[PLing] Talk by Prof. Idan Landau, 17 April, 18:30h

[Iva Kovač]

Dear PLing-members,

We are delighted to announce a talk by Prof. Idan Landau (Ben-Gurion 
University) entitled _Reciprocal Shift and Symmetry Breaking_ (see below 
for the abstract), which will take place on Monday, 17 April 2023, at 
18:30h, in Hörsaal 1 (Sensengasse 3A).

We look forward to seeing many of you there!

Kind regards,
Iva Kovač & Susi Wurmbrand

***

_Reciprocal Shift and Symmetry Breaking_

Bipartite reciprocal phrases are common in Indo-European, Indo-Aryan and 
Semitic languages. When occurring with a case particle (K) or a 
preposition (P), K/P intervenes between the two units of the reciprocal 
phrase, producing an otherwise exceptional K/P-medial KP/PP. While 
diachronic descriptions successfully trace the origin of the two units 
to separate constituents which have gradually gotten closer, they fall 
short of explaining the stability of the K/P-medial outcome. Based on a 
detailed study of the Hebrew reciprocal construction, I argue that its 
two components are generated as sisters but cannot persist as such 
because they yield an illicit point of symmetry - an unlabeled phrase. 
The first member thus raises past K/P, breaking the symmetry, thereby 
allowing the complement of K/P to be labeled. The analysis is supported 
by data from intra- and crosslinguistic variation and predicts 
systematic correlations between the degree of symmetry between the two 
units of the reciprocal phrase and their separability.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.univie.ac.at/pipermail/pling/attachments/20230321/f7a6036d/attachment.html>