze (phonetische Reduktion des Partizip I, syntaktische Analogiebildung oder slavische Lehnsyntax) können die Entwicklung nicht befriedigend erklären. In diesem Vortrag wird ein alternatives Szenario des Ursprungs des werden+Infinitiv-Futurs vorgeschlagen, das auf Reanalyse beruht und die Entwicklung zentral in Beziehung zu bestimmten morpho-phonologischen...
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