Colloquium: Deutsche Grammatik
Mo 15:59-17:30, Raum 1.401 (DOR 24)BA und Master Linguistik
Kurzbeschreibung
In dieser Veranstaltung können Studierende im BA oder MA Themen, an denen sie arbeiten, vorstellen. Außerdem gibt es Gastvorträge von Wissenschaftlern und Vorträge von Mitarbeitern, die ihre Projekte, Dissertationen oder Habilitationen vorstellen bzw. über den aktuellen Stand berichten.Vorträge
05.11.2018: Marvin Schmitt, HU Berlin: CRISP – A semantics for focus-sensitive particles in questions
I will present a novel formal semantics, called ``CRISP’’ which stands for ``Compositional Roothian Inquisitive Semantics with Presuppositions’’ which I developed in my Master's thesis. It integrates the focus semantics of Rooth (1985, 1992) with the compositional inquisitive semantics with presuppositions of Champollion, Ciardelli, and Roelofsen (2017). Such a semantics is motivated both empirically and theoretically (the latter topic I will ignore in this talk). Empirically, examples like the ones below necessitate such a semantics:- Does Mary only dance_F?
- Does only Mary_F dance?
- Antecedent: Peter dances. Does Mary_F dance too?
- Does Mary (only) dance_F, or sing_F too?
- Does Mary dance_F too, or only sing_F?
- Antecedent: Everybody smokes. Who drinks_F too?
- Antecedent: Mary smokes. # Who_F smokes too?
- # Does Mary dance_F or sing_F too?
I will first present the semantics, and then concentrate on (8) (the wh-question data is discussed in my thesis, but is very technical and necessitates a dynamic extension of CRISP which is still under construction). If time permits, I will also discuss the data point below which posits a challenge for the account developed in my Master's thesis, but also for Beck and Kim's (2006) theory of focus intervention effects in alternative questions:
- Mary plays guitar. Does she dance_F or sing_F too?
12.11.2018: Prof. Dr. Louise McNally, Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona: Multi-level syntax and semantics
Ladusaw (1985) distinguished between multi-stratal syntactic frameworks — those with multiple representations using a single theoretical vocabulary — and multi-level syntactic frameworks — those with representations using different theoretical vocabularies. Frameworks using only syntactic trees coupled with movement are an example of the former; Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), with its use of both F-Structure and Constituent-Structure, is an example of the latter. In this talk, which reports on incipient work, I explore the possibility of hooking up a multi-level semantics to a multi-level syntax with characteristics that are, in very general terms, similar to those of LFG. The multi-level semantics described here is distinct in nature from two-dimensional semantics in philosophy of language and multi-dimensional meaning representations in circulation since Potts (2005); it is closer in spirit to the intuition behind the Relevance Theoretic distinction between conceptual and procedural meaning. Its central tenet is that distinct representational languages should be used to model and compose interpretations for non-referential descriptive expressions, on the one hand, and for referential expressions (as I will define them in the talk), on the other. I will close by offering various reasons why I think such a semantics is worth exploring.26.11.2018: Annika Tjuka, HU Berlin: The belly of the cabbage – Body-part metaphors as a window into the mind
In this talk, I present a cross-linguistic study of body-part metaphors in object and landscape terms such as the leg of the chair and the foot of the mountain. Thus far, the cognitive processes underlying the mapping of body-part terms to object and landscape features have not been fully explored. Ullmann (1963) states “[s]ince metaphor is based on the perception of similarities, […] when an analogy is obvious, it should give rise to the same metaphor in various languages; hence the wide currency of expressions like the ‘foot of a hill’ or the ‘leg of a table’.” In addressing this claim, studies such as Levinson (1994) and Tilbe (2017) have found that the dimensions of shape, function and spacial configuration play a major role in the process. Their results show that Mesoamerican languages can differ in terms of which dimension is used most productively. For my MA thesis, I conducted the first systematic typological study that investigates the following questions:- How productively do languages use body-part terms to express parts of objects and landscapes?
- Of the three dimensions is one used more productively than the others?
- How much variation do we find between languages with respect to 1) and 2)?
leg/foot of the chair/tableare present throughout the entire set of languages, while others show a lot more variation across languages. In addition, I talk about the learnings and biases which were uncovered while conducting the study.
03.12.2018
10.12.2018: Paola Fritz Huechante, HU Berlin
17.12.2018: Julian Rott, HU Berlin
07.01.2018: Dick Hudson, London: Word order and phrases in a network
The talk will introduce a cognitive theory (Word Grammar) whose immediate goal is to model language as a symbolic network; the ultimate goal is to model language using general-purpose mental apparatus, without any special provision for language. This apparatus includes:- classified network links (e.g. ‘friend’)
- ‘isa’, which carries inheritance
- dependencies (e.g. ‘subject’) between words
- positional links: ‘location’, ‘landmark’, ‘before’, ‘start’
- default inheritance (e.g. if it’s a bird, it can fly; but if it’s a penguin, it can’t)
- node creation (e.g. for new experiences or new word tokens)
- basic word order (e.g. SVO)
- exceptional word order (e.g. extraction)
- phrasal boundaries (e.g. Welsh mutation)
- phrasal semantics (e.g. typical French house)
- as in phrase structure, the head word has a distinct node for each of its dependents (e.g. for ‘French house’)
- but as in dependency structure, this node represents a single word (a distinct token of the head word), related to other tokens of the word by a taxonomy, not a partonomy.