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Linguistics Department Open House
9:30-10:30AM October 31st 2007- HALLOWEEN
4th Floor, Lorch Hall

Wear a costume to be entered into our prize drawing!

Free Donuts and Cider from Washtenaw Dairy

Foundations of Generative Grammar, and Beyond: A student-faculty interactive

Tonight, Tuesday Oct 9 several UM syntacticians will take part in an interactive discussion at Eastern Michigan University to discuss foundational issues in generative grammar.

Speakers include:

Marlyse Baptista (Ph.D, Harvard)
http://www.ling.lsa.umich.edu/fac/

Sam Epstein (Ph.D, UCONN):
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/ling/epstein/

John Hale (Ph.D, Johns Hopkins University)
http://www.msu.edu/~jthale/

Hisa Kitahara (PhD, Harvard)
Dr. Kitahara will be visiting the Department of Linguistics at the Unviersity of
Michigan for two years beginning Fall 2007 from Keio University, Japan.

Acrisio Pires (Ph.D, U. of Maryland)
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/ling/pires/

The (MSU) Linguistics Department Colloquium Series 2007

Dr. Acrisio Pires
University of Michigan

Thursday, September 27th
4:30 PM in Wells 607

The Syntax of Wh-in-situ and Common Ground

In this talk I will present the results of collaborative work showing that single-question wh-in-situ occurs in English under specific discourse-pragmatics (1)-(2). I will argue these questions are possible only when the information being requested is part of the Common Ground (CG) (Stalnaker 1978). The same analysis constrains wh-in-situ in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) (1c)-(2c), restricting the optionality of wh-in-situ. It will then be proposed that both languages display a [+wh] complementizer that does not trigger wh-movement. This is supported by the fact that wh-in-situ in both languages is not subject to the same locality conditions associated with wh-in- situ in a language such as French, and is also not an instance of head-movement.

(1) a. A: I made desserts.
b. B: You made what kind of desserts?
c. B: Você fez que tipo de sobremesa?

(2) a. B. Attorney: Tell me what happened on January 1, 2005 at 4 pm
A. Defendant: I was driving along Andrews Avenue.
b. B. Attorney: And the police officer said you were traveling about how fast?
c. B: E o policial disse que você estava dirigindo em que velocidade?

The Gods Must Be Crazy
Thursday, 27 Sept, 7:30 PM
Room 403 Lorch Hall

A short presentation on click languages by Ryan Rozycki will precede a
showing of the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” Dessert and coffee
provided by the linguistics club.