Full Title: Workshop - Issues in the Syntax and Semantics of Definiteness

Date: 08-Dec-2023 - 09-Dec-2023
Location: Bucharest, Faculty of Letters, 5-7 Str. Edgar Quinet, Romania
Contact Person: Ion Giurgea
Meeting Email: [email protected]

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics; Syntax

Call Deadline: 05-Oct-2023

Meeting Description:

The “Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” Institute of Linguistics of the Romanian Academy and the Faculty of Letters organize a workshop on the semantics and syntax of definite expressions, within the 23rd International Conference of the Department of Linguistics of the University of Bucharest.

Call for Papers:

Date: December 8-9, 2023
Venue: Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, 5-7 Str. Edgar Quinet, Bucharest, Romania, and online (hybrid)

Keynote speakers:
Manfred Krifka, Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin
Alexandra Simonenko, Ghent University
Radek Šimík, Charles University and Institute of Czech Language and Theory of Communication, Prague

Convenors: Ion Giurgea ([email protected])
Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin ([email protected])

Registration fee: 250 RON (50 €);
125 RON (25 €) for online participation and for PhD students

We invite submissions for 30 minutes presentations (including 5-10 minutes for discussion) on any topic related to the semantics of definiteness and its morphosyntactic realizations. We encourage papers addressing the syntax-semantics interface, understudied languages, comparative issues, and the diachrony of definiteness marking. Topics include:

- distinctions between various types of definite expressions, as reflected in distribution (e.g. the use of definites in predicative position, see Cheng et al. 2017) or the use of special forms (strong vs. weak articles, see Schwarz 2009, 2019, Ortmann 2014, Bernstein et al. 2021)
- the analysis of demonstratives, in particular, how they differ from definite articles, whether they can be semantically decomposed into a definite article and other pieces of structure (see Simonenko 2014) or rather involve an additional argument (see e.g. King 2001, Elbourne 2008, Ahn 2019, 2022) or just an enriched meaning (see e.g. Roberts 2002, Wolter 2006). How does the decompositional analysis correlate with syntactic structure across languages, where we find both co-occurrence and complementary distribution between demonstratives and definite articles?
- the analysis of definite pronouns (personal pronouns and demonstratives), in particular, the correspondence between pronouns and determiners with overt nouns: Should pronouns be analyzed as determiners followed by noun ellipsis (see e.g. Elbourne 2005, 2013, Sauerland 2007, Patel-Grosz & Grosz 2017, a.o.), or are they ambiguous between structures with no N-component and structures with N-ellipsis (Jenks & Konate 2022)? Does the determiner of 3rd person pronouns correspond to the definite article (Wolter 2006, Patel-Grosz & Grosz 2017) or is it closer to demonstratives (Ahn 2019, Blumberg 2021)?
- the interaction between definiteness and differential argument marking (see e.g. differential object marking in languages with articles such as Spanish and Romanian, but also in languages without articles such as Turkish)
- the analysis of weak definites (Carlson & Sussman 2005, Carlson et al. 2006): in spite of a rich amount of data, there is still disagreement with respect to the semantic analysis of these weakly referring definite phrases (see Aguilar-Guevara 2014, Aguilar-Guevara & Zwarts 2010, Schwarz 2014, Krifka & Modarresi 2016, a.o.).
- the diachrony of definiteness marking and its implications for the analysis of languages without articles: it has been noticed that the anaphoric article is the first stage in the development of the definite article; this observation raises several issues: Why should languages without articles first develop an anaphoric article? Why does this system often evolve towards one with a generalized definite article? Is the absence of definiteness marking in languages without articles a matter of ambiguity or, rather, underspecification (see e.g. Šimík & Demian 2020, who argue against a covert iota)?
Abstracts should be anonymous and no longer than 2 pages, including examples and references, 2,5 cm. margins, font size 12. The language of the workshop is English.

Abstracts should be sent to [email protected], specifying in the body of the message or in the title “workshop definiteness”.