[PLing] Workshop by Paul Meisenbichler on Times and Individuals (22nd & 23rd January)

[Melanie Loitzl]

Dear all,

Paul Meisenbichler will be giving a 2-day workshop on Times and 
Individuals next week. Please find the workshop information as well as 
the abstract below.

Dates, times & locations:
Day 1: Thursday, 22nd January 2026, 5 p.m., SR 8 (Sensengasse 3a, 5th 
floor)
Day 2: Friday, 23rd January 2026, 3 p.m., SR 3 (Sensengasse 3a, 1st 
floor)

For those who would like to participate online: 
https://univienna.zoom.us/j/65307053915?pwd=QeEyoOTLjrKzQ8tg3fbQKTMPTLaj9e.1
(The link for the zoom meeting will be the same for both days of the 
workshop.)

Registration in advance is not necessary - just stop by or join us 
online!

Title: Times and Individuals: Temporal semantics in the nominal domain

Abstract: This mini-course is a crash course on the temporal semantics 
of nouns (or DPs). Nouns share with verbs the property that their 
extension is sensitive to temporal information: in the same way that the 
verbal predicate "swim" picks out a different set of individuals at 
different evaluation times (its extension is the set of swimmers _at a 
given evaluation time_), the set picked out by a noun like "student" 
changes with time as well (its extension is the set of students_ at a 
given evaluation time_). Importantly, while verbs typically come with a 
dedicated grammatical system (involving tense and aspect) to determine 
their evaluation time, nouns seem to lack such a system (at least in 
languages like English and German). This raises several questions: If 
DPs do not have tense and aspect, what other (syntactic, semantic, 
pragmatic, lexical) factors determine the evaluation time of a noun? 
Does verbal tense influence the temporal interpretation of DPs? Does the 
temporal system of the DP have some of the properties of the verbal 
tense/aspect system or does it work in a completely different way? Are 
there languages with nominal tense, whether overtly or covertly? These 
and other questions will be addressed in the mini-course. As for 
prerequisites, I will assume basic knowledge of formal semantics as one 
finds in a standard introductory textbook (e.g., Heim & Kratzer 1998), 
including some basic understanding of intensional semantics (as one 
finds, for example, in Chapter 12 of the Heim & Kratzer textbook or in 
the first chapter of von Fintel & Heim's _Intensional Semantics_).

Best regards,
Melanie Loitzl
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