Inauguration of the 2nd funding period of the Research Training Group on ‘Nominal Modification’

The official inauguration of the 2nd funding period of the Research Training Group on ‘Nominal Modification’ will take place on April 23, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM in Room IG 1.314 (Eisenhower-Room), Uni Campus Westend. Prof. Dr. Esther Rinke, our new spokesperson of the RTG will open the event, followed by welcoming addresses of Prof. Dr. Simone Fulda, Vice President of Goethe University and Prof. Dr. Britta Viebrock, Dean of Faculty 10 ‘Modern Languages’. The guest speaker Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Artemis Alexiadou (Humboldt University Berlin) will give a talk on ‘Nominal modification in language contact situations’ (see the abstract bellow).

After the talk, there will be a reception with a buffet.

Title:
Nominal modification in language contact situations

Abstract:

As is well-known, Germanic languages differ from Romance languages when it comes to the placement of adjectives. In e.g. German, all adjectives appear in pre-nominal position (English allows under certain conditions post-nominal placement of adjectives). By contrast, in Romance, adjectives may follow the noun. When both prenominal and post-nominal placement are possible in Romance or English, differences in interpretation emerge.  Greek behaves similar to German but it also allows post-nominal adjectives when these are preceded by a determiner with similar restrictions to Romance and English.

In this talk, I will focus on the following question: What happens language contact situations between Greek and Romance? Two such cases will be discussed, Italiot Greek and Heritage Greek spoken in Argentina.