Full Title: Theoretical and Computational Approaches to Decomposition and Presuppositions

Date: 08-Nov-2023 - 09-Nov-2023
Location: Saarbrücken, Germany
Contact Person: Martin Kopf
Meeting Email: [email protected]

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics

Call Deadline: 15-Jun-2023

Meeting Description:

Adverbs like 'again' or 'almos't and their possible counterparts in many languages have sparked interest and occasionally controversies regarding the possibility of event decomposition e.g. especially since Arnim von Stechow’s (1996) contribution, sometimes with a twist on not-at-issue meanings  (see, for example, Ausensi, Yu & Smith 2021, Beck 2005, Fabricius-Hansen 2001, Gergel & Beck 2015, Gergel & Nickles 2019, Patel-Grosz & Beck 2019, Pedersen 2014, Pustejovsky 2013, Zwarts 2019 for some recent approaches in different ares of potential decomposition). This workshop takes place in connection with a DFG-funded project "Decomposing Decomposition over Time“ with an added - but by no means exclusive - interest in the diachronic developments of decompositional or presuppositional items in which alongside fresh ideas from synchronic theoretical modeling (semantics, pragmatics, syntax), concerns of corpus annotational accuracy and computational procedures are all invited to play a part. 
 
Confirmed invited speakers: 
Sigrid Beck, University of Tübingen
James Pustejovsky, Brandeis University
Joost Zwarts, Utrecht University

References:
Ausensi, J., Yu, J., and Smith, R.W. (2021). Agent entailments and the division of labor between functional structure and roots. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 6(1): 53.
Beck, S. (2005). There and back again: A semantic analysis. Journal of Semantics, 22: 3-51.
Fabricius-Hansen, C. (2001). Wi(e)der and Again(st). In Féry, C. and Sternefeld, W. (eds). Audiatur Vox Sapientiae. A Festschrift for Arnim von Stechow. 101-130. De Gruyter, Berlin.
Gergel, R. and Beck, S. (2015). Early Modern English again: a corpus study and semantic analysis. English Language and Linguistics, 19(1): 27–47.
Gergel, R. and Nickles, S. (2019). Almost in Early and Late Modern English. Turn on the parametric screw (but not tightly enough to change a parameter). In Gattnar, A., Hörnig, R., and Featherston, S. (eds). Proceedings of Linguistic Evidence 2018. 282–293. University of Tübingen.
Patel-Grosz, P. and Beck, S. (2019). Different Again. Semantics and Pragmatics, 51(3): 1–52.
Pedersen, W. (2014). A scalar analysis of again-ambiguities. Journal of Semantics, 32(3): 373–424.
Pustejovsky, J. (2013). Type theory and lexical decomposition. In Pustejovsky, J., Bouillon, P., Hitoshi, I., Kanzaki, K., and Chungmin, L., (eds). Advances in Generative Lexicon Theory. Springer, Dordrecht.
Zwarts, Joost. (2019). From ‘back’ to ‘again’ in Dutch: The structure of the ‘re’ domain. Journal of Semantics, 36:211–240.

Call for papers:

We invite interested researchers working on formal theoretical issues of decomposition (whether synchronic or diachronic), the diachrony of presuppositions, or the annotation/computational modeling of synchronic or diachronic data with a decompositional or presuppositional character to submit a one-page  abstract (12p, Times New Roman) by June 15, 2023 to [email protected].

An additional page can be attached for (i) references, (ii) examples from languages other than English that require additional space due to glossing/translation, (iii) examples illustrating long and necessary corpus data which may require additional space. 
While the abstracts themselves should be anonymous, names and affiliations of all authors should be included in the email message. Notifications of acceptance/rejection are planned within six weeks after the final deadline for abstract submissions. 

Workshop date: November 8-9 2023 at Saarland University.