{"id":10439,"date":"2017-10-02T06:02:15","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T10:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=10439"},"modified":"2017-10-02T11:34:47","modified_gmt":"2017-10-02T15:34:47","slug":"ling-lunch-105-sarah-zobel-tubingen-mit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2017\/10\/02\/ling-lunch-105-sarah-zobel-tubingen-mit\/","title":{"rendered":"Ling-Lunch 10\/5 - Sarah Zobel (T\u00fcbingen & MIT)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaker:<\/strong> Sarah Zobel<\/a> (University of T\u00fcbingen and MIT)<\/br>
\nTitle:<\/strong> On the semantic variability of weak adjunct “as”-phrases<\/br>
\nDate\/Time:<\/strong> Thursday October 5, 12:30-1:50pm<\/br>
\nLocation:<\/strong> 32-D461<\/br>
\nAbstract:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Stump (1985) discusses the behavior of free adjuncts, like the sentence-initial adjuncts in (1). He observes that certain free adjuncts (which he calls “weak”) are interpreted as restrictors of co-occurring quantifiers (i.e., modals, adverbs of quantification, Gen\/Hab), see (1a), while others (which he calls “strong”) only allow for a non-restrictive, causal interpretation, see (1b).<\/p>\n

(1) a. Playing with his toys, Peter is often content. (weak)<\/br>
\n   (Possible: When Peter is playing with his toys, he is often content.)<\/p>\n

 b. Having three toy cars, Peter is often content. (strong)<\/br>
\n   (Not possible: When Peter has three toy cars, he is often content.)<\/p>\n

My work focuses on English “as”-phrases (and German “als”-phrases), which are weak adjuncts according to Stump’s distinction. Compare (1a) and (2).<\/p>\n

(2) As a passenger of Lufthansa, Peter is often content. (weak)<\/br>
\n  (Possible: When Peter is a passenger of Lufthansa, he is often content.)<\/p>\n

Starting out with a straightforward analysis of the interactions between “as”-phrases and co-occurring operators (inspired by Stump 1985), I take a closer look at the restrictive possibilities of “as”-phrases (and weak adjuncts in general), and I show that these are in fact more restricted than previously assumed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaker: Sarah Zobel (University of T\u00fcbingen and MIT) Title: On the semantic variability of weak adjunct “as”-phrases Date\/Time: Thursday October 5, 12:30-1:50pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: Stump (1985) discusses the behavior of free adjuncts, like the sentence-initial adjuncts in (1). He observes that certain free adjuncts (which he calls “weak”) are interpreted as restrictors of co-occurring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10439"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10456,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10439\/revisions\/10456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}