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Existential constructions:
An investigation into the Italo-Romance dialects

Manchester Symposium on Existentials - Programme


Thursday, 28 June
University Place: Room 6.207


9:00 – 9:20      Registration
9:20 – 9:30      Welcome remarks

9:30 – 10:00    Yaron Matras, University of Manchester
                     Existentials in Domari

10:00 – 10:30  Jenneke van der Wal, University of Cambridge
                     Unpronounced locatives in inversion constructions

10:30 – 11:00  Ljuba Veselinova, Stockholms Universitet
                     Negation in existential sentences: A cross-linguistic study

11:00 – 11:30  Coffee break

11:30 – 12:00  Charlotte Coy & Robin Hörnig, Universität Tübingen
                     Telling locatives and existentials apart: An experimental investigation of French il y a

12:00 – 13:00  Keynote speaker: Andrew Koontz-Garboden, University of Manchester
                     Ulwa existentials and locatives

13:00 – 14:30  Lunch break

14:30 – 15:00  Susann Fischer, Universität Hamburg
                     A diachronic comparative approach of expletives (and the definiteness effect)
                     in unaccusatives and existentials

15:00 – 15:30  Manuel Leonetti, Universidad de Alcalá
                     Topics and codas in Romance existentials

15:30 – 16:00  Xavier Villalba, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
                     Eventive existentials in Catalan and the topic-focus articulation

16:00 – 16:30  Coffee break

16:30 – 17:00  Esther Brown & Javier Rivas, University of Colorado at Boulder
                     The role of grammatical relation probabilities in the spread of language change:
                     An example with Spanish existential haber
there (be)

17:00 – 17:30  Delia Bentley, Francesco Maria Ciconte, Silvio Cruschina, University of Manchester
                     Micro-variation in subject markedness: The case of INDE-cliticised pivots in Romance

                          Social Dinner
                     Time: 7pm; Venue in the Manchester Curry Mile


Friday, 29 June
University Place: Room 6.207

9:30 – 10:00    Lunella Mereu, Università Roma Tre
                     Syntactic and argument structure of existentials

10:00 – 10:30  Matic Pavlič, Univerza v Ljubljani
                     Are the impersonals in Slovene existentials?

10:30 – 11:00  Nadia Varley, Bergische Universität Wuppertal
                     Negated existentials in Bulgarian and Russian: The syntax-morphology link

11:00 – 11:30  Coffee break

11:30 – 12:00  Nicholas Sobin, University of Texas at El Paso
                     Explaining TH/EX

12:00 – 13:00  Keynote speaker: Itamar Francez, University of Chicago
                     Scope and predicational structure in modal existentials

13:00 – 14:30  Lunch break

14:30 – 15:00  Michael Zimmermann, Universität Konstanz
                     On the Availability of the Definiteness Effect in French Existentials

15:00 – 15:30  Eva-Maria Remberger, Universität Konstanz
                     Deontic existentials

15:30 – 16:00  Mohamed Jlassi, University of Newcastle
                     Is existential there ever a mood particle? Evidence from Tunisian Arabic (TA)

16:00 – 16:30  Coffee break

16:30 – 17:00  Luisa Amenta, Università di Palermo, & Elvira Assenza, Università di Messina
                     Existentials in Sicilian: A diachronic and synchronic analysis

17:00 – 17:30  Machteld Meulleman, Universiteit Gent
                     Locatives in existentials: A comparative approach in Spanish, French and Italian