LINGUIST List 11.1727

Fri Aug 11 2000

Calls: Information Structure, New Journal/Humanities

Editor for this issue: Jody Huellmantel <jodylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Kerstin Schwabe, Information Structure/Referential Status of Linguistic Expressions
2. Peter Gutmann, Perspectives/New Journal in the Humanities

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS


	INFORMATION STRUCTURE AND THE REFERENTIAL
	 STATUS OF LINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONS

 Workshop is part of the 23th annual meeting of the
 Deutsche Gesellschaft f�r Sprachwissenschaft (=DGfS).
	 http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~dgfs2001

 University of Leipzig

 28 February - 2 March 2001


DESCRIPTION

Information structure has been of great interest for some time. In recent
theories, information structure is investigated with respect to its
relation to intonation, its role in the interpretation of focus particles,
or its impact on establishing ellipsis. However, there are very few
approaches that focus on the effect of information structure on the
referential status of linguistic expressions.

The Workshop intends to discuss the relation between information structure
and the referential properties of two prominent linguistic units:
indefinite NPs and clauses. On the one hand, we intend to discuss the
interpretation of indefinite NPs with respect to the information structure,
on the other hand, we want to investigate the connection between
information structure and sentence mood.

Specific areas of inquiry include, but are not limited to the following:

1. What is the impact of linguistic context
 on the interpretation of indefinite NPs?
2. How are indefinites interpreted in contrastive focus,
 presentational focus or background as well as in topic or comment?
3. To what extend does the interpretation of an indefinite
 depend on the sentence mood of the sentence it is embedded in?
 (Cf. 'Have you seen a dog? *Yes, I've fed it. vs.
 Peter has seen a dog. He has fed it.)
4. How does information structure syntactically
 and semantically interact with sentence mood?
5. Are there any pieces of evidence for the assumption
 that information structure may determine the
 referential status of a sentence?
6. How do discourse relations determine the sentence
 types and thus the referential status of the
 respective sentence?

The objective of the workshop is to integrate syntactic investigations on
the field of sentence mood with semantic approaches towards the
interpretation of indefinite NPs in the light of information structure and
hopes thus to gain synergetically new insights.

INVITED SPEAKERS

 Nicholas Asher, University of Texas, Austin
 Donka Farkas, University of California, Santa Cruz
 Hans Kamp, Universitaet Stuttgart
 J�rgen Lenerz, Universitaet Koeln
 Barbara Partee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (to be confirmed)
 Paul Portner, Georgetown University 
 Marga Reis, Universitaet Tuebingen (to be confirmed)
 Anita Steube, Universitaet Leipzig


ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

Abstracts are invited for thirty-minute talks (twenty minutes for
presentation plus ten minutes for discussion)

Papers may be presented in German or English

Please submit:
- an anonymous one-page abstract, single-spaced in 12-pt Times font;
- for each author, one copy of the information form below.

Electronic submissions are encouraged; abstracts should be attached in
plain text format or as Word files.


DEADLINE

 All submissions must be received by August 31, 2000.

Send submissions to:
	Kerstin Schwabe
 	ZAS
 	Jaegerstr. 10/11
 	D-10117 Berlin
 	Germany

 Send abstracts by FAX to: +49 - 30 - 20 192 402
 or by e-mail to: schwabezas.gwz-berlin.de

Notification of acceptance will be emailed in mid-September.

IMPORTANT DATES

* 31 August 2000: 	deadline for submittal of abstracts
* 15 September 2000: 	notification of acceptance
* 28 Feb.- 2. March: 	workshop


CONTACT

For further information contact one of the organizers:

Klaus von Heusinger		klaus.heusingeruni-konstanz.de
Kerstin Schwabe		schwabezas.gwz-berlin.de

or our workshop homepage:
http://ling.uni-konstanz.de/pages/home/heusinger/konf-proj/AG01/



LOCAL ORGANISATION

Prof. Dr. Gerhild Zybatow
Universit�t Leipzig
Institut f�r Slavistik

http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~dgfs2001

- --------------------------

AUTHOR INFORMATION FORM

title of the talk:

name(s) of the author(s):

affiliation(s):

mailing address of the first author:

email-addresses:

First Call for Papers -- First Call for Papers 

Perspectives is a new journal, published at Oxford Brookes University
Humanities Research Centre. It addresses an international audience of
post-graduate students and scholars engaged in interdisciplinary work
within the Humanities. It is a bi-annual on-line publication,
accompanied by a (weekly updated) website for discussion and
workshopping of ideas.

The journal aims at creating a new interdisciplinary community of
people working beyond the limits of the established split into
disciplines. Thus, our concept of "The Humanities" is an open one, it
comprises the traditional Humanities as easily as what has come to be
called Social Sciences and other related fields (and areas of
interest).

We invite articles for our third number: "Whatever happened to
Postmodernism?- Foucault & Co. in the 21st 
century."

Possible subjects for articles could be (but are by no means limited to)
the following:

- What did happen to Postmodernism?
- Foucault, Derrida et al: Experiences with the Application of their
works in Interdisciplinary Work
- Interdisciplinarity and Postmodernism
- Are we still postmodern? Odds and Ends of a philosophy.
- Postmodern analyses of...
- Hollywood and beyond (Carpenter's H20 - a handbook to postmodernism;
_Deconstructing Harry_, _High Fidelity_ and _Girl, interrupted_ - new
quests for identity?; ...)
- The History of Language in times of _posthistoire_?
- Linguistics, the Natural Sciences and postmodern fashions
- ...


Deadline for submission of articles: 1 January 2001


We also invite articles for an unthemed number. Preliminary deadline for
this number is: 15 May 2000. (cf separate call for papers)

Please send enquiries and proposals to the editors at:
perspectivesbrookes.ac.uk


The language of the journal is English. Articles requiring translation
will not be accepted. The length of articles should range from 1500 to
5000 words, occasionally, however, exceptional features of up to 15000
words can be published. Book reviews should not exceed 1000 words. All
contributors will be required to submit the article either as plain-text
e-mail or as an e-mail attachment (rtf format preferred). A style-sheet
for accepted articles can be obtained from the editors.



- 
Peter Gutmann, MA
Bei der alten Furt 3
66539 Neunkirchen
http://www.brookes.ac.uk/schools/humanities/research/perspectives/