Full Title: Workshop: Special definites, demonstratives, and pronouns - The 24th International Conference of the Department of Linguistics
Short Title: CIDL24

Date: 16-Nov-2024 - 16-Nov-2024
Location: Bucharest and online, Romania
Contact Person: Monica Vasileanu
Meeting Email: [email protected]
Web Site: https://litere.ro/cidl-en/

Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories; Pragmatics; Semantics; Syntax; Typology

Call Deadline: 15-Sep-2024

Meeting Description:

The “Iorgu Iordan – Alexandru Rosetti” Institute of Linguistics of the Romanian
Academy and the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bucharest organize a workshop on
special definites, demonstratives, and pronouns, within the 24th International Conference of
the Department of Linguistics of the University of Bucharest.
We invite submissions for 30 minutes presentations (including 5-10 minutes for
discussion) on any topic related to the semantics and syntax of various types of definite
expressions, on demonstratives and their relation with the definite article, and on the internal
structure and interpretation of definite pronouns (personal and demonstrative pronouns).

Topics include:
• distinctions between various types of definite expressions, as reflected in distribution
or semantics (e.g. the use of definites in predicative position, see Cheng et al. 2017,
the use of definite articles in vocatives and with proper names, or weak definites in the
sense of Carlson & Sussman 2005) or the use of special forms (strong vs. weak articles,
see Schwarz 2009, 2019, Ortmann 2014, Bernstein et al. 2021); is there evidence for
different types of definite articles or different underlying structure, depending on the
semantic type of definite, even in languages where there are no formal differences
(such as strong vs. weak articles or overt vs. null D)?
• 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 do anaphoric demonstratives differ from anaphoric
definites? How do recognitional demonstratives differ from familiar definites? 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)? It is well-known that languages use
various series of pronouns (weak, strong, demonstratives) depending on the
accessibility or level of activation of the antecedent. How can this be accounted for
within analyses which decompose pronouns into a definite D and a null N-constituent
which may result from ellipsis?
For References, see the workshop website: https://litere.ro/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Workshop-3.pdf

Date: November 16, 2024
Venue: Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, 5-7 Edgar Quinet St., Bucharest,
Romania, and online (hybrid)
Keynote speaker: Prof. Stefan Hinterwimmer, University of Hamburg
Convenors: Ion Giurgea ([email protected]), Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin
([email protected])
Registration fee: 300 RON (60 €) for faculty members; 150 RON (30 €) for PhD
students and online participants

The 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.
The abstracts should be sent to [email protected], specifying in
the body of the message or in the title “workshop definites”.
Deadline for abstract submission: 15 September 2024
Notification of acceptance: 1 October 2024