Colloquium: David Pesetsky (MIT)
Thursday 29.03.2007
Time: 17:00
Room: 1.516 GWZ, Beethovenstraße 15

Why nouns and verbs build different kinds of phrases

Typologisches Kolloquium: Christian Lehmann (University of Erfurt)
Wednesday 18.04.2007
Time: 17:00
Room: 1.516 GWZ, Beethovenstraße 15

Wurzeln, Stämme, Wortarten

Typologisches Kolloquium: Manideepa Patnaik (MPI EVA)
Wednesday 25.04.2007
Time: 17:00
Room: 1.516 GWZ, Beethovenstraße 15

Left-peripheral Complementizers in Juang

Typologisches Kolloquium: Miriam Butt & Tika Ram Paudyal (University of Konstanz)
Thursday 26.04.2007
Time: 14:30
Room: 1.516 GWZ, Beethovenstraße 15

Distribution of the Ergative in Nepali

Semantisches Kolloquium: Markus Egg (University of Groningen)
Thursday 26.04.2007
Time: 17:15
Room: 1.516 GWZ, Beethovenstraße 15

Unterspezifizierte Repräsentation von Diskurs

Colloquium: Malte Zimmermann (University of Potsdam)
Wednesday 20.06.2007
Time: 17:15
Room: 1.516 GWZ, Beethovenstraße 15

(Syntactic) Focus marking in Hausa and Bura: Movement or Clefting, and is there focus marking at all?

In this talk, I will discuss focus marking in two Chadic languages, Hausa and Bura, which - at first sight - seem to employ syntactic focus marking strategies. A closer look verifies this first impression for Hausa, where focused subjects and non-subjects alike are focus-marked by movement to the left periphery. The situation in Bura is different, however. I will argue that only non-subject focus is marked syntactically in form of a pseudocleft, while subject focus in Bura requires the insertion of a special (focus) copula element in T.  From a more general point of view, it is shown that between closely related languages (Hausa-Bura) and even within a single languages (Bura), there may be considerable variation concerning how to derive a marked (= non-canonical) structure that reflects the marked information-structural status of the focus constituent. In the final part of the talk, we will turn to the motivation of purported focus movement in Hausa. It is shown that a categorie's being focused is not sufficient for its being focus-marked by movement, as focus marking on non-subjects is optional. In addition, there is no 1:1-correspondence between syntactic focus marking and a stronger interpretation of the moved constituent as contrastive or identificational focus (E.Kiss 1998). First, all subjects, contrastive or not, must be marked by means of movement. Second, depending on context, contrastviely focused non-subjects sometimes remain in situ. These findings suggest that the application of syntactic movement is not triggered by abstract morpho-syntactic features, such as  [FOC] or [kontrast], which would need to be checkedby moveemnt (overt or covert). Rather, speakers of a language can choose a marked, but independently available construction, in order to mark parts of the utterance as unexpected, and therefore of a greater news potential for the hearer. The advantage of this more peripheral, processing-oriented approach to formal focus marking is that it generalizes easily to other ways of marking a structure as non-canonical, e.g. morphological or prosodic marking.

Colloquium: Sten Vikner und Eva Engels (University of Århus)
Wednesday 27.06.2007
Time: 18:15
Room: 4.415 GWZ, Beethovenstraße 15

Object Shift, Remnant VP-Topicalisation, and Optimality Theory

Holmberg (1997, 1999) assumes that Holmberg's generalisation (HG) is derivational, prohibiting Object Shift (OS) across an intervening non-adverbial element at any point in the derivation. Counterexamples to this hypothesis are given in Fox & Pesetsky (2005), which show that remnant VP-topicalisations are possible in Scandinavian as long as the VP-internal ordering relations are maintained. Extending the empirical basis concerning remnant VP-topicalisations, we argue that HG and the restrictions on object stranding result from the same, more general condition on order preservation. Considering this condition to be violable and to interact with various constraints on movement in an Optimality-theoretic fashion, we suggest an account for various asymmetries in the interaction between remnant VP-topicalisations and both OS and other movement operations (especially subject raising) as to their order preserving characteristics and stranding abilities.

Colloquium: Kleanthes Grohmann (University of Cyprus)
Wednesday 11.07.2007
Time: 18:15
Room: 4.415 GWZ, Beethovenstraße 15

Focus Systems and Perpetual Bifurcation: Some Initial Remarks

The empirical part of this talk will be differences in the syntactic expression of focus in Standard Modern Greek vs. Cypriot Greek. On the basis of the emerging generalization, that both languages make use of two of the three focus strategies attested cross-linguistically (in situ, movement, clefting), I will try and capture this aspect from deeper, biolinguistic principles, here called "perpetual bifurcation" (properly part of "three factors in language design"). Along the way a novel analysis of cleft structures will be presented, discussed, and extended.

Colloquium: Barbara Stiebels (ZAS Berlin)
Friday 13.07.2007
Time: 14:15
Room: 1.516 GWZ, Beethovenstraße 15

On the linking of sentential arguments

Most of the extensive literature on argument linking has dealt with the linking of individual arguments; sentential (state of affairs) arguments are often ignored. In my talk I want to highlight some commonalities and differences in the linking of individual and sentential arguments in terms of linkers, canonical/structural vs. non-canonical/non-structural linking, syntactic effects of oblique/lexically marked linking, linking types, and argument structure operations.

Colloquium: Silke Fischer (University of Stuttgart)
Wednesday 18.07.2007
Time: 18:15
Room: 4.415 GWZ, Beethovenstraße 15

Binding and Local Optimization

In a local derivational approach we are restricted in two ways. On the one hand, we do not know the structure that has not yet been built up; on the other hand, great parts of the derivation that have already been completed are rendered unaccessible by constraints like the Ph(r)ase Impenetrability Condition. Thus, it seems to be problematic to integrate binding into a local derivational theory because it is not a strictly local phenomenon (cf. pronominal binding or long distance anaphora), and furthermore the locality degree of the binding relation determines the shape of the bound element (simple or complex anaphor or pronoun). Hence, the solution cannot just be to split up the non-local relation into several local ones, as it is done in the case of successive-cyclic wh-movement -- for binding, something more needs to be said.
The solution I want to propose is based on the following assumptions: (i) binding corresponds to feature checking in a local spec-spec configuration; i.e., the designated bound element x moves successive-cyclically to its checking position, a position in which it is at the same time accessible as its antecedent; (ii) the concrete realization of x is determined in the course of the derivation: x is equipped with a realization matrix that contains its potential realizations (concrete anaphoric or pronominal forms); (iii) after the completion of each phrase, optimization takes place and might delete forms from x's realization matrix; (iv) after checking has taken place and the matrix has thus reached its final form, the concrete realization of x can finally be determined in a post-syntactic process.

Colloquium: Wolfgang Sternefeld (University of Tübingen)
Friday 20.07.2007
Time: 14:15
Room: 4.415 GWZ, Beethovenstraße 15

Heute kommt Wolfgang und diskutiert mit uns...

... ueber die sogenannte Subjektlückenkonstruktion. Diese zeichnet sich dadurch aus, dass sie aus zwei Konjunkten besteht, zB. (a) wann kommt Wolfgang + (b) und diskutiert mit uns? Der Gag an der Sache ist nun der, dass im zwieten Konjukt das Subjekt fehlen muss: (b') und (*er) diskutiert (*er) mit uns. Im Zentrum der Diskussion stehen die weiteren Eigenschaften der Konstruktion, die in der Literatur seit Hoehle auch als asymmetrische Koordination bezeichnet wird. Der talk stellt die Analyse der Konstruktion aus Sternefeld (2006) vor und vergleicht diesen Ansatz mit der soeben von Ingo Reich eingereichten Habilitationsschrift zur Subjektlückenkonstruktion.

Lit.:
Hoehle, Tilman 1983: Subjektluecken in Koordinationen. Mskr. Tübingen
Reich, Ingo 2007: Asymmetrische Koordination im Deutschen. Habil.schrift Tübingen
Sternefeld, Wolfgang 2006: Syntax. Bd 2. Stauffenburg Verlag Tübingen