Orientierungsveranstaltung für Erstsemester (BA und MA Linguistik) am Mo, 15.11.2018 um 18:00 in Raum IG 411

(IG-Gebäude, Erdgeschoß, neben dem Foyer)

Erstsemesterfrühstück am Freitag 5.10.18, 10-14 Uhr in Raum IG 251 (IG-Gebäude, Erdgeschoß)

 

 

Vorträge

09.02.2017, 14:00-16:00, Psycholinguistics Colloquium

IG-Farbenhaus, IG 4.301

Elisabeth Verhoeven (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

Topic: Verb classes as predictors of syntactic behaviour: word order and backward binding 

Abstract:

Experiencer-object verbs are known to have exceptional syntactic properties. At least with a subset  of  these  verbs  (which  is  defined  by  agentivity),  the non-nominative  argument (experiencer) originates in a base position that is higher than the nominative argument (stimulus) (e.g. Belletti & Rizzi 1988, Pesetsky 1995, Landau 2010). This talk examines two predictions of this account with respect to (a) argument linearization and (b) backward binding. The putative preference for experiencer > stimulus is tested in a large corpus of written German, taking into account effects of further factors that are known to influence word order, namely animacy and givenness.  The obtained results indicate that at least a part of the experiencer-first effects are due to further triggers, in particular animacy. However, after substracting the effect of these factors the pure impact of the thematic properties remains and is necessary to explain the whole range of data. Furthermore, I will report the results of an experiment on backward binding with accusative and dative experiencer-object verbs in German which show that verb class (experiencer-object vs. agentive) has a significant effect on variable binding, both for dative and for accusative verbs. This result cannot be accounted for through accidental coreference and is not reducible to effects  of  sentence  aspect, the  latter  being  correlated  with  the  distinction  between experiencer-object and agentive verbs. These findings are evidence for backward binding as a genuine psych effect in German. 


24.07. - 04.08.2017 Summer School in Göttingen

There will be a summer school in Göttingen, Germany, from July 24th to August 4th, 2017. The subject is historical linguistics with a focus on 
speech acts and sentence types. Participants should have a background in diachronic syntax and/or semantics/pragmatics, preferably of Romance and Germanic languages.

Here is the link: http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/555484.html.

You can also consult the announcement on the Linguist List: 
http://linguistlist.org/summerschool/getSummerSchool.cfm?submissionid=36253317.