General Linguistics Colloquium (WiSe 2026/2027)

The morphological realization of plurality in the nominal domain is well-studied in the literature. For instance, English employs several exponents for realizing plural in the nominal domain, with /-z/ [s] being the elsewhere form. The choice of exponent is determined by the √ROOT, such that in the context of √OX the allomorph [en] is inserted (Marantz 2001; Embick 2015; see also Gouskova and Bobaljik (2025) for a recent overview). In contrast, the realization of plural on pronouns remains controversial. It has been argued that pronouns do not employ the same plural morphology as nouns, a difference taken to reflect a fundamental distinction between nominal and pronominal plurality (Ghomeshi and Massam 2020). By contrast, Harbour (2016) proposes a uniform account, in which the noun/pronoun distinction is orthogonal to plural semantics. This study presents a detailed cross-linguistic investigation of the morphological realization of plurality on nouns and pronouns. I show that (i) elsewhere plural exponents attested on nouns can also surface on pronouns, and (ii) they do so to varying degrees, thereby exhibiting PERSON-conditioned plural allomorphy (for this kind of allomorphy see also Zwicky 1977; Noyer 1992; Harbour 2016). I demonstrate that PERSON-conditioned plural allomorphy exhibits systematicity that implicates natural classes of PERSON features and necessitates a decompositional account of PERSON. The analysis is couched within the Distributed Morphology framework.

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In this talk, I examine the diachronic development of the Georgian phasal enclitic =gha. In Modern Georgian, the particle has two main uses, which I descriptively refer to as residual (1a) and late-onset (1b). In residual uses, =gha identifies what remains after a reduction. In late-onset uses, it identifies a relatively late stage at which a proposition becomes true.
(1) a. ori kandidati=gha aris.
two candidate=gha be.prs.3sg
‘Only two candidates are left.’
b. akhla=gha ga-v-ige.
now=gha pv-1sg-understand.aor
‘Only now did I understand.’'
Both interpretations are already attested in Old and Middle Georgian. However, the historical distribu- tion of =gha is considerably broader, including uses in continuative (2a) and additive (2b) environments, among others.
(2) a. akamomde tsotskhal=gha ars-a sats’q’alobeli igi?
up.to.now alive=gha be.prs.3sg-Q poor DEM
‘Is that poor woman still alive?’ (Shushanik, 476-482; GNC2650435)
b. upalo, vetskhl-man man shen-man khuti=gha skhua-i sasts’ori q’o.
lord silver-ERG DEM.ERG your-ERG five=gha other-NOM unit make.AOR.3SG
‘Lord, your money produced another five units.’ (Luke 19:18; GNC 1838136)
Drawing on diachronic data from the Georgian National Corpus (GNC, http://gnc.gov.ge/gnc), I examine the licensing environments of =gha across Old, Middle, and Modern Georgian. I investigate how far existing analyses of phasal and scalar particles (Löbner 1989, Beck 2020, Neeleman & Van De Koot 2022, Persohn 2024) can account for both its broader historical distribution and the restrictions observed in Modern Georgian.

Beck, S. 2020. Readings of scalar particles: noch/still. Linguistics and Philosophy 43(1). 1–67. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10988-018-09256-1.
Löbner, S. 1989. German Schon- Erst- Noch: An integrated analysis. Linguistics and Philosophy 12(2). 167–212. https : //doi.org/10.1007/BF00627659.
Neeleman, A. & H. Van De Koot. 2022. The interpretation and distribution of temporal focus particles. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 40(3). 793–835. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-021-09526-x.
Persohn, B. 2024. The polyfunctionality of ’still’ expressions: A cross-linguistic exploration (Research on Comparative Grammar 4). Berlin: Language Science Press. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.11381664.

It has often been suggested that there is a trade-off between the complexity of different parts of grammar, such that for example English uses its complex prosody to mark information because its morpho-syntax is very restricted. In this talk, I present a research project trying to find such trade-offs experimentally, both within a single language and by comparing English, Mandarin, Finnish and Kalaallisut with the same methodology to assess this assumed causality.

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Linguistic diversity is a multidimensional phenomenon that can be studied across and within languages, as well as at different levels of linguistic structure. The presentation will review the main approaches to measuring linguistic diversity, with particular emphasis on the methodological considerations involved.
The discussion will focus on three complementary dimensions of diversity: a) variety i.e. the number of linguistic categories; b) balance i.e. their relative distribution, and; c) disparity i.e. the degree of difference between them. This framework offers a way to compare and integrate different approaches, including measures of language richness and evenness, entropy-based indices, linguistic distance, typological and phylogenetic methods and corpus-based measures.
The presentation will examine how quantitative measures, such as Shannon entropy and Hill numbers, extend simple language counts by accounting for differences in speaker populations. It will also consider how dependency-parsed corpora can be used to study diversity at the lexical, morphological and syntactic levels.
Finally, the talk will address key methodological challenges, including the distinction between languages and dialects, the reliability of speaker statistics, the treatment of multilingualism, the effects of corpus size, the selection of linguistic features and distance measures and the lack of consistency in the terminology and metrics used to quantify linguistic diversity.

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German modal particles are typically described as prosodically weak, yet doch can show noticeable prominence in spontaneous speech. This talk asks whether such variation is incidental or whether it reflects differences in what a doch-utterance is doing in discourse. Focusing on the relation between prosodic prominence and discourse function, the analysis points to a picture that is more systematic and at the same time more complex than it might initially appear. The talk thus explores what prosody can reveal about the pragmatic role of doch in interaction.

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no talk. Students are welcome to participate to the accreditation of the study programs.

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