Linguistics Graduate Students Association

Putting our heads together: Icelandic deverbal event nouns and allosemy Grimshaw (1990) showed that when an event noun is derived from a verb, it is systematically ambiguous. In the “Complex Event Nominal” (CEN), eyðilegging 'destruction' refers to an event and inherits argument structure from the verb (as in eyðilegging borgarinnar var hræðilegur atburður 'the destruction of the town was … Read More

Ungrammaticality from triviality: deriving selectional restrictions of attitude verbs It's commonly assumed that ungrammaticality is a syntactic notion and should receive a purely syntactic explanation. Yet there are many proposals appealing to squarely semantic considerations in order to account for certain cases of ungrammaticality. In this seminar meeting, we will first discuss one particular strategy … Read More

Witness protection: A unified semantics for additive particles in assertions and questions The English additive particle also can appear in assertions and polar questions, but not in canonical wh-questions: (1)  Mary danced all night. a. John also danced. b. Did John also dance? c. #Who also danced? It has been suggested that when also appears … Read More

Rethinking Questions We are actively trying to understand how to account for the distribution and interpretation of embedded questions: Why do know and wonder embed them but not (usually) think? Why do we have to hedge and add (usually) to statements like the previous one? And why does know plus a question imply belief, when … Read More

The shape, meaning, and sound of factivity In this talk grounded in Turkish data, I present empirical evidence that the factive inference must be derived and not encoded in the meaning of verbs and complementizers, and propose a unified syntax and semantics that derives it. Finally, I show that a contrast in intonation between factive and non-factive attitude … Read More

Semantic research in the signed modality  This seminar will provide an overview of aspects of the semantic research in sign languages, taking the recent discussions on indexical pointing used for referent tracking as a case study. We will identify and discuss the main challenges and limitations of research in this domain, as well as whether … Read More