1/12

• organizational meeting

1/19

• everybody (under Dave H.'s guidance):
  babbling about VP ellipsis in preparation for Line Mikkelsen's colloquium talk on Verb-second structures: Evidence from Danish VP anaphora (abstract)

• SUGGESTED by Mikkelsen:
  Luis Lopez & Susanne Winkler, Focus and topic in VP anaphora constructions
• OPTIONAL: Kyle Johnson, What VP ellipsis can do and what it can't, but not why
• OPTIONAL: Michael J. Houser, Line Mikkelsen, and Maziar Toosarvandani, Verb Phrase Pronominalization in Danish: Deep or Surface Anaphora?

• Dave B. & Neon Brooks: the acqusition of "only" and scales

• Kate: on coordination

• Simone: Processing Negation
  ABSTRACT: The processing literature assumes that negated sentences are harder to process than affirmative sentences since reaction times increase and accuracy decreases. Pragmatically, we know that negated sentences impose stricter discourse conditions than affirmative sentences. The syntactic literature shows that sentential negation creates an island and the extraction out of this island is constrained. Semanticists argue that the lack of an exhaustive answer to certain negative wh-questions leads to unacceptability. Results from a new acceptability judgment study show that even if the syntactic constraints are met and even if there is an exhaustive answer, there is still a big drop in acceptability for negative island constructions in comparison to other negated constructions and affirmative questions. I am going to babble about these results and about possible interpretations and consequences.

• Marta Abrusan, Presuppositional and Negative Islands: A Semantic Account:
  - SALT paper (short version, 18pp)
  - Natural Language Semantics paper (long version, 53pp)

• Dave H.: experimental work on temporal when clauses

• everybody: babbling about next quarter's babbling schedule and plans

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