Unergative workshop in Bilbao

This last week, Katie popped over to Bilbao for a workshop on unergative predicates, organised by colleagues at Structures Formelles du Langage (UMR 7023, CNRS/Paris 8) and IKER (UMR 5478, CNRS), and the research groups Bas&Be (FFI2014-51878-P UPV/EHU) and the Bilingual Mind (IT665-13 UPV/EHU); Ane Berro was the main organiser, at the University of Deusto. The keynote speakers were Gillian Ramchand, Fabienne Martin, and Alec Marantz.

view from the conference venue

It was interesting to hear the puzzles– and proposals– that people have found in various languages (there were talks not just on Basque or Urdu, but also German, Latin, and Yucatan)!

Winter school @ UPF (SigGram)

On January 9-12, Laia, Katie and Elena attended the Winter School organized by the “Meaning and Grammar” network (SigGram, Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Ref. FFI2016-81750-REDT, PI: M.Teresa Espinal) and hosted at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, in Barcelona. We had three great lecturers, Klaus von Heusinger (U. Köln), who gave a crash course on information structure, Elizabeth Coppok (Boston U.), who explained her work on determinacy and definiteness, and Peter Sutton (U. Düsseldorf), who taught about vagueness and polysemy. It was a nice opportunity to mingle with junior and senior researchers in syntax-semantics-pragmatics, and to hear the newest thoughts on the topics.

This activity, which was locally organized by Laia at the UPF, will be followed by yet another event organized by SigGram, namely Sinn und Bedeutung 23, hosted by the Centre de Lingüística Teòrica at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. The deadline for abstract submission is March 12th. Save the date!