[PLing] Reminder: Two talks tomorrow

[Dalina Kallulli]

Dear colleagues,

This is just a reminder of two guest talks taking place tomorrow (Wednesday, December 11th) at the Department of Linguistics, which you are cordially invited to:

1. Professor Sam Wolfe (University of Oxford)
Title: The Romance Languages and Syntactic Variation and Change – Lessons from the Left Periphery
Time and place: Wednesday, December 11th, at 9:30, Sensengasse 3a, 1st floor, Seminarraum 2.
Abstract: This talk will outline some of the key research questions in studies of the Romance left periphery synchronically and diachronically, before highlighting the major empirical advances recent years have seen in our understanding of this aspect of Romance syntax. We will show how Romance has affected our understanding of how the left periphery can change over time and how it can vary synchronically. We will also explore evidence that left-peripheral movement is particularly susceptible to exogenous change in language- and dialect-contact situations.

2. Professor Ian Roberts (University of Cambridge (presenting joint work with myself)
Title: Parameters: Redundancy and Deficiency
Time and place: Wednesday, December 11th, at 16:45, Sensengasse 3a, 1st floor, Seminarraum 1.
Abstract: The Borer-Chomsky Conjecture (BCC) states that parametric variation reduces to (a subset of) formal features of (a subset of) functional heads. However, while we have a reasonable extensional idea of what such formal features are (e.g. Person, Number, Case, Tense, Aspect, Mood, wh, D, Q, …), though such lists are always incomplete, we have no adequate intensional definition to date. This arguably undermines the BCC, since without such a definition, strictly speaking no predictions can be made about the limits to typological variation. For example, the BCC would not prevent the postulation of a feature [±n]-ary Merge, whose positive value would allow multiple Merge to a single functional head creating a flat structure. Since it is currently assumed that binary Merge is invariant, we need to rule out such features. Adopting the definitions of Redundancy (ℜ) and Deficiency (𝔇) in Onea et al. (2023), we present an alternative to the BCC which addresses these issues. Our core proposal is given in (1):
(1) Parametric variation arises from the interaction of ℜ and 𝔇 of formal features of functional heads.

Best wishes,
Dalina Kallulli
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