Events

• Mon

  23

  Mar

  2026

  Didier Demolin (Université Sorbonne nouvelle, CNRS & Rhodes University Makhanda) & Francisco Mendes (Federal University of Brasilia) - "Acoustic features and grammatical structures of Muriqui vocalizations"

  3:00 pmBlandijn 2 3.30 (Camelot)

  Vocal communication of the Muriqui

  Abstract:
  What can we learn from animal communication, if we set this issue in terms of evolution? Comparisons with animal communication lead to a better understanding of some of the principles underlying human languages. Muriqui (Brachyteles hypoxantus) show that the acoustics of their vocalizations are generated from a set limited features in addition to showing non-linear characters in their voice source. A close examination of the communication system of the muriqui also shows that the recombination of discrete elements in part of their vocal communication shows both recursion and grammatical structure.

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• Mon

  20

  Apr

  2026

  Annachiara Clementelli - t.b.a.

  3:00 pm

Event Information:

• Thu

  15

  Jun

  2017

  Multiple subjects across categories: Evidence from Modern Standard Arabic

  1:00 pmGrote vergaderzaal, 3de verdieping Blandijn

  Dialing talk: Fayssal Tayalati en Lieven Danckaert (Université de Lille 3), "Multiple subjects across categories: Evidence from Modern Standard Arabic"

  In this talk we focus on a particular type of tough-construction in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), illustrated in (1)-(2). In these examples we see a DP (bracketed), followed by an adjective (underscored) and a deverbal noun. Attached to this last element is a resumptive pronoun (glossed as ‘RP’) which corefers with the bracketed DP.
  (1) [hāḏā l-kitābu]i mumtiʿun qirāʾatu-hui
  this the-book.ᴍ.sɢ.ɴᴏᴍ pleasant.ᴍ.sɢ.ɴᴏᴍ read.f.sɢ.ɴᴏᴍ-ʀᴘ.ᴍ.sɢ
  ‘This book is pleasant to read.’ (= predicative reading, root clause)
  (2) [[al-ʿimāratu]i [ṣ-ṣaʿbu bayʿu-hāi]] bīʿat ʾaẖīran
  the-building.f.sɢ.ɴᴏᴍ the-difficult.ᴍ.sɢ.ɴᴏᴍ sell.ᴍ.sɢ.ɴᴏᴍ-ʀᴘ.f.sɢ was.sold finally
  ‘[The building which is difficult to sell] was finally sold.’ (= attributive reading, DP)
  A key property of these structures concerns the agreement morphology on the adjective. In MSA, attributive and predicative adjectives canonically agree with their head noun or subject. However, as can be deduced from (2), the adjective in tough-constructions does not agree in number, gender or case with the lefthand DP, but rather it appears with ‘default’ nominative masculine singular morphology.
  We will propose a unified analysis of (1)-(2), which crucially incorporates the idea that the relevant structures contain two distinct subject positions. First, to account for the observed lack of agreement between the DP and the adjective, we adopt Mohammad’s (1990, 2000) suggestion that the ‘default’ agreement which can be observed in a number of (impersonal) constructions in MSA is due to the presence of a (phonologically null) expletive subject. We take this expletive pronoun to be located in SpecTP, where it agrees with the adjectival predicate. Next, having discarded the hypothesis that the initial DP sits in an A-bar position, we propose that it occurs in Cardinaletti’s (2004) SubjP, i.e. a high subject position which is associated with an ‘aboutness’ reading. Interestingly, there is independent evidence that in MSA (as well as in many other languages) two clause-mate subject positions can be filled simultaneously by non-coreferring XPs: this is the case in the ‘broad subject’ pattern discussed in e.g. Alexopoulou et al. (2004).

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