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Virtual Colloquium by Dunstan Brown (University of York): Investigating Sims’ conjecture: looking at the distributional semantics of Russian defective nouns

Oxley Hall
October 29, 2021
3:55PM - 5:15PM
Virtual zoom meeting

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Add to Calendar 2021-10-29 15:55:00 2021-10-29 17:15:00 Virtual Colloquium by Dunstan Brown (University of York): Investigating Sims’ conjecture: looking at the distributional semantics of Russian defective nouns Presentation by Dunstan Brown (York) reporting on work by Yu-Ying Chuang (Tübingen), Dunstan Brown (York), Roger Evans (Brighton), Jule Weber (Tübingen) and Harald Baayen (Tübingen). In this talk we report on ongoing work where we take another look at Russian nouns that are defective in the genitive plural. Rather than look at the form-based properties that contribute to the uncertainty of exponence in these nouns, we consider the problem from a new perspective, namely the distributional semantics of case and number. A motivation for this is Sims’ (2015: 101) conjecture that defectiveness may be the preferred option when there is semantic incongruity.  Dunstan Brown is a Professor in the Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York.  Accommodation statement: If you require an accommodation such as live captioning or interpretation to participate in this event, please contact Ashwini Deo at deo.13@osu.edu. In general, requests made two weeks before the event will allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.  Virtual zoom meeting Department of Linguistics linguistics@osu.edu America/New_York public

Presentation by Dunstan Brown (York) reporting on work by Yu-Ying Chuang (Tübingen), Dunstan Brown (York), Roger Evans (Brighton), Jule Weber (Tübingen) and Harald Baayen (Tübingen).

In this talk we report on ongoing work where we take another look at Russian nouns that are defective in the genitive plural. Rather than look at the form-based properties that contribute to the uncertainty of exponence in these nouns, we consider the problem from a new perspective, namely the distributional semantics of case and number. A motivation for this is Sims’ (2015: 101) conjecture that defectiveness may be the preferred option when there is semantic incongruity. 

Dunstan Brown is a Professor in the Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York. 

Accommodation statement: If you require an accommodation such as live captioning or interpretation to participate in this event, please contact Ashwini Deo at deo.13@osu.edu. In general, requests made two weeks before the event will allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date. 

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