Nominal Modification

The Research Training Group on Nominal Modification at the Goethe University Frankfurt

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Virtual GK Colloquium June 8th: Nikolaus P. Himmelmann

We are happy to announce that on Tuesday, June 8th, virtual GK Colloquium will be hosting a talk by Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, on  “Determiners in Wooi (West Papua)” (abstract). When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pm (CET)Where: Online via Zoom(if you are not a regular member of RTG ‘Nominal Modification’ please send an e-mail to to receive a Zoom access link).

Virtual GK Colloquium April 27th: Johannes Mursell & Katharina Hartmann

On Tuesday, April 27th, virtual GK Colloquium will be hosting a talk entitled Typing Relative Clauses in Dagbani (Mabia) (abstract) by Johannes Mursell and Katharina Hartmann (one of our PIs).  When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pm (CET)Where: Online via Zoom(if you are not a regular member of RTG ‘Nominal Modification’ please send an e-mail to to receive a Zoom access Continue Reading

Virtual GK Colloquium April 13th: Sol Lago

We will open the first slot of the semester with a talk by Sol Lago (one of our PIs) on Grammatical illusions in bilingual processing (abstract). After the talk we will have our virtual social event ‘Welcome & Farewell’ on which we will welcome the 3.cohort of the doctoral researchers, and say goodbye to the current Continue Reading

Virtual GK Colloquium February 16th: Natalie Roller & Anna Preßler

On Tuesday, January 16th, virtual GK Colloquium will be hosting two talks by doctoral researchers of GK.  Natalie Roller will present his recent research on ‘Strategies of Nominal Modification in Tagalog’ (abstract) and Anna Preßler will present her work on ‘The role of phonological factors in word order phenomena‘ (abstract). When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pm (CET)Where: Online via Zoom(if you are not a Continue Reading

Virtual GK Colloquium January 26th: Sebastian Bredemann & Emma Merritt

On Tuesday, January 26th virtual GK Colloquium will be hosting two talks by doctoral researchers of GK.  Sebastian Bredemann will present his recent research on ‘Accounting for optimizing and non-optimizing phonologically conditioned allomorphy’ (abstract) and Emma Merritt will present her work on ‘Recursive Structures in Language Acquisition: Recent findings, open questions, and implications for linguistic theory’ (abstract). When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pm Continue Reading

Virtual GK Colloquium January 12th: Ahmad Al-Bitar and Yat Han Lai

On Tuesday, January 12th virtual GK Colloquium will be hosting two talks by doctoral researchers of GK. Ahmad Al-Bitar will present his work on ‘Abstract ‘average’: a Unique modifier‘ (abstract) and Yat Han Lai will present his recent research on ‘Processing non-canonical order’ (abstract). When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pm (CET)Where: Online via Zoom(if you are not a regular member of RTG Continue Reading

Virtual GK Colloquium December 8: Christoph Scheepers

On Tuesday, December 8th virtual GK Colloquium will be hosting a talk by Christoph Scheepers (University of Glasgow) entitled ‘Syntactic Priming of Relative-Clause Attachments: Implications for the Mental Representation of Syntax‘ (abstract). When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pm (CET)Where: Online via Zoom(if you are not a regular member of RTG ‘Nominal Modification’ please send an e-mail to to receive access link)

Virtual GK Colloquium July 14 (@4:15pm): Priscilla Adenuga & Melanie Hobich

Immediately following Michael Erlewine’s talk, virtual GK Colloquium will be hosting two talks by doctoral researchers of GK. Priscilla Adenuga will present her research on Plural sensitivity to animacy and definiteness: crosslinguistic evidence (abstract) and Melanie Hobich will present her research entitled On wh-exclamatives (abstract). When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pmWhere: Online via Zoom(please send an e-mail to to Continue Reading

Virtual GK Colloquium July 14 (@2:15pm): Michael Erlewine

On Tuesday, June 14th virtual GK Colloquium will be hosting 3 talks. The first talk by our guest speaker Michael Erlewine will be on Patterns of relativization in Austronesian and Tibetan. This talk will start at 2:15. Please send an e-mail to to get access link to Zoom meeting room. Abstract In both Tibetan and Continue Reading

Virtual GK Colloquium July 7: Lydia Grohe & Yat Han Lai

On Tuesday, June 7th virtual GK Colloquium will be hosting talks by Lydia Grohe entitled  Multiple adjectival modification in child spontaneous speech and in the adult input (abstract) and Yat Han Lai entitled The production of non-canonical orders (abstract). When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pmWhere: Online via Zoom(please send an e-mail to to get access link)

Virtual GK Colloquium June 30: Sebastian Bredemann & Abigail Bimpeh

On Tuesday, June 30th virtual GK Colloquium will be hosting talks by Sebastian Bredemann entitled On the influence of phonology in morphological realization (abstract) and Abigail Bimpeh entitled Control Phenomena in Ewe (abstract). When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pmWhere: Online via Zoom(please send an e-mail to to get access link)

GK Virtual Colloquium June 23: Ted Gibson

On Tuesday, June 23rd virtual GK Colloquium will be hosting a talk by Ted Gibson entitled ‘Information processing and cross-linguistic universals’. See below for the abstract.  When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pmWhere: Online via Zoom(please send an e-mail to to get access link) Information processing and cross-linguistic universals Finding explanations for the observed variation in human languagesis the primary goal of linguistics, and Continue Reading

Virtual GK Colloquium June 16: Sanja Srdanović & Emine Şahingöz

On Tuesday, June 16th virtual GK Colloquium will be hosting talks by Sanja Srdanović entitled Possessive pronouns do not c-command out of the noun phrase in Serbian: Evidence from a self-paced reading task‘(abstract) and Emine Şahingöz entitled On the traces of i (abstract). When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pmWhere: Online via Zoom(please send an e-mail to to get access link)

Virtual GK Colloquium June 2: Fenna Bergsma & Ruby Sleeman

On Tuesday, June 2nd virtual GK Colloquium will be hosting talks by Fenna Bergsma entitled ‘Case competition in headless relatives: a Germanic typology‘ and Ruby Sleeman entitled ‘Modifying superlatives: German ordinal-compounding vs. the Dutch exceptive op…na‘. See below for the abstracts.  When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pmWhere: Online via Zoom(please send an e-mail to to get access link) Case competition in headless Continue Reading

Virtual GK Colloquium May 26: Astrid Gößwein

On Tuesday, May 26th virtual GK Colloquium will be hosting a talk by Astrid Gößwein entitled ‘Double center embedding of prenominal participle constructions and relative clauses in German’. See below for the abstract.  When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pmWhere: Online via Zoom(please send an e-mail to to get access link)  Double center embedding of prenominal participle constructions and relative clauses in German Center embedded structures Continue Reading

Virtual Colloquium May 19: Marcin Morzycki

On Tuesday, May 19th GK Colloquium will be hosting a talk by Marcin Morzycki entitled ‘Interpreting Multiple Superlatives: Covert Modality and Semantic Viruses’. See below for the abstract.  When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pmWhere: Online via Zoom(please send an e-mail to to get access link) Interpreting Multiple Superlatives: Covert Modality and Semantic Viruses Multiple occurrences of superlative morphology in the same clause systematically Continue Reading

Colloquium: Shanley Allen

On Tuesday, February 4th GK Colloquium will be hosting a talk by Shanley Allen entitled ‘The role of information density and cross-linguistic influence in the L2 Processing of complex nominal compounds’. See below for the abstract.  When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pmWhere: SH 0.107 The role of information density and cross-linguistic influence in the L2 processing of complex nominal Continue Reading

Colloquium: David Erschler

On Tuesday, February 11th GK Colloquium will be hosting a talk by David Erschler entitled ‘Depictives in Ossetic and Cross-Linguistic Variation in Modification by Depictives’. See below for the abstract.  When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pmWhere: SH 0.107 Depictives in Ossetic and Cross-Linguistic Variation in Modification by Depictives Depictives are adjectival phrases that modify a participant without forming Continue Reading

Colloquium: Sebastian Bredemann

On Tuesday, January 28th GK Colloquium will be hosting a talk by Sebastian Bredemann entitled Adjectival Agreement in Vata. Please click here for the abstract. When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pmWhere: SH 0.107

Colloquium: Martina Wiltschko

On Tuesday, January 21th GK Colloquium will be hosting a talk by Martina Wiltschko entitled ‘Let’s interact with high end nominals’. See below for the abstract.  When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pmWhere: SH 0.107 Let’s interact with high end nominals! In recent years there has been increasing interest in the syntax of speech acts to the effect that Continue Reading

Colloquium: Peter Hallman

On Tuesday, January 14th GK Colloquium will be hosting a talk by Peter Hallman entitled Comparison and adjective ordering in Arabic. See below for the abstract.  When: 4:15 pm-6:00 pmWhere: SH 0.107 Comparison and adjective ordering in Arabic Adjective ordering in English and Arabic have been analyzed as mirror images of each other. Noun phrases in Continue Reading

Colloquium: Melanie Hobich

On Tuesday, December 17th GK Colloquium will be hosting a talk by Melanie Hobich entitled KIND-interrogatives as predication? See below for the abstract.  When: 4pm (c.t.)-6pmWhere: SH 0.107 KIND-interrogatives as predicational? The literature on the “was für/wat voor/cto za” construction often makes reference to the predicational “nature” of this particular KIND interrogative found in Germanic, Baltic Continue Reading

Colloquium: Emine Şahingöz

On Tuesday, December 3rd GK Colloquium will be hosting a talk by Emine Şahingöz entitled Digor-Ossetic Definite Particle i. Click to see the abstract. When: 4pm (c.t.)-6pmWhere: SH 0.107

Colloquium: Sanja Srdanović

On Tuesday, November 26th at 4pm (c.t.) at SH 0.107, Sanja Srdanović will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. See below for the abstract. Title: Cataphoric pronoun resolution in Serbian Abstract: It has been shown that c-command has an effect on the acceptability of coreference in pronoun-name constructions (cataphoric binding/backward anaphor) (cf. 1a and 1b). The ungrammaticality Continue Reading

Colloquium: Fenna Bergsma

On Tuesday, October 22th at 4pm in SH 0.107, Fenna Bergsma will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: Deriving a typology of case mismatches in free relatives Abstract: This talk focuses on case mismatches in free relatives. An example is given below. The predicate internal to the relative clause (vertraust `trust’) assigns dative case, and the predicate Continue Reading

Colloquium: Elly van Gelderen

On Tuesday, June 18th, at 4pm in SH 5.105, Elly van Gelderen (Arizona State University) will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: Remarks on nominal modification Abstract: This talk investigates a number of facets regarding prenominal modifiers, some of it based on your (Uni Frankfurt grad students) interests and some on mine, the Continue Reading

Colloquium: Zorica Puškar Gallien

On Tuesday, June 11th, at 4pm in SH 5.105, Zorica Puškar Gallien (ZAS, Berlin) will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: Disassembling and reassembling pronouns Abstract: Looking at personal pronouns in the Slavic family, local-person (1st and 2nd person) can be taken to differ from 3rd person in the following respects: (i) Continue Reading

Colloquium: Elsi Kaiser

On Tuesday, June 4th, at 4pm in SH 5.105, Elsi Kaiser (University of Southern California) will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: Head-final relative clauses and animacy effects: What corpus patterns and psycholinguistic studies can tell us Abstract: Animacy guides language processing in deep-reaching ways. In this talk, I explore the consequences Continue Reading

Colloquium: Hannah Sande

On Tuesday, May 21st, at 4pm in SH 5.105, Dr Hannah Sande (Georgetown University) will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: Doubly morphologically conditioned phonology Abstract: Phonological alternations can be unconditioned, applying uniformly across a language, no matter the context. They can also be specific to particular morphological environments, like English velar softening Continue Reading

Colloquium: Shravan Vasishth

On Tuesday, May 14th, at 4pm in SH 5.105, Professor Shravan Vasishth (University of Potsdam) will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: “Prenominal relatives clauses in Mandarin: Implications for theories of sentence processing”.Abstract: Models of retrieval processes in sentence processing [3, 6, 1, 8] predict that increasing head-dependent distance in linguistic dependencies Continue Reading

Colloquium: Charles Yang

On Tuesday, May 7th, at 4pm in SH 5.105, Professor Charles Yang (University of Pennsylvania ) will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: Language shapes children’s understanding of number  Abstract: Only humans learn language and only humans develop the concept of natural number: How are these two abilities related? We propose that Continue Reading

Colloquium: Tom Roeper

On Tuesday, April 16th, at 4pm in SH 0.104, Professor Tom Roeper (University of Massachusetts) will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: How abstract are real Mental Representations?Searching for the right formulation of recursion in language and Math if they emerge together on the developmental path. Abstract: Recent work in Minimalism (Chomsky Continue Reading

Colloquium: Sebastian Bredemann and Emine Şahingöz

On Tuesday, February 12th at 4pm in SH 3.104, we will have two speakers in the GK colloquium: Sebastian Bredemann and Emine Şahingöz. See below for abstracts. Speaker: Sebastian Bredemann Time: 4-5pm Title: Phonological agreement Abstract: Phonological agreement (PA) is a phenomenon under which agreement is determined by the phonological properties of a noun. Examples are given in (1) and (2) for the Continue Reading

Colloquium: Astrid Gößwein

On Tuesday, February 5th at 4pm in SH 3.104, Astrid Gößwein will give a talk in the GK colloquium.   Title: Extended nominal modifiers – participle constructions in German and English   Abstract:  Extended prenominal modifiers in German have notable sentential properties, especially when the adjectival element is a participle. (1)  die  das Sofa    zerstörende Katze  (hat vermutlich   Continue Reading

Colloquium: David Adger

On Tuesday, January 29th, at 4pm in SH 3.104, Professor David Adger (Queen Mary University of London) will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: Meaningless Movements in the Noun Phrase Abstract: There has been much discussion recently about the status of Head Movement: is it syntactic, and expected to feed meaning, or morphological, and hence expected Continue Reading

Colloquium: Melanie Hobich

On Tuesday, January 22nd at 4pm in SH 3.104, Melanie Hobich will give a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: From head to phrase to clause. The syntactic change of quantifiers in Germanic and its implications for ‘was für’ Abstract:   The was für (‘what kind of’) construction (WFC) has been much called on in the literature. The construction has been analysed Continue Reading

Colloquium: Natalia Gagarina

The talk of Professor Natalia Gagarina will take place On Tuesday, January 15th at 4pm in SH 3.104. Title: Referentiality in bilingual oral and written texts Abstract: The goal of this talk is to trace the developmental trajectory of referentiality in Russian-German bilinguals and to compare monolingual and bilingual strategies of the use of referential cohesive desives. While referentiality in elicited narratives has Continue Reading

Colloquium: Marcel den Dikken

On Tuesday, January 15th, there will be an additional GK colloquium talk, given by Professor Marcel den Dikken (Eötvös Loránd University) at 12pm in SH 5.105.   Title: One syntax for all: A unified representational system for syntax and phonology   Abstract: In the development of the generative perspective on linguistic analysis over the past half century, the approaches to the phrase Continue Reading

Colloquium: Sanja Srdanović

On Tuesday, December 18th at 4pm in SH 3.104, Sanja Srdanović will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: Binding Principle B in Serbian possessive constructions: clitics vs. strong pronouns Abstract: According to the Universal DP Hypothesis, it is claimed that all languages have a DP, including articleless languages (Bašić, 2004; Progovac, 1998). On the other hand, other Continue Reading

Colloquium: Enoch Aboh

On Tuesday, December 11th at 4pm in SH 3.104, Enoch Aboh (University of Amsterdam) will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: D: A spurious category Abstract In minimalism, it is common practice to assume that D is a primitive category, arguably present in all languages (cf. Longobardi 1994 vs. Chierchia 1998), or a phase subject to parametric Continue Reading

Colloquium: Abigail Bimpeh

On Tuesday, December 4th at 4pm in SH 3.104, Abigail Bimpeh will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: On (anti)logophoricity in Ewedomegbe   Abstract:   It has been established in the literature that attitude reports are a necessary environment for logophoricity cross linguistically (e.g. Culy 1994a, Schlenker 1999, among others). In this talk, exploring Culy’s (1994) hierarchy Continue Reading

Colloquium: Ruby Sleeman

On Tuesday, November 27th at 4pm in SH 3.104, Ruby Sleeman will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: Prenominal modifiers in Dutch: ordinals and superlatives   Abstract: Ordinal numbers are an interesting topic from the point of view of several different fields of linguistic study: the morphology of Dutch and German ordinals (and English first) points to a potential Continue Reading

Colloquium: Lydia Grohe

On Tuesday, November 20th at 4pm in SH 3.104, Lydia Grohe will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: Round blue table or blue round table: The production of double prenominal adjectives in acquisition Abstract: The presence of multiple adjectives in prenominal position is subject to ordering restrictions in adult language. These restrictions are usually explained via notion Continue Reading

Colloquium: Lai Yat Han

On Tuesday, November 13th at 4pm in SH 3.104, Lai Yat Han will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: Processing non-canonical structures in Cantonese Abstract: In the acceptability judgement tasks, native Cantonese speakers were asked to rate sentences that involve preposed sentence objects, while the canonical word order in Cantonese is subject-verb-object (SVO). The experiment tests the motivations Continue Reading

Colloquium: Ianthi Tsimpli

On Tuesday, November 6th at 4pm in SH 3.104, Ianthi Tsimpli (University of Cambridge) will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium. Title: Aspects of linguistic complexity in bilingual children’s grammars Abstract:   Bilingual children have often been shown to have lower language proficiency when compared with monolingual children. Studies which show this difference usually examine bilingual children’s use Continue Reading

Colloquium: Gregory Scontras

On Tuesday, October 30th at 4pm in SH 3.104, Gregory Scontras (University of California, Irvine) will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium.Title: The role of subjectivity in adjective ordering preferences Abstract: From English to Hungarian to Mokilese, speakers exhibit strong ordering preferences in multi-adjective strings: “the small brown box” sounds far more natural than “the brown small box.” Continue Reading

Colloquium: Lyn Frazier

On Tuesday, October 23rd at 4pm in SH 3.104, Lyn Frazier (University of Massachusetts Amherst) will be giving a talk in the GK colloquium.Title: Processing ellipsis: The circumstances of repairAbstract:There is evidence from the processing of mismatch ellipsis that an antecedent for an elided constituent will be repaired when it does not syntactically match the elided constituent.  Such repair operations do not take place indiscriminately but rather Continue Reading

Colloquium: Priscilla Adenuga and Fenna Bergsma

The GK colloquium season will kick off with our first speakers Priscilla Adenuga and Fenna Bergsma on Tuesday, October 16th, from 16-18 in SH 3.104. Priscilla Adenuga: “Relabelling Adjunction: A modification analysis in Ògè”  In this talk, I show that plural marking is not obligatory in Ògè because it lacks agreement; rather, it belongs to the group of languages that syntactically mark plural with the Continue Reading