JOHNSON COLLOQUIUM

Kyle Johnson (UMass Amherst) will give a colloquium this Friday (May 20) on “Building a trace”:

Many accounts of movement invoke a special rule of semantic interpretation that causes the lowest position in the movement chain to be interpreted as a variable bound by the term in the highest position of the movement chain. I will examine a model of movement that moves away from that conception of its semantics. DP Movement on this alternative view puts together a garden variety definite description with another garden variety DP and merges the definite description in a position c-commanded by the position the other DP occupies. The way these two DPs are put together involves giving them a shared part — that is, it uses multidominant phrase markers. I will demonstrate this alternative view of movement with an analysis of two case studies of Quantifier Raising. This is joint work with Danny Fox.

As usual, the colloquium will start at 2 pm in Humanities 1 (Room 210). There will be a potluck to follow in the evening.