LINGUIST List 7.492

Mon Apr 1 1996

All: 1st On-Line LINGUIST Conference

Editor for this issue: Anthony M. Aristar <aristartam2000.tamu.edu>

Directory

1. The LINGUIST List, 1st On-Line LINGUIST Conference

	 ---- FIRST ON-LINE LINGUIST CONFERENCE ----


	 GEOMETRIC AND THEMATIC STRUCTURE IN BINDING
 

INTRODUCTION

LINGUIST is pleased to announce its first electronic linguistics
conference, "Geometric and Thematic Structure in Binding," to 
be held in October 1996. A specific call for papers, with more
details of the theme of the meeting, will be posted today 
in a regular LINGUIST "Calls" issue. Our purpose here is twofold: 
(1) to explain the organization of the conference and solicit
any suggestions readers may have for improvement, and (2) to
emphasize that we hope electronic conferencing will eventually become
a regular feature of LINGUIST. If this conference is successful,
we will solicit proposals from subscribers and support the 
organization of electronic conferences on other linguistic topics.

Conference Organizer: Daniel Seely

Technical Support: Anthony Aristar
	 Helen Dry

	Background
	Conference Theme (brief statement -- for more details, see
		the Call for Papers, LINGUIST 7.493, at 
	 URL http://www.emich.edu/~linguist/issues/html/7-493.html)
	Conference Organization
		Submission and Review Procedures
		Technical Procedures
		Session Organization 
	Procedures for Participation
		To "Attend" the Conference
		To Submit an Abstract

	---------------------------------------------------

BACKGROUND

With this conference, we hope to further develop the impressive 
potential of the internet to encourage interchange among 
geographically-distant scholars. 

Advantages of an electronic conference include:

	Linguists can be actively involved just by turning
	on the computer; this minimizes temporal, locational,
	and financial constraints on conference participation. 

	Immediate archiving allows easy and permanent
	access to conference procedings.

	There are unique opportunites to foster public discussion
	by specialists within and across subdisciplines.

Disadvantages: no restaurant guide
 
The goals of this first conference are serious linguistically but
modest technically. It is intended as a pilot project which will give us 
valuable experience in determining how things can and should 
work in the future. We hope that in the future other electronic
conferences will be proposed and organized by LINGUIST subscribers.


CONFERENCE THEME

Within the generative tradition, two major approaches to binding theory 
can be identified: theta-based accounts and structure-based accounts.
The former defines the binding domain of some target element in
terms of co-argumenthood and often employs a theta hierarchy. 
The latter exploits the geometry of a phrase marker
appealing to such purely structural notions as c-command, government,
or spec-head agreement. Many mixed approaches exist, for Chomsky (1986)
_Knowledge of Language_, for instance, the binding domain of an anaphor
is stated in terms of argument structure while the relation between an
anaphor and its antecedent requires c-command, but there are pure forms 
on both sides.

The working goal of this conference is to explore the empirical and 
theoretical advantages and disadvantages of theta-based vs structure-based 
binding theories with the ultimate task of assessing where the
preponderance of current evidence falls. 

Further details of the theme are available in a separate issue of 
LINGUIST, under the topic "Calls:" Questions about the conference
theme should be addressed to Daniel Seely <dseelyemunix.emich.edu>


CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION

SUBMISSION & REVIEW PROCEDURES: Paper selection and review procedures 
will be similar to those of a regular conference. Our time-frame is:

	Call for papers: April 1

	Deadline for abstracts: May 15, 1996

	Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by the Review Board:
		
		REVIEW BOARD

		Arild Hestvik
		James Higginbotham
		Howard Lasnik
		Robert May
		Pierre Pica
		Eric Reuland
		Daniel Seely
		Wendy Wilkins

	Final program announced: June 21, 1996
 
	Final versions of papers submitted to the conference organizer by:

		Sept 21, 1996

	Conference: Oct 14 to Nov 4, 1996


TECHNICAL PROCEDURES:

	There will be an email list, separate from LINGUIST,
	for conference participants. LINGUIST subscribers 
	sign up for the conference, are put on this list,
	and can participate actively or passively. 
	
 	Papers will be mounted on a Web site and also 
	sent via email to conference participants.
	
	Discussion of papers will take place on the 
	special conference email list.

	Because the electronic medium requires extra reading
	and discussion time, and because the participants
	will be in different times zones, this conference
	will take 3 weeks.


SESSION ORGANIZATION:

	We plan to have 3 sessions, each with 3 - 4 papers.
	All sessions will have a moderator drawn from
	the Review Board listed above.

	At the beginning of each session the session papers will
	be sent to participants and mounted on the Web site. 
	Each session will consist of (in order):

		a 2 day reading period 
	
		a 3 day discussion period, facilitated
			by the moderator

		a final statement by the moderator
 
	At the end of the conference, there will be general discussion 
	of all papers and comments, and a 
 
		Keynote Address (Howard Lasnik)



PROCEDURES FOR PARTICIPATION:


TO "ATTEND" THE CONFERENCE:

Send an email message to:

	listservtamvm1.tamu.edu

The message should consist of the single line:

	subscribe linconf firstname lastname

Ex: subscribe linconf Jane Doe

The conference signup period will extend from April 1 to the end of the
conference. 

At the end of the conference, participants will be automatically
unsubscribed from the linconf list.


TO SUBMIT AN ABSTRACT:

Check the formal Call for Papers (LINGUIST 7.493) for a full description
of the conference theme. Deadline for abstracts is May 15, 1996

Submit a 1-page abstract electronically to 

	abstracttamvm1.tamu.edu

The first 3 lines of the message should consist of 
	
	Your name
	Your email address
	The title of the abstract

Then leave at least 3 blank lines before beginning the abstract.
The abstract itself should also begin with the title. But no other
identifying information should be included. 

Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously. So the conference organizers
will strip off the 3-line identifying information as well as the mail
header before submitting the abstract to the Review Board.

Since abstracts and papers will be distributed via email, and
many participants will not have MIME or unicode-compliant mailers, 
	
	All text must be in ASCII.


	Conference URL: http://www.emich.edu/~linguist/linconf.html

Questions about the conference should be addressed to the conference 
organizer: Daniel Seely
 dseelyemunix.emich.edu

 -----------------------------------------------------

Again, we solicit your comments and suggestions about the organization
of this conference.

	--Daniel, Anthony, Helen