1st LINGUIST Conference: Geometric & Thematic Structure in Binding

LINGUIST is pleased to announce its first electronic linguistics conference, "Geometric and Thematic Structure in Binding," to be held October 14 through November 4, 1996. We are looking forward to this meeting since we hope that electronic conferencing will become a regular feature of LINGUIST. In the future we will solicit proposals from subscribers and support the organization of electronic conferences on a wide range of linguistic topics.

With this conference, we seek 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 proceedings.
There are unique opportunities to foster public discussion by specialists within and across subdisciplines.

The goals of this first conference are serious linguistically but modest technically. It is intended as a pilot study which will give us valuable experience in determining how things can and should work in the future.

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2. 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 objective of this meeting 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. Below we present a sampling of some of the issues that are addressed:

THETA-BASED BINDING

Theta-based accounts define the binding domain of anaphoric elements using some notion of coargumenthood; the strong version attempts to eliminate all structural relations such as c-command, m-command, government, etc. in favor of relations such as x is or is not a coargument of y, and x is or is not asymmetrically related to y relative to a theta hierarchy. These analyses are claimed to

allow for a strong version of the autonomy thesis. As Wilkins (1988) points out [in "Thematic Structure and Reflexivization" in Syntax & Semantics, vol 21, p.192]: "... reflexivization necessarily involves semantic interpretation (often discussed as "coreference"), [and thus] an explanation in terms of semantic notions would be more parsimonious, and thus more highly valued, than one that relies on the syntactic order or hierarchical arrangement of constituents." (See also Reinhart & Reuland (1993) "Reflexivity" LI, 24.4 pp 657-720, among others.)
account for certain data better than structural accounts, specifically cases where there is a thematic asymmetry between elements x and y but not a structural asymmetry between them. Thus, "Mary talked to Bill about himself" is troublesome for structural binding since "himself" is not c-commanded by its antecedent "Bill" and yet the sentence is fine; but this is straightforward for theta accounts since "Bill" is higher on the theta hierarchy than "himself" and hence can bind it.
And finally, as pointed out by many linguists, they allow binding theory to be sensitive to semantic properties of theta roles that are inaccessible to purely structural accounts.

STRUCTURE-BASED BINDING

On the other hand, analyses for which structural relations are paramount, including the classic BT of Chomsky (1981) and most recent versions of the movement analysis of anaphors, do a fine job in handling

long distance anaphors and
in capturing the relation between the morphological form of reflexives and their binding potential, viz, long distance reflexives are monomorphemic while short distance reflexives are polymorphemic.
They also give a satisfying account of such phenomena as subject orientation and the blocking effect.

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3. CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION

HOW THE PAPERS WILL BE PRESENTED

There will be three sessions each with three papers; roughly one session per week with a keynote address by Professor Howard Lasnik of the University of Connecticut at Storrs.

The first session begins on Monday, October 14th. On that day the first three papers will be sent via email to conference subscribers and be made available on this Web site. For the next two days there will be a "reading period;" we use this phrase for what we anticipate will be the lag-time for subscribers to read the papers. Now it may be that subscribers will wish to comment on a paper during this time and those comments will go out via email to everyone. However, we foresee that comments will intensify at the end of the week and we refer to this as the discussion period. All sessions work in similar fashion. Thus:

Presentation of papers: papers sent to subscribers via email and made available on Web site.

Two day reading period: reading lag-time, with some discussion of papers.

Two-three day discussion period: discussion of session papers intensifies.

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DISCUSSION OF PAPERS

Please note that this is not a bounce-back list. All public comments will go through a central processing point at LINGUIST and then be sent out to subscribers. Our working strategy will be to minimize the filtering of messages. However, we do want to have the opportunity to group comments into coherent units where possible and to avoid discussion that gets completely off track.

Each session will have a moderator. His/her job is basically to keep the comments on track and to give a final statement at the end of the session (observations, summaries, etc.).

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4. THE PROGRAM

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

Keynote Address by

HOWARD LASNIK

Professor of Linguistics at University of Connecticut
Research Affiliate at MIT

"On Certain Structural Aspects of Anaphora"

George Aaron Broadwell, University at Albany, State University of New York: Switch-Reference Phenomena as Evidence for Structure-Based Approaches to Binding Theory

Martin B. Everaert, OTS/Research Institute for Language & Speech, Utrecht, The Netherlands, and Elena Anagnostopoulou, Tilburg University: Thematic Hierarchies and Binding Theory: Evidence from Greek

Robert Hamilton, University of South Carolina: Reflexivity, Anaphoricity, or Polymorphemicity?

Jeffrey L. Lidz, University of Delaware: On the Independence of Syntactic and Thematic Binding

Ruth Reeves, City University of New York Graduate Center: De Se/Non De Se Representation in Long-Distance Dependencies

Carol Tenny, University of Pittsburgh and University of Quebec at Montreal: Short Distance Pronouns and Locational Deixis

Elly van Gelderen, Arizona State University: Historical Binding Domains

Roberto Zamparelli, University of Rochester: A Null Theory of Bound-Variable Pronouns

Larisa Zlatic, University of Texas at Austin: Syntactico-Semantic Approach to Binding: Evidence from Serbian

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5. REVIEW BOARD

LINGUIST would like to extend its thanks to the board members for their conscientious work in preparing the on-line conference program:

Andrew Barss

Robert Fiengo

Arild Hestvik

James Higginbotham

Robert May

Pierre Pica

Eric Reuland

Wendy Wilkins

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6. SUBSCRIBING TO THE CONFERENCE

YOU MUST SUBSCRIBE TO THE ON-LINE CONFERENCE

It is important to realize that the on-line conference will NOT go out as regular LINGUIST issues. Anyone interested in attending the conference (meaning that one will receive the relevant mail messages) must subscribe to a special list. There is a simple procedure for doing this:

To "Attend" the Conference:

Send an email message to:

listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu

The message should consist of the single line:

subscribe linconf firstname lastname

Ex: subscribe linconf Jane Doe

One can subscribe at any time before or during the conference. At the end of the conference, participants will be automatically unsubscribed from the special list.

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Questions about the conference should be addressed to the conference organizer:

Daniel Seely dseely@emunix.emich.edu

The LINGUIST Gratuitous Pig