Talk by Justine Mertz (Köln) in the Phonology Colloqium

by Tina Bögel Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Justine Mertz in the Phonology Colloquium. Room: IG 4.301 Date: November 20, 2024 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: "Investigating prosodic modulation in French Sign Language (LSF): A kinematic analysis of sign language coarticulation” Abstract: During interaction, speakers often modulate coarticulatory cues to either amplify or reduce perceptual distinctions between competing speech units. Anticipatory coarticulation has been observed in visual-gestural languages as well. However, coarticulatory strategies in sign language remain underexplored. This study offers the first investigation of coarticulation in French Sign Language (LSF) using 3D-Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) for precise kinematic analysis of sign production. A deaf native signer was recorded (EMA/video) producing phonological sign pairs involving '1'- and/or '3'-handshapes. The kinematic data reveal the presence of coarticulation in varied discourse contexts, at both temporal and spatial levels. Using a dynamical framework (Articulatory Phonology), we interpret these kinematic patterns as systematic overlapping processes rooted in the phonological system....
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Talk by Alexandrine Dunlap (GU/Florida) in the Syntax Colloquium

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Alexandrine Dunlap (GU/Florida) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talks will take place in person. Room IG 4.301 Date: November 18, 2024 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: "Operator Agreement in Sentential Negation" Abstract: In this talk I will put forward possible analyses that can account for Gweno’s unique agreeing negation. In Gweno main clause sentential negation, a post-verbal negation particle is inflected for the phi features of the subject. Additionally, Gweno uses an alternate negation strategy for certain clause types, specifically relative clauses and conditionals which encode negation with a post-initial prefix. Given the strict relationship between the negation particle and subject inflection on the verb, I explore the possibility of movement of the entire TP into the specifier of NegP and the role an operator may play in facilitating this pattern....
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Talk by Samuel O. Acheampong and Anke Himmelreich (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Samuel O. Acheampong and Anke Himmelreich (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium. The talks will take place in person. Room IG 4.301 Date: November 11, 2024 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: "On the interaction between coordination and focus marking: The case of Mabia languages” Abstract: In this talk we present data from two Mabia languages, Likpakpaanl and Dagbani, that show that the marker for clausal coordination is identical to the ex-situ focus marker. Further, in a clausal coordination construction, focus marking is impossible in the second conjunct. We discuss the idea that the focus construction and the clausal coordination construction are structurally identical in the sense that the marker links two elements of different syntactic categories and we show how this can derive the empirical observations about clausal coordination in the Mabia languages....
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Talk by Cornelia Ebert (Frankfurt) and Markus Steinbach (Göttingen) in the Semantics Colloquium

by Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Cornelia Ebert (Frankfurt) and Markus Steinbach (Göttingen) 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 7, 2024 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t. Title: The semantics of semi-conventionalized lexical depictions in spoken and sign languages Abstract: Typological research has shown that many unrelated spoken languages have ideophones such as English helter-skelter or German plitsch-platsch. Ideophones form a special class of words which are used in specific registers (often vivid narrative contexts) and can be defined as “an open lexical class of marked words that depict sensory imagery” (Dingemanse 2019). They have been argued to be depictive items which establish an iconic relationship of the form of an ideophone (including the utterance of it) and its meaning, which lies in the domain of sensory imagery encoding information about movement, sound, sentiment or mental state. In addition, ideophones typically contribute...
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Talk by Marieke Einfeldt (University of Konstanz)

by Tina Bögel Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Marieke Einfeldt (Konstanz) in the Phonology Colloquium. Room: IG 4.301 Date: November 06, 2024 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: "Differences of prenuclear accents and stops in the two varieties of Zurich German speakers: A within speaker comparison” Abstract: While research on the two languages of bilingual speakers has already received a lot of attention (see e.g., Chang, 2021 for an overview), research on the two varieties of bilectal speakers is still scarce (Kupisch et al., 2023). I will present findings from the analyses of two closely related Swiss German varieties (Zurich German and Swiss Standard German) spoken by the same speakers and compare them to a Standard German control group. We focused on segmental (VOT and closure duration) and prosodic (prenuclear accents) properties that have the potential to differ in the dialectal and in the standard realizations: Zurich German stops have been reported to differ based on closure duration, while Standard German stops are differentiated based on VOT (Ladd &...
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