The online colloquium is intended as a venue for researchers to present work that is at an early stage or ongoing, as well as more developed ideas. Please contact Heidi Klockmann if you would like to request a slot for presenting. The colloquium will be held monthly on Zoom on Mondays from 2.15pm - latest 4pm CET (partial slot presentations are also welcome), and Zoom links will be distributed through the mailing list (subscribe here).
October 6: Colin Davis (Nord University)
November 3: Elsi Kaiser (USC)
December 1: Andrew Weir (NTNU): Strange ellipses along movement paths: do they work the way Andrew thinks <they work>?
I observe and analyze a cross-linguistic pattern regarding morpheme order in superlative adjectives. Previous work has observed that in some languages, superlative adjectives are morphologically built from comparative ones, such that the superlative morpheme appears to combine with what would otherwise be a comparative adjective. If morphology realizes syntactic structures, as argued in theories like Distributed Morphology, we expect that at least some of the time, morphology will reveal the influence of the same principles that we observe in syntax. One proposed constraint on syntactic structures is the Final-over-Final Condition (FOFC): A head-initial phrase cannot be dominated by a head final phrase (within the same "extended projection"). I argue that the order of morphemes in the superlative adjectives in question, across a variety of unrelated languages, aligns with the predictions of the FOFC.
This talk discusses the Spanish equivalent of verbs like (1), which I will call 'berry verbs' (Aronoff 1976).
(1) in-stitute, re-stitute, con-stitute, de-stitute, pro-stitute...
Berry verbs are characterised by three main properties: (i) they lack a stable (conceptual) semantic contribution, (ii) they contain a segmentable prefix but cannot function at all without a prefix (*stitute) and (iii) the verbal component behaves in morphology as a 'normal' verb in formal terms, selecting theme vowels, determining irregularity patterns, etc.
In this talk I will present preliminary results of a Nanosyntactic analysis of this type of formations. I will argue that berry verbs lack a root constitutent (which explains (i) above), where the verbal formant corresponds to the Aktionsart-defining sequence (which explains (iii)) and the prefix is base merged in the place where a root would normally be introduced (which explains (ii) via ancillary assumptions about the locative nature of argument structure).
I furthermore show that berry verbs have a stable structural semantics, where one can see that the verbal component defines an invariable Aktionsart constituent and at least some prefixes define a stable argument structure constituent. This will lead me to propose a more abstract decomposition of Ramchand's (2008) heads that is closer to Piñón (1997) in taking points and extensions as its basic building blocks.
What do the left periphery and bird flocking have in common?
At first glance, nothing. The former is a structural domain in syntax associated with discourse-related elements, while the latter describes how large flocks of birds coordinate movement into complex shapes that shift in seconds. Yet, in this talk, I argue that both can be understood as complex systems.
A complex system consists of many interacting components where global patterns emerge from local interactions, without centralized control (Mitchell 2009; Ladyman & Wiesner 2020). Examples include bird flocking, traffic flow, and weather systems, where simple individual-level rules lead to unpredictable yet structured behavior at a larger scale.
Traditionally, Rizzi’s cartographic model (Rizzi 1997, 2004) has modeled the left periphery as a fixed hierarchy of projections: a predefined blueprint speakers use to construct grammatical sentences.
In this talk, I explore an alternative: instead of a fixed blueprint, word order emerges dynamically through local interactions among syntactic elements. Conceptualizing the left periphery as a self-organizing system, I draw on complexity science to model word order through agent-based interactions, where local rules collectively shape larger syntactic patterns. Unlike hierarchical frameworks that assume a rigid, predefined structure, this approach allows syntax to emerge incrementally, offering a more flexible and context-sensitive account of word order.
To demonstrate this, I present a computer simulation that I have built in NetLogo, a platform for modeling how individual agents interact to produce complex patterns. The model shows how simple local rules can generate observed linguistic patterns in the left periphery, providing a computationally simpler and conceptually more adaptable alternative to traditional cartographic approaches.
Icelandic nouns inflect for two values of number and four values of case, for an 8-celled paradigm, with variation across three genders and a major declension class distinction, the strong and the weak; the strong declensions include several minor classes with various patterns of syncretism across classes. If definite forms are included, the paradigms consist of 16 cells for each noun (exemplified by ‘horse’):
hestur___hesturinn hestar___hestarnir
hest_____hestinn hesta____hestana
hesti____hestinum hestum__hestunum
hests____hestsins hesta____hestanna
Icelandic adjectives, pronouns, and various determiners inflect for 3 genders x 2 numbers x 4 cases, for a 24-celled paradigm, and in addition the adjectives have a weak declension when used attributively in definite noun phrases.
Syncretisms reduce the number of distinct forms in the paradigms; for example in the paradigm for ‘horse’ above, there are only 15 distinct forms, because the indefinite accusative plural hesta and the indefinite genitive plural hesta are identical. However, they are distinguished in other declensions, for example the irregular noun maður ‘man’: accusative plural menn, genitive plural manna, so the syncretism seen in hestur does not hold of all strong masculine nouns.
There are many elements with irregular paradigms, including pronouns, demonstratives, and numerals, yet there are system-wide syncretisms which are observed even by the irregular forms. These systematic syncretisms provide insight into the feature interactions behind them. I combine a Minimalist feature-based syntax with DM-style late insertion in two stages (as in Bye & Svenonius 2012), with what seems to me to be a satisfying result. I also illuminate some advantages to a span-based treatment.
In this talk, I examine the external and internal syntax of instrumental indem-clauses in German. As a subordinating conjunction, indem takes a finite TP as its complement and triggers verb final position, cf. [1]:
[1] Max hat Maria beleidigt,
Max have.3SG Maria offend.PTCP
[CP [C0 indem] er sie vollkommen ignoriert hat].
indem he her.ACC completely ignore.PTCP have.3SG
‘Max offended Maria by completely ignoring her.’
Semantically, indem introduces, as Sæbo (2011: 1435) puts it, an action as an instrument of another action. In [1], the action of ignoring is understood as an instrument of the action of offending. Accordingly, the main task of the instrumental clause is to elaborate on the content of the matrix clause by providing more specific content (cf. Behrens & Fabricius-Hansen 2002 and Bücking 2014 for more details).
I provide evidence showing that instrumental indem-clauses can operate only on the content level and that they cannot be interpreted epistemically, nor can they modify a speech act (contrary to how many other types of adverbial clauses behave). Furthermore, I argue that although indem-clauses are restricted to a particular interpretation, they can attach at two distinct heights in the matrix clause. If they are analyzed as central adverbial clauses, they attach as TP adjuncts. If, on the other hand, instrumental indem-clauses are treated as peripheral adverbial clauses, they are JP adjuncts (Krifka 2023). Main evidence for the analysis comes from: i) variable binding and Principle C effects, ii) movement to the left periphery of the matrix clause, and iii) licensing conditions of weak and strong root phenomena (Frey 2023).
References
Behrens, Bergljot & Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen. 2002. Connectives in contrast: A discourse semantic study of Elaboration based on corpus research. In Hilde Hasselgård, Stig Johansson, Bergljot Behrens & Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen (eds.), Information Structure in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective (Language and Computers 39), 45–61. Leiden: Brill.
Bücking, Sebastian. 2014. Elaborating on events by means of English by and German indem. Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 10. 19–36.
Frey, Werner. 2023. On the categorical status of different dependent clauses. In Jutta Hartmann & Angelika Wöllstein (eds.), Propositionale Argumente im Sprachvergleich: Theorie und Empirie / Propositional Arguments in Cross-Linguistic Research: Theoretical and Empirical Issues (Studien zur deutschen Sprache 84), 363–408. Tübingen: Narr.
Krifka, Manfred. 2023. Layers of assertive clauses: Propositions, judgements, commitments, acts. In Jutta Hartmann & Angelika Wöllstein (eds.), Propositionale Argumente im Sprachvergleich: Theorie und Empirie / Propositional Arguments in Cross-Linguistic Research: Theoretical and Empirical Issues (Studien zur deutschen Sprache 84), 115–182. Tübingen: Narr.
Sæbø, Kjell Johan. 2011. Adverbial clauses. In Klaus von Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn & Paul Portner (eds.), Semantics. An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft / Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science 33/2), 1420–1441. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.