LINGUIST List 19.1863
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Thu Jun 12 2008
Calls: General Linguisics/Germany ; Syntax/UK
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Directory
1. Gisella
Ferraresi,
Workshop on 'Clause Combining' (Session of DGfS 2009)
2. Glenda
Newton,
Workshop on Particles
Message 1: Workshop on 'Clause Combining' (Session of DGfS 2009)
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Date: 11-Jun-2008
From: Gisella Ferraresi <ferraresilingua.uni-frankfurt.de>
Subject: Workshop on 'Clause Combining' (Session of DGfS 2009)
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Full Title: Workshop on 'Clause Combining' (Session of DGfS 2009)
Short Title: DGfS 2009
Date: 04-Mar-2009 - 06-Mar-2009
Location: Osnabrueck, Germany
Contact Person: Gisella Ferraresi
Meeting Email: ferraresilingua.uni-frankfurt.de
Web Site: http://www.dgfs.de/cgi-bin/dgfs.pl/tagung
Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
Call Deadline: 01-Aug-2008
Meeting Description:
This workshop is part of the 31st Annual Meeting of the German Linguistics
Society (DGfS 2009), hosted by the University of Osnabrueck/Germany. It is
co-organized by Eva Breindl (IDS, Mannheim), Gisella Ferraresi (University
of Frankfurt) and Anna Volodina (University of Frankfurt)
Workshop 'Formen und Funktionen von Satzverknüpfungen'
Diskursstrukturen lassen sich als multidimensionale Gebilde verstehen, für deren
Zustandekommen mehrere Ebenen auf vielfältige Weise interagieren. Eine zentrale
Rolle spielen dabei die spezifischen semantischen Relationen zwischen den
einzelnen Diskurssegmenten. Hierbei konstituieren formale Mittel wie
lexikalische Satzverknüpfer (Konnektoren und konnektorähnliche Ausdrücke),
Prosodie und Syntax Merkmalsbündel, die wiederum mit den
informationsstrukturellen Eigenschaften und der Interpretation der
Diskursrelation korrelieren (Pasch et al. 2003, Lang/Adamiková 2007). So ist
etwa der Faktor (prosodische und syntaktische) Desintegration eines adverbialen
Konnektors oder eines sententialen Adverbials meist relevant für die
Interpretation der Diskursrelation (vgl. Lohnstein/Trissler (Hg.) 2004), wie bei
der Scheidung einer irrelevanzkonditionalen (1a) von einer konditionalen (1b)
Lesart:
(1a) Wenn du auch dagegen bist, ich gehe da nicht hin.
(1b) Wenn du auch dagegen bist, gehe ich da nicht hin.
Im Mittelpunkt der AG stehen die Fragen:
Wie funktioniert die Interaktion zwischen den einzelnen sprachlichen Ebenen und
welche ?Einwirkungsrichtungen'' und Abhängigkeiten lassen sich dabei erkennen?
Wie interagieren Informationsstruktur und Diskursrelationen?
Welche Rolle hat die Prosodie: Wird sie von den topologischen Eigenschaften der
Konstruktion gesteuert, oder kann sie selbst die Interpretation steuern?
In der AG sind neben synchronen und sprachvergleichenden auch diachrone
empirische Ansätze zur Syntax und Semantik von Satzverknüpfern willkommen, die
historische Erklärungen für die Entwicklungsprozesse bei den Formen sowie
Einschränkungen im Gebrauch von Satzverknüpfern liefern können.
Forms and Functions of Clause Combining
Discourse structures can be analyzed as multi-dimensional entities in whose
genesis various levels interact in numerous ways. A fundamental part in this
process is played by the specific semantic relations between the single
discourse segments. In this respect, formal means like clause-combiners
(connectors and connector-like expressions), prosody and syntax constitute
bundles of features, which, in their turn, correlate to the properties of
information structure and the interpretation of the discourse relation (cf.
Pasch et al. 2003, Lang/Adamiková 2007). Thus e.g. the factor of (prosodic and
syntactic) disintegration of an adverbial connector or a sentential adverbial is
relevant for the interpretation of a discourse relation in most cases (cf.
Lohnstein/Trissler (eds.) 2004), like for example in the distinction between the
interpretation of a when-clause as irrelevance conditional (1a) and standard
conditional (1b):
(1a) Wenn du auch dagegen bist, ich gehe da nicht hin.
Even if you are against it, I will not go there anyway.
(1b) Wenn du auch dagegen bist, gehe ich da nicht hin.
If you are against it, too, I will not go there.
The workshop is centered on the following questions:
How should the interaction between the single linguistic levels be modelled, and
what patterns of influencing and what dependencies can be discerned in it?
How do information structure and discourse relation interact?
What part does prosody take: is it controlled by the topological properties of
the construction, or can it itself control the interpretation?
The workshop invites synchronic and comparative studies, but also diachronic
empirical contributions on the syntax and semantics of clause-combiners which
provide historical explanations for the development of their forms and the
restrictions on their use.
Lang, Ewald/Adamíková, Marcela (2007): The lexical content of connectors and its
interplay with intonation. An interim balance on sentential connection in
discourse. In: Späth, A. (Hg.): Interfaces and Interface Conditions. Berlin/New
York: de Gruyter. 199-230.
Lohnstein, Horst / Trissler, Susanne (Hg.) (2004): The Syntax and Semantics of
the Left Periphery. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Pasch, Renate/Brauße, Ursula/Breindl, Eva/Waßner, Ulrich Hermann (2003):
Handbuch der deutschen Konnektoren. Berlin/ New York: de Gruyter.
Submission:
Abstracts should be sent by e-mail to the following address:
ferraresilingua.uni-frankfurt.de
Abstract guidelines:
Abstracts should not exceed one page (12pt font) and should be attached as a
Word-document.
Deadline for abstract submission:
August 1, 2008
Notifications of acceptance:
September 1, 2008.
Contact:
breindlids-mannheim.de
ferraresilingua.uni-frankfurt.de
volodinauni-kassel.de
Message 2: Workshop on Particles
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Date: 11-Jun-2008
From: Glenda Newton <gen21cam.ac.uk>
Subject: Workshop on Particles
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Full Title: Workshop on Particles
Date: 30-Oct-2008 - 31-Oct-2008
Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom
Contact Person: Theresa Biberauer
Meeting Email: mtb23cam.ac.uk
Web Site: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/linearization/
Linguistic Field(s): Syntax
Call Deadline: 01-Sep-2008
Meeting Description:
The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers working on particles
to work towards a better understanding of the properties that particle and
non-particle elements share and also of those which differentiate them.
Invited Speaker: Edith Aldridge (University of Washington, Seattle)
The focus of this workshop is a neglected and not very well understood syntactic
element, namely that commonly designated ''particle'' in the descriptive,
typological and generative literature. Elements of this type are generally
treated in one of two, mutually contradictory ways, either being excluded from
consideration alongside functionally/semantically similar non-particle elements
or being (largely uncritically) classified as categories no different from
non-particles. Thus, for example, Greenberg (1963) famously excluded
''uninflected auxiliaries'' from his discussion of auxiliary placement relative
to the verb and object, basing his Universal 16, regarding the tendency for V, O
and Aux placement to be ''harmonic'' (i.e. either AuxVO or OVAux, or
consistently head-initial or head-final), exclusively on the behaviour of
inflected auxiliaries. By contrast, it is very common in the modern generative
literature to find particles being described as heads of various more or less
articulated types (consider, for example, the various C-(related)particles
postulated for Celtic and Sinitic languages), heads which may also be realised
by elements that are not generally viewed as particles (e.g. fully-fledged
finite or non-finite complementisers). The aim of this conference, then, is to
work towards a better understanding of the properties that particle and
non-particle elements share and also of those which differentiate them.
The specific impetus for the conference is the observation that elements
designated 'particles' in the literature very frequently violate a seemingly
robust word-order constraint, namely the Final-Over-Final Constraint in (1):
(1) Final-Over-Final Constraint (FOFC - cf. Biberauer, Holmberg & Roberts 2007)
If ? is a head-initial phrase and ? is a categorially non-distinct* phrase
immediately dominating ?, then ? must be head-initial. If ? is a categorially
non-distinct head-final phrase, and ? is a phrase immediately dominating ?, then
? can be head-initial or head-final.
[* 'categorial non-distinctness' being speculatively defined with reference to a
head's 'verbal' [+V] versus 'nominal' [+N] specification]
(1) highlights an asymmetry in the distribution of disharmonic word orders that
is empirically attested in a range of domains. Consider, for example, the
oft-noted VOAux gap in Germanic (cf. i.a. den Besten 1989, Kiparsky 1996), which
contrasts with the ready attestation of AuxOV orders in this family (Holmberg
2000 shows that the same gap appears in Finnish and Haddican (2004) registers
the corresponding gap in Basque). Similarly, it is well-established that VO
languages do not feature final complementisers (cf. Hawkins 1990), whereas OV
languages rather commonly have initial complementisers (cf. West Germanic,
Turkish, etc.). The unattested pattern is once again ruled out by (1) since it
requires a FOFC violation at some level between VP and CP. VOAux and VOC
patterns do not seem to universally ruled out, however: a range of VO languages
with non-inflecting (particle?) auxiliaries permit the former pattern, while VO
languages featuring clause-final discourse particles would seem to instantiate
the latter.
Against this background, we welcome abstracts on topics including, but not
limited to the following:
1. The nature of particles
Do we need a syntactic category 'particle'?
-Do all particles have common properties (e.g. inability to project, as proposed
in Toivonen 2003, or a deficiency of some other kind - for example,
morphological invariance)?
-What roles may they play in clausal and nominal contexts?
-What kinds of positions may they occupy?
-Do particles in languages tend to be consistently final or consistently initial
or do languages just as commonly exhibit both initially and finally surfacing
particles? Do we observe optionality in the placement of (certain) particles
within a single language?
-Can particles be spellouts of the ''sub-heads'' of articulated projections such
as the Rizzian CP and its TP, DP, PP and other counterparts?
-Can particles be phase-heads? (cf. Chomsky 2001 onwards) If so, and if they can
also spell out sub-heads as outlined above, can they give us any insight into
which sub-heads are phasal and which are not?
2. The manner in which particles interact with other structural elements
-What is the nature of the relationship between elements such as those
highlighted in (2) and (3) above?
-Do we find non-selection-related root-embedded asymmetries in respect of the
distribution of particles (cf. i.a. Paul 2008 on the root nature of Chinese
clause-typing particles, and Cavalcante 2007 on the clause-final concord element
in Brazilian Portuguese negation structures which is, likewise, restricted to
root contexts)?
-Do we observe intervention effects between particles? Between particles and
non-particle elements?
-How similar/different are particles and clitics? Do we observe intervention
effects between these elements? Are they subject to the same sorts of
positioning effects?
-Can particles readily be borrowed where languages are in contact or do we find
languages where particle-borrowing has not taken place despite intensive contact
which has resulted in large-scale borrowing in other domains?
3. The origins of particles
-Are they grammaticalised units deriving from more contentful elements or do
particles tend not to be elements that have undergone grammaticalisation processes?
-How frequently are particles homophonous with (an)other particle element(s) in
the same language, which may or may not differ in positioning and/or headedness?
4. Particles cross-linguistically
-How similar/different are particles in different languages families (e.g. those
found in the Celtic languages, in Germanic and in the languages of East Asia,
Austronesia, Africa, etc.)?
-Does it make sense to think in terms of a typology of particles?
Papers may deal with these questions from any theoretical or empirical
standpoint. We particularly welcome papers focusing on particles in lesser
studied languages and on languages which exhibit structures that (superficially
appear to) violate (1).
Presentations will be allotted forty minutes (30 minutes for the presentation
followed by ten minutes for questions). Abstracts should not exceed two
A4/letter-size pages and be in 10- or 12-point type with standard margins. They
should be submitted by e-mail in pdf format to Theresa Biberauer
(mtb23cam.ac.uk) by 1 September 2008. Notification of acceptance by 15
September 2008.
Local Organisers: Theresa Biberauer and Glenda Newton
Scientific Committee
Theresa Biberauer
Anders Holmberg
Glenda Newton
Ian Roberts
Michelle Sheehan
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