LINGUIST List 13.3010

Tue Nov 19 2002

Confs: Semantic Role Universals

Editor for this issue: Karolina Owczarzak <karolinalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. bornke, Conference on Semantic Role Universals, Leipzig Germany

Conference on Semantic Role Universals

Location: Leipzig, Germany
Date: 05-Dec-2002 - 07-Dec-2002 
Web Site: http://www.cns.mpg.de/Projects/Congress/Semantic_Role
Contact Person: Ina Bornkessel
Meeting Email: bornkecns.mpg.de
Linguistic Subfield(s): General Linguistics 

Meeting Description: 

The aim of this conference is to bring together theoretical
linguistic, language typological and psycho-/neurolingustic
perspectives on generalised semantic roles. The Max Planck Institutes
of Cognitive Neuroscience and Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, are
pleased to announce a

CONFERENCE ON SEMANTIC ROLE UNIVERSALS
Leipzig, December 5th-7th, 2002

Conference Description:
 
Generalised semantic roles (macroroles, hyperroles, proto-roles) play
an important role in determining argument linking in a variety of
theoretical and typological linguistic approaches. Furthermore,
research in the psycho-/neurolinguistic domain has recently
demonstrated the applicability of generalised roles to online language
comprehension. In light of these diverse sources of converging
evidence in favour of the assumption of generalised roles, various
questions with regard to their definition and generalisability arise:
 
- What are the advantages of generalised roles and how should these
 roles be defined? How many generalised roles should be assumed?
 What is the conceptual content of a generalised role?
 
- May generalised roles be conceived of as universal or should they
 rather be considered a property of certain languages only (i.e. are
 there languages which are better described in terms of individual
 roles)? How is thematic (semantic role) information expressed
 across languages (e.g. via morphological case)?
 
- To what extent may (generalised) thematic relations be seen as verb-
 independent, i.e. as relating sentential arguments to one another (e.g.
 on the basis of morphological case marking) without reference to the
 specific properties of the verb?
 
- How should thematic (semantic role) information be defined from a
 psycho-/neurolinguistic perspective? In what way does this type of
 information contribute to online sentence comprehension, i.e. at what
 stage of processing does this information become accessible and what
 are the consequences of its application?