Lectures

Programme 2024/25

Since 2022/23, we changed the way DLLD works. We now invite one lecturer per semester to give three lectures (two online, one on campus) on different aspects of their work. The focus is on the journey they take to find what they’re searching.

 

Semester 1 2024/2025: Pritty Patel-Grosz (Oslo): From Linguistics to Super Linguistics

More information soon!

  • 31 October 2024: Cross-linguistic inquiry at the syntax semantics interface (online)
  • 08 November 2024: Expanding linguistics as a science: dance (online)
  • 22 November 2024: The search for universal primate gestural meanings (online)

Semester 2 2024/2025: Silvio Cruschina (Helsinki): Incorporating variation in syntactic theory

In this lecture series we will deal with the approaches and research methods that incorporate variation in syntactic theory. The first two lectures will be online through Zoom and will focus on some core assumptions of Generative Grammar about its object of study and the source of data. In the third session, which will be on campus, we will look at how the study of the interfaces between syntax and other components of the grammar (semantics, pragmatics, and prosody) can help us answer our research questions about syntactic variation. A common thread through all lectures is the perspective and methodological changes that have characterized the generative investigation in recent decades, which have also shaped my career and ‘journey’ as a linguist.

20 Februari 2025: When the answer you seek is within you: Syntactic theory and introspection (online)

In this session, we will discuss some fundamental tenets of Generative Grammar: since the object of the investigation is the competence of the speaker, intuitions or judgments provide the necessary evidence for the phenomena that are to be explained by the theory of grammar. In fact, the use of introspection and grammaticality judgements also characterized my early work on focus and syntactic variation.

03 April 2025: Numbers matter: Quantitative and experimental studies (online)

Starting from the 1990s, attempts have been made to combine the focus on variation with an interest in more naturalistic and complex data, moving away from the initial tendency to analyse idealized data. The focus of this lecture will be on these new approaches, which have resulted not only in the adoption of quantitative and experimental methods of investigation, but also in a systematic focus on different types of speakers in a diversity of contexts such as multilingualism and language contact.

08 May 2025: Reinforcements arrive! Syntax and its interfaces with meanings and sounds  (on-site)

In this final lecture, we will look at the advantages of bringing interfaces into the study of syntactic variation (including microvariation). Indeed, syntactic phenomena of variation can be better understood and explained if semantic properties, pragmatic differences or prosodic distinctions are taken into account. We’ll focus on specific case studies from Italian and Italian dialects (e.g. question particles, wh-questions, and focus types).

Programme 2023/24

Semester 1: Joachim Kokkelmans (Bozen/Bolzano): Fonetisch-fonologische variatie: van geluidsopnames tot universele typologieën

Semester 2: Metin Bağrıaçık (Boğaziçi): When two tongues meet: linguistic investigation of contact situations

Programme 2022/23

Semester 1: Marieke Meelen (Cambridge): How to do historical linguistics with scarce data

Semester 2: Oliver Niebuhr (SDU Sønderborg, Denmark): The charisma journey

Programme 2021/22

30-09-2021             Emiliana Cruz (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), Mexico City):

“Hiking to Document the Wisdom, Knowledge, and Memories of the Elders of San Juan Quiahije: An Interdisciplinary and Pedagogical Approach

20-10-2021            Ashwini Deo (Ohio State University):

“The emergence of split-oblique case systems: a view from the Bhili dialect continuum (Indo-Aryan)”

22-11-2021          Sali A. Tagliamonte (University of Toronto):

“Mining for linguistic gold: The Ontario Dialects Project”

21-02-2022           Tamsin Blaxter (University of Cambridge):

“What maps can tell us about grammar: enriching historical linguistics with evidence from geolinguistics and sociolinguistics”

09-05-2022             Diego Pescarini (CNRS):

‘Negation marking in central Romance: reviving some late 19th and early 20th century data’

Programme 2020/21

05-10-2020             Mathieu Avanzi (Paris VII):

“Mapping dialectal variation”

19-10-2020             Artemis Alexiadou (HU Berlin):

“Linguistic changes in heritage grammars”

23-11-2020             George Walkden (U Konstanz):

“Can we predict future language changes?”

14-12-2020             Ailis Cournane (NYU):

Modal verbs in language development and language change

08-02-2021             Roberta D’Alessandro (U Utrecht):

“What microcontact tells us about language”

22-04-2021             Nino Grillo (York U):

“Local and Universal: On the interaction of universal parsing principles and grammatical variation.”

10-05-2021             Hae-Sung Jeon (U Central Lancashire):

‘Intonation: From Phonetics to Meaning’ 

Programme 2019/20

3 Oct 2019             Pritty Patel-Grosz (Oslo):

Explorations in the semantics of dance

7 Nov 2019            W. Tecumseh Fitch (Vienna):

The Evolution of the Neural Basis for Language: A Comparative Perspective

12 Dec 2019             Stefan Rabanus (Verona):

Possessive constructions in Cimbrian: contact-induced or autonomous morphosyntactic change?

2 Mar 2020        Ianthi M. Tsimpli (Cambridge):

Linguistic Complexity in Bilingual Children’s Grammars

30 Mar 2020         Chiara Gianollo (Bologna):

Simply not? How negation is strengthened in discourse, and which effects this may have over time

29 Apr 2020           Ingo Feldhausen (Frankfurt):

Focus, prosody, and word order: How new information is encoded in language and how one can investigate focus experimentally

Programme 2018/19

3 Oct 2018             Tjerk Hagemeijer (Lisbon):

The formation of the Gulf of Guinea creoles: between languages, genes, and history

23 Oct 2018             Gerardo Mazzaferro (Turin):

Researching (post)multilingualism: Translanguaging practices in an emergent superdiverse city, Turin (Italy) 

3 Dec 2018             Beáta Megyesi (Uppsala):

Decoding secret writings from the past – CANCELLED

25 Feb 2019          Daniel Gutzmann (Cologne):

I lost my damn watch! The grammar of expressive adjectives.– CANCELLED

14 Mar 2019          Peter Alexander Kerkhof (Leiden):

How bilingual Belgians reshaped the French language: Germanic-Romance language contact and Pippinid prestige

2 Apr 2019             Lutz Marten (SOAS London):

Universality and variation in language: Comparing East African Bantu languages in the context of the world’s linguistic diversity

15 May 2019            Marjo van Koppen (Utrecht):

Negation in the letters of P.C. Hooft: combining literary studies and linguistics

Programme 2017/18

26 Oct 2017             Roland Pfau (Amsterdam):

Sign Language Negation: From Gesture to Grammar

30 Nov 2017           Maria Garraffa (Heriot Watts, Edinburgh):

Mechanisms of language learning in children with developmental language disorder

4 Dec 2017              Beáta Megyesi (Uppsala):

Decoding secret writings from the past

19 Mar 2018            David Britain (Bern):

Discovering dialect with mobile phone apps

26 Apr 2018           Gea de Jong-Lendle (Marburg):

Forensic phonetics: Language identification from a foreign accent in German – Where does the kidnapper come from?

9 May 2018             Giuditta Caliendo (Lille):

Legitimacy and Identity in the Time of Crisis: a discursive perspective on European integration

Programme 2016/17

18-10-2016     Birgit A. Rasmussen (Copenhagen):

Tracing the Indo-Europeans – their language and culture

07-11-2016    Tamara Rathcke (Kent):

On the power of rhythm in language and music

14-12-2016    Francis Nolan (Cambridge):

Intonation analysis: the ‘British’ school and the emergence of a phonology of intonation

23-03-2017     Ielka van der Sluis (Groningen):

The use and effectiveness of multimodal instructions

27-04-2017     James Clackson (Cambridge):

Ancient Etruscan – deciphering an unknown language

08-05-2017     Rob Truswell (Edinburgh):

Bonobos, children, and fear of trees

Programme 2015/16

08-10-2015     Andrew Nevins (University College London):

Tooth and Throat Singing: Mondegreens and the Decoding of Sound Structure

26-10-2015    Caroline Heycock (University of Edinburgh):

Linguistic change in the North Atlantic: Investigating modern Faroese

07-12-2015     Marc van Oostendorp (Universiteit Leiden):

Frans klinkt als een machinegeweer, Nederlands als morsecode

09-03-2016     Klaus Abels (University College London):

What word order typology reveals about universal cognitive biases

25-04-2015     Ioanna Sitaridou (University of Cambridge):

Continuity, Contact and Change: The Greek varieties (Romeyka) in Turkey today

03-05-2016     Antonella Sorace (University of Edinburgh):

Bilingualism across the lifespan: language and general cognition