LINGUIST List 33.1598

Sun May 08 2022

Calls: General Linguistics, Linguistic Theories, Semantics/Romania

Editor for this issue: Everett Green <everettlinguistlist.org>

Date: 02-May-2022
From: Xavier Villalba <Xavier.Villalbauab.cat>
Subject: Superlatives and Definiteness
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Full Title: Superlatives and Definiteness
Short Title: SuperDef

Date: 30-Nov-2022 - 30-Nov-2022
Location: Bellaterra, Spain
Contact Person: Lucia Tovena
Meeting Email: < click here to access email >

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Semantics

Call Deadline: 20-Jul-2022

Meeting Description:

The use of the definite articles with ‘relative’ superlatives is a much studied but still unsettled issue in formal linguistics (Szabolcsi 1986, Heim 1999, Farkas & É. Kiss 2000, Sharvit & Stateva 2002, Schwarz 2005, Krasikova 2012, Pancheva & Tomaszewicz 2012, Coppock & Beaver 2014). Other—less addressed—issues concerning the interaction between superlatives and definiteness are:

i) the construction of the superlative meanings by combining definiteness marking and a comparative form. Romance languages, Albanian, Modern Greek, some Austrian German varieties, Maltese, Neo-Aramaic, Livonian do not have a dedicated morphological marker for the superlative (no counterpart of the English -est or most) but instead convey superlative meanings by using comparative markers associated with definiteness (see Bobaljik 2012:52). For Romance languages, it has been shown that this morphological uniformity corresponds to quite different syntactic configurations, depending on whether the definite article is part of a superlative constituent as in French postnominal superlatives and in Romanian (Croitor & Giurgea 2016, Dobrovie-Sorin & Giurgea 2021), or realizes the determiner of the overall nominal projection, as in Ibero-Romance and Italian (Loccioni 2018). On the semantic side, attempts have been made of building superlative meanings based on comparatives (see Dunbar & Wellwood 2016) but definiteness plays no part in them.

ii) the restriction on the use of indefinite determiners with superlatives. Such uses are only found in absolute superlatives which involve separate orderings in each group of a plurality, e.g. This class has a best student (Herdan & Sharvit 2006).

iii) the semantics of predicative superlatives. Recently, it has been noticed that predicative superlatives show interesting properties in languages that mark superlatives by combining comparatives and definites (Loccioni 2018, 2019, Croitor & Giurgea 2016).

2nd Call for Papers:

Topics include:

1. Crosslinguistic variation. (i) We would like to find out whether the difference between dedicated superlatives versus superlative meanings based on comparatives is accompanied by other constraints in the distribution and range of meanings available for superlatives. (ii) We would like to know whether the constraints on the relative superlative readings are different in languages with articles versus languages without articles (Slavic) or languages in which the definite article has been introduced relatively recently (Bulgarian).
2. Differences between adnominal and predicative superlatives
3. Modal superlatives (see Schwarz 2005, Romero 2013, Loccioni 2019): their syntax and semantic composition, and their adnominal vs predicate position
4. Compositional semantics. (i) What is the semantics of superlatives in those languages (e.g. French and Romanian) in which the definite article is a ‘superlative marker’ directly attached to the adjective in the comparative? How to get it compositionally? (ii) What is the compositional semantics of superlatives in those languages (e.g. Italian and Ibero-Romance) in which the definite article is the determiner of the nominal projection (noun modified by adjective in the comparative) rather than a ‘superlative marker’? For these languages, do we need to postulate a null counterpart of the superlative marker that surfaces as a definite in Romanian and French? (iii) How is the compositional semantics of adnominal vs predicative superlatives build?

Submission Guidelines:

Abstracts should be anonymous and no longer than two pages A4, including references and examples, with 2.5 cm margins, font size 12, single-spaced. The file should be anonymous both in the body of the text and in the filename. Submissions are limited to a maximum of one individual and one joint abstract per author for the entire conference; it will not be possible to introduce changes in authorship after submission. Please indicate in your submission whether your abstract should be considered for the main session or for the workshop, and (for main session submissions) whether your paper is to be considered for oral or poster presentation. Abstracts should be submitted in PDF format through EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=gr20220) no later than July 20, 2022 (UTC+2).




Page Updated: 08-May-2022