Giorgos Spathas
Researcher at Leibniz - Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
Researcher at Leibniz - Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
I am a theoretical linguist currently working as the Principal Investigator of the DFG-funded project 'Measures of change in
the grammar of verbal predication' at the Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft in Berlin.
My primary research interests are the syntax and semantics of natural language, the interface between these two components
of grammar and their connection to prosody.
I have worked extensively on binding theory, argument structure, phi-features, inner aspect, measurement structures, and focus theory, among others.
I will be giving a talk at CGSW 38 together with Florian Schäfer (Humboldt).
The title of the talk is 'Binding in Passives: By-Phrases, Adjuncts, and a Semantic Constraint on Principle A'.
I will be acting as Guest Professor at the Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin for two semesters, from April 2025 to March 2026.
I will be giving a talk at SuB 29. The title of the talk is 'Measuring change with precise proportions'.
I am arguing for a new analysis of Degree Achievement verbs (widen, lengthen, strengthen, etc.) based on their interaction with percentages in examples like The river widened (by) twenty percent.
The ACTL (Advanced Core Training in Linguistics) Summer School, a generic training program for PhD students in Linguistics, is being hosted by the Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York. This year I am teaching a course on 'What it means to be a verb'. The course investigates the grammatical representation of the meaning of verbal predications by providing a detailed examination of the class of Degree Achievement verbs. Degree Achievements (DAs) are verbs like, e.g., widen in The gap widened, which pick out events in which an individual, here the gap, increases its value in a gradable property, here width, throughout the runtime of the event. Each class focuses on a different theoretical issue in the grammar of verbal predication (telicity, event structure, measurement, etc.) by examining the behavior of DAs in a relevant set of diagnostics.
This paper discusses the proportional readings of nominal measurement structures as they arise in the presence of precise proportions like percentages. We focus on differential comparatives, juxtaposed measurement structures and partitives in Greek. We provide novel evidence that, even in the presence of percentages, it is necessary to assume a second source of proportionality. We provide an analysis in terms of proportional measure functions which also allows for a uniform analysis of percentages. The analysis also has ramifications for the analysis of differential comparatives.