SoSe 2023

Turkish is one of the few European languages that do not belong to the
Indo-European language family. Together with around 40 closely related
languages like Uigur, Azerbaijani or Tartar, it constitutes the Turkic language
family (sometimes linked to the Mongolian and Tungusic languages in the
hypothetical Altaic family). The mayority of its around 80 million speakers
live in Turkey. However, speakers of Turkish form minorities in many
neighbouring countries and also have migrated to a number of Western countries,
not least to Germany, within the last half century.

We will investigate all areas of Turkish grammar starting with the sound
system, covering derivational and inflectional morphology, the syntax and
lexicon of the language. Turkish is often used as a textbook example of the
agglutinating morphological type, as nominal and verbal stems are often
accompanied by a large number of suffixes each encoding a single grammatical
category. Within these (sometimes very complex) word forms a
morpho-phonolocical assimilation process, referred to as vowel harmony, can be
observed. Another interesting feature is the heavy use of non-finite verb forms
in complex sentences. Furthermore, the so-called Turkish Language Reform is a
prime example of language planning and language politics, which we will also
address in the course.

This course is an introduction to the study of meaning in the context of generative linguistics. The perspective we'll adopt is that of truth-conditional, compositional semantics, building on the foundational work of philosopher-logicians such as Gottlob Frege, Alfred Tarski, and Richard Montague. The notion of "meaning" we'll explore is somewhat rarefied - concretely, we'll develop the idea that to know the meaning of a sentence, is to know the conditions under which it is true. This perspective has been both influential and incredibly fruitful, laying the foundations for research in formal semantics right up to the present day. Although some knowledge of elementary logic and set theory will be useful, we'll spend the beginning of the course brushing up on the necessary mathematical background, before diving into semantic analyses of particular linguistic phenomena, such as logical connectives, quantificational expressions, pronouns, etc.

In this class, we investigate the semantics and pragmatics of questions. We will examine a large variety of questions: polar questions (eg, Do you like chocolate ice-cream?), alternative questions (eg, Do you like chocolate or strawberry ice-cream?), wh-questions (eg, What kind of ice-cream do you like?), and non-canonical questions (eg, You like chocolate ice-cream?). Several classic and modern semantic theories are introduced: alternative semantics, partition semantics, and inquisitive semantics. Additionally, we will explore the role questions play in analyzing other linguistic phenomena such as focus, discourse coherence, rhetorical relations, and informational oddness. 

Suppose there is a heap of rice sitting in front of you. If you remove a single grain of rice from this heap, you surely still have a heap of rice; if ye remove a grain again, then ye still have a heap. But if you remove gains one by one and apply the previous principle at each stage, you will end up concluding that the final grain is also a heap of rice. Vague predicates such as "heap" and "tall" give rise to so-called "Sorites Paradox". In this class, we will survey some of the most prominent theories on vagueness and Sorites Paradox: many-valued logic, supervaluation and subvaluation, nihilism, epistemicism, and contextualism. In addition, we will also examine some of the empirical work on vagueness.

 In this course, we will critically explore some of the most foundational questions in the study of meaning, from classical dilemmas (e.g. Does the language you speak influence the way you see the world?)  to exciting new developments (e.g. What does ChatGPT know, if anything, about meaning and understanding?), stretching the boundaries of the field (e.g, is linguistic information different from other types of information and how?). The set of papers we will explore covers a variety of interconnected topics, and includes both theoretical and experimental work. In particular we will explore three main foundational questions:

1. Language, thought, and reality: what is the relationship between language, thought, and reality? Does speaking a language influence the way you see the world? Is language a reflection of the world? Is language a cultural artifact? 
   
2. Meaning and machines: what do large language models (e.g. BERT, GPT3, …) now popularized by ChatGPT and others know, if anything, about meaning and understanding? and how does it relate to what humans know? What are the implications of this?
   
3. Language and cognition: how much of our knowledge of meaning is specific to language and how much is rather more general cognition? Relatedly, can we apply the precise and effective methods we use to study linguistic meanings to information conveyed non-linguistically (e.g. gestures, visual animations …) and what does this tell us about our knowledge of meaning? 
   

Dieser Kurs ist Teil des Projekts "Urbane Feldforschung in Düsseldorf". Die Studierenden lernen Feldforschungsmethoden zur Sprachdokumentation und -beschreibung kennen und wenden diese auf verschiedene in Düsseldorf gesprochenen Sprachen an. Im Rahmen des Projekts tauchen sie in die Sprachen und Sprachgemeinschaften ein, erfahren in der Interaktion mit Sprecher*innen linguistische Forschung hautnah, und dokumentieren ihre Ergebnisse. Es sind keine Vorkenntnisse über Minderheitensprachen oder Feldforschung erforderlich, alle Methoden und Themen werden auf einem für alle Teilnehmer*innen angemessenen Niveau eingeführt.

Natural languages, such as English, have rich means to express quantities by using quantifiers, e.g., most, many, some, at least 1, few, fewer than half. Quantifiers differ in terms of complexity, logical properties associated with them, or how precise their meaning boundaries are (aka vagueness). Moreover, some quantifiers like many and few are context-dependent. For example, "There are many people in the supermarket." refers to different numerosities these days than during lockdown.During this course, we will try to answer some of the many questions about quantifiers: How do people process quantifiers? Why are some quantifiers more difficult to process than others? How do children learn quantifiers? Which quantifiers are easy to learn? How does linguistic knowledge about quantifiers interact with other cognitive systems? Can quantifiers be mapped on specific numbers?

Negation is one of the most fundamental concepts, essential in everyday communication. Every natural language has some means to express negation. For centuries, negation has been an object of theoretical investigation for philosophers, logicians, and linguists. More recently, it has become a popular topic for experimental psychologists and cognitive scientists. The studies on negation have also practical applications in education or consultancy. Psychological studies on negation established that sentences containing negation are more difficult to process than affirmative sentences. Some models of negation explain this finding by postulating that the sentence with negation (e.g, "I am not guilty") is represented in two steps. In the first step, the so-called to-be-negated content (e.g, "I am guilty") must be represented. In the second step, the negation is processed. These models explain also why sentences with negation are often remembered contrary to the intention. For example, when you say that you "are not guilty" it could be remembered as you "being guilty" rather than "being innocent".During this course, we will set the theoretical background for studies on negation and discuss different models of negation processing, experimental findings about negation, and their practical applications.

Die Veranstaltung ist verpflichtend für alle Masterstudierenden, die eine Übung im Rahmen des Master Teamprojekts leiten.

In dieser Veranstaltungen lernen Sie Techniken kennen, Tutorien erfolgreich zu gestalten, und Sie können sich untereinander und mit der Dozentin über den Verlauf Ihres eigenen Tutoriums austauschen.

Antosch-Bardohn, J., Beege, B., & Primus, N. (2016). Tutorien erfolgreich gestalten. Ein Handbuch für die Praxis. Brill/ Schöningh.

https://katalog.ulb.hhu.de/Record/990036938320206443

Lässt sich an der Struktur einer Sprache ihr soziologischer Entwicklungszusammenhang ablesen? Haben Sprachen, die in zerklüfteten Bergregionen gesprochen werden, systematisch andere Strukturen als Sprachen, die in weitläufigen Savannen beheimatet sind? Wir wirkt sich die Größe einer Sprechergemeinschaft und deren Kontaktsituation zu anderen Sprachen auf die Grammatik aus?

Diese und weitere Fragen bearbeiten wir in diesem Kurs. Dabei erlernen wir grundlegende Fähigkeiten der quantitativen Typologie und reflektieren die jüngeren Entwicklungen in der vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft.

In diesem Kurs lernen wir die Grundlagen der Syntax kennen. Anhand der Grundsatzdebatte über Worststellungsmuster in den Sprachen der Welt entwickeln wir die Grundbegriffe und Fähigkeiten, die für die sprachwissenschaftliche Forschung zentral sind. Dazu gehören die Diagnose von Wortarten und Argumentstrukturen, die Analyse von Phrasen und Sätzen in verschiedenen Theorien, und die Bestimmung der Länge syntaktischer Dependenzen.