October 10, 2024 | 3:30PM
Stuart, 105
Luigi Rizzi, Collége de France, University of Geneva
Please join us for the very exciting colloquium talk that will be given by Luigi Rizzi (Collège de France) on Thursday, October 10, at 3:30 p.m. in Stuart 105. This talk is being sponsored by the France Chicago Center. Prof. Rizzi’s title and abstract are given below.
The colloquium will be followed by a tea (room TBA). In addition, if you would like to go to dinner with Prof. Rizzi that same Thursday in the evening, please let Monica know (monicado@uchicago.edu).
Description and explanation in cartographic maps: some results, problems and prospects.
Cartographic studies involve a large descriptive endeavor, which aims at capturing the fine details of syntactic structures across languages. This descriptive effort is constrained and guided by theoretical hypotheses, and constantly implies the search for explanation, intended as the effort of tracing back the intricate observed patterns to the interaction of plausible principles of the language faculty. In the spirit of this dual goal, drawing the correct syntactic map is just the beginning, not the end point of the endeavor: we want to deductively connect the properties that we observe to abstract principles constraining syntax and the interfaces with sound and meaning.
In line with these remarks, I would like to review here a number of properties of topic and focus in the periphery of the clause. Properties of subjects, in the high IP structures, will also be reviewed in comparison with topics. Various cross-linguistically stable generalisations involving topics, foci and subjects will be amenable to refinements of the criterial approach to scope-discourse semantic properties, and to a sharpening of the syntactic and interface conditions operating on the different criterial configurations.