LINGUIST List 15.2052

Sun Jul 11 2004

Calls: Syntax/Germany; General Ling/Germany

Editor for this issue: Marie Klopfenstein <marielinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. e.leiss, Evolution and Functions of Nominal Determination
2. heike.wiese, Expecting the Unexpected - Exceptions in Grammar

Evolution and Functions of Nominal Determination 

Date: 23-Feb-2005 - 25-Feb-2005
Location: Cologne, Germany
Contact: Elisabeth Stark
Contact Email: estarkzedat.fu-berlin.de 

Linguistic Sub-field: General Linguistics, Historical Linguistics,
Language Description, Semantics, Syntax, Typology

Call Deadline: 01-Sep-2004

Meeting Description:

Evolution and functions of nominal determination - workshop held
during the Annual Meeting of the German Society of Linguistics (DGfS)
2005 in Cologne (Germany),

We invite abstracts for presentations at a workshop held during the
Annual Meeting of the German Society of Linguistics (DGfS) 2005 in
Cologne, February 23-25, 2005

Speakers will be allotted slots of 30 (20+10) minutes. We welcome
submissions for presentations in German or English.

Workshop description:

The workshop aims at a fundamental discussion of the essence of the
role of nominal determination in language, both from a theoretical
and/or typological-historical perspective. Language comparison has
shown that nominal determination as a grammatical category is not
universal and that for its marking different syntactic and
morphological devices are used, a fact which complicates its
language-independent description and definition and poses a challenge
for the modelling of cross-linguistic variation. If one confronts
actual linguistic facts with recent formal semantic models of nominal
determination, the implicit reduction of the function or meaning of,
for example, the articles in Germanic to the 'anaphoric-cataphoric
opposition' is revealed as historically untenable/questionable.

There are a lot of theoretical and empirical points to clarify, among
them the identification and adequate description of all functional
nominal categories (strict distinction between determination and
(in)definiteness, between nominal determination and nominal
classification etc.), the description and typological explanation of
the interaction of nominal and verbal determination at the sentence
level, or the modelling of typlogical variation in nominal and verbal
determination.

The workshop strives to bring together linguists of diverse research
fields, such as typologists with a background in synchrony,
specialists of comparative and historical linguistics and proponents
of formal semantics and/or syntax. The organizers aim at a balanced
representation of theoretical papers on the one side, and of
submissions concentrating on empirical generalizations and/or
cross-linguistic coverage.

Important deadlines:
Submission of abstracts: September 1st, 2004;
Notification of acceptance: September 30th, 2004.

Please submit abstracts of no more than one A4 page (incl. examples
and references) via e-mail (MS-Word or pdf) to the following address:
mailto:estarkzedat.fu-berlin.de.

complete contact information of the workshop organizers:

Elisabeth Leiss
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit�t M�nchen	
Department f�r Germanistik, Komparatistik und Nordistik	
Schellingstra�e 3/RG	
D - 80799 M�nchen	
Tel.: (0049) (0)89 / 2180-2339	
e-mail: e.leissgermanistik.uni-muenchen.de

Elisabeth Stark
Freie Universit�t zu Berlin
Institut f�r Romanistik
Habelschwerdter Allee 45
D - 14195 Berlin
Tel.: (0049) (0)30 / 838-52041
e-mail: estarkzedat.fu-berlin.de

Expecting the Unexpected - Exceptions in Grammar 

Date: 23-Feb-2005 - 25-Feb-2005
Location: Cologne, Germany
Contact: Heike Wiese
Contact Email: exceptionsstaff.hu-berlin.de 
Meeting URL: http://www.dgfs.de/cgi-bin/koeln2005.pl 

Linguistic Sub-field: General Linguistics, Language Description,
Linguistic Theories 
Call Deadline: 15-Aug-2004

Meeting Description:

EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED: EXCEPTIONS IN GRAMMAR

Workshop as part of the 26th Annual Meeting of the German Society for
Linguistics (DGfS) Organisers: Horst Simon & Heike Wiese
(Humboldt-University Berlin)

Keynote speakers:
 Frans Plank (University of Konstanz) 
 Marga Reis (University of Tuebingen) 
 Tom Wasow (Stanford University)

A general goal of scientific theories is to systematise data from a
particular field as completely and as elegantly as possible; ideally,
all phenomena should be accounted for within a simple system.

Is such a methodological aim also adequate for human language? In the
analysis of linguistic data, one frequently faces phenomena that pose
a problem for systematisation because they do not follow the standard
patterns one observes otherwise. The workshop will explore the
theoretical and practical problems that exceptions pose for
grammatical modelling; focussing on questions like:
- How can exceptions be identified? In how far is their special status
tied to the particular grammatical model used?
- Do exceptions constitute sub-systems? Are there special areas in
grammar where exceptions abound?
- How do exceptions emerge diachronically? How are they levelled out
again?
- Are there special acquisitional patterns for exceptions? How are
they affected in situations of language loss? What is their status in
language processing?
- Are exceptions also a part of communication systems of other
species, or are they a species-specific characteristic of the human
language faculty? Do they play a role in language evolution?

Call for Papers:

EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED: EXCEPTIONS IN GRAMMAR

Workshop as part of the 26th Annual Meeting of the German Society for
Linguistics (DGfS)
University of Cologne, Germany 
23rd-25th February, 2005

In addition, some approaches favour 'softer' grammatical models (such
as Prototype Theory or Stochastic Optimality Theory) that can
integrate 'exceptions' without bestowing them a special theoretical
status. Finally, for some models of language change (e.g. those based
on evolutionary theory), the existence of exceptions is an integral
and constitutive part of the theory.

Exceptions can be defined both inter- and intra-linguistically. First,
typologically, exceptions can represent counter-examples to
cross-linguistically formulated general regularities, while they might
constitute a systematic phenomenon in the individual language in which
they occur (cf. e.g. the cases collected in the Constance
Rarit�tenkabinett). Second, in a particular language, exceptions can
represent an idiosyncratic phenomenon that cannot be captured by
intra-linguistic grammatical generalisations and therefore requires
special descriptive efforts.

In the workshop, we want to explore the theoretical and practical
problems that such intra- and inter-linguistic exceptions pose for
grammatical modelling. In particular, the workshop will be dedicated
to the following questions:
- How can exceptions be identified? In how far is their special status
tied to the particular grammatical model used?
- Do exceptions constitute sub-systems? Are there special areas in
grammar where exceptions abound?
- How do exceptions emerge diachronically? How are they levelled out
again?
- Are there special acquisitional patterns for exceptions? How are
they affected in situations of language loss? What is their status in
language processing?
- Are exceptions also a part of communication systems of other
species, or are they a species-specific characteristic of the human
language faculty? Do they play a role in language evolution?

We invite linguists from all persuasions who work on grammatic
modelling and who reflect on methodological issues, in particular
those working in the fields of grammatical theory, typology,
historical linguistics, psycho- and neurolinguistics, and computer
linguistics. General theoretical discussions and analyses of case
studies are equally welcome.

Talks will be 20 minutes each, with 10 minutes of discussion. 

Please send an anonymous abstract of max. 500 words, as a text file or Word file, 
to exceptionsstaff.hu-berlin.de

DEADLINE: August 15th, 2004

Notification of acceptance will be sent by email in September.

For further enquiries please contact:
Horst Simon or Heike Wiese, 
Institut f�r deutsche Sprache und Linguistik 
Humboldt-Universit�t zu Berlin, Germany

horst.simonunivie.ac.at (until Sept 20th) /
horst.simonrz.hu-berlin.de (from Oct 1st) heike.wieserz.hu-berlin.de