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<p>Everybody is cordially invited to join a talk by <b>Marcin
Wągiel</b> on <b>Wednesday, Dec 13th, 14:30</b></p>
<p>Location: <b>SR2</b>, 1st floor, Sensengasse 3a, 1090 Vienna</p>
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<p>Note: Marcin has also offered to give us a more thorough
introduction to mereotypology in the form of a two or three part
seminar in January, if there is interest. So if you want to check
out if mereotypology is your thing, this talk is a good occasion
to do so.<br>
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<h2>Structured Parthood in Language</h2>
<div>Marcin Wągiel (Masaryk University in Brno & University of
Wrocław)</div>
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<div class="elementToProof">Standard approaches to expressions
describing part-whole structures in language are grounded in
classical mereology, which is built upon the notion of parthood.
In this talk, I will argue that this is not enough to capture
certain linguistic data. I will discuss a number of linguistic
phenomena in the nominal domain calling for an analysis that
captures not only part-whole relations but also topological
arrangement of parts within a whole. Among others, I will
investigate entity partitives such `a half of that apple', Slavic
spatial collective nouns, e.g., Czech <i>list</i> `a leaf' `->
<i>listí</i> `foliage', and singulatives, e.g., Ukrainian <i>grad</i>
`hail' ~ <i>hradyna</i> `a hailstone', as well as Italian
irregular plurals, e.g., <i>osso</i> `a bone' ~ <i>ossi</i>
`bones' ~ <i>ossa</i> `(connected) bones (as in a skeleton)'. I
will demonstrate that all of these phenomena can be captured if
one adopts a more powerful theory of parts and wholes compared to
mereology. This theory is called mereotopology and it combines
standard mereology with topological notions such as connectedness
that allow for modeling various spatial configurations of
entities.
<pre class="x_moz-signature" cols="72">--
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Daniel Büring Institut für Sprachwissenschaft
Universität Wien Sensengasse 3a, Raum O6.05
1090 Wien/Vienna (Austria) +43 1 4277 41710
fax (Sekretariat): +43 1 4277 9417 +43 664 60277-41710
homepage.univie.ac.at/daniel.buring/ <a
class="x_moz-txt-link-abbreviated moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="mailto:daniel.buring@univie.ac.at" moz-do-not-send="true">daniel.buring@univie.ac.at</a></pre>
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