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<p>Dear colleagues,
<br>
<br>
this is a reminder that Jonathan Bobaljik (Harvard University)
will give a talk in the <i>Theoretical Linguistics Colloquium</i>
on Friday, 21.6., 16:00, Sensengasse 3A, Seminarraum 3. Title
& Abstract are attached below.
<br>
<br>
We're looking forward to seeing you there!
<br>
<br>
Best,
<br>
Iva Kovač, Valerie Wurm & Magdalena Lohninger
<br>
<br>
<br>
TITLE: Structuring Itelmen Word Order
<br>
<br>
ABSTRACT:
<br>
Word order in Itelmen (itl, Chukotko-Kamchatkan) is quite flexible
and has not been previously studied in any depth. This talk draws
on a small text corpus to investigate the role of Information
Structure in conditioning the distribution of object-verb and
verb-object (OV,VO) word orders. Although speakers in elicitation
contexts generally assent to both orders and describe them as
meaning the same, a robust pattern emerges in the corpus: O
denoting new discourse entities are overwhelmingly preverbal,
while given objects may occur pre- or post-verbally. In this talk,
I argue that these results have a variety of implications: (i) the
observed pattern converges with other evidence that Itelmen is an
OV language and provides an argument that the VO order in Itelmen
is not simply a calque from Russian, (ii) the
Information-Structural evidence provides a means to resolve a
syntactic puzzle about the analysis of perception verb complements
in Itelmen, (iii) the pattern contributes to larger debates about
the syntactic/grammatical representation of new versus given (or
topic and focus), potentially arguing against “focus-movement”
(cartographic) perspectives, and (iv) Information Structure
provides a better characterization of the OV/VO alternations than
competing accounts of such alternations that appeal to
extra-grammatical communicative efficiency, notably those rooted
in ambiguity avoidance with animate objects.
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Magdalena Lohninger
Linguist, University of Vienna
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:magdalena.lohninger@univie.ac.at">magdalena.lohninger@univie.ac.at</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://lenalohninger.wordpress.com/">https://lenalohninger.wordpress.com/</a></pre>
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