From claire.bowern at yale.edu  Wed Dec  7 12:43:29 2011
From: claire.bowern at yale.edu (Claire Bowern)
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2011 07:43:29 -0500
Subject: Fwd: CFP Uncovering Language History from Multilingual Resources
In-Reply-To: <ACF55646-CE8D-45EC-A6AD-E96069281D2D@eva.mpg.de>
Message-ID: <WED.7.DEC.2011.074329.0500.CLAIRE.BOWERN@YALE.EDU>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael Cysouw <cysouw at eva.mpg.de>
Date: Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 3:52 AM
Subject: CFP Uncovering Language History from Multilingual Resources
To: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org


=================================================================

                      CALL FOR PAPERS

       EACL 2012 Joint Workshop of LINGVIS & UNCLH
          Visualization of Linguistic Patterns
                         and
 Uncovering Language History from Multilingual Resources
        https://sites.google.com/site/lingvisunclh/

           April 23-24, 2012, Avignon, France

          Submission deadline: January 30, 2012

=================================================================

The overall aim of the workshop is to explore how methods developed in
computational linguistics, statistics and computer science can help
linguists in exploring various language phenomena. The workshop focuses
particularly on two special subtopics:
1) visualization of linguistic patterns (LINGVIS);
2) usage of multilingual resources in computational historical
linguistics (UNCLH).

Visualization of Linguistic Patterns
------------------------------------

The aim of the first subtopic of this joint workshop is to combine
techniques developed in the vibrant fields of Information Visualization
(InfoVis) and Visual Analytics with methodology and analyses from
theoretical and computational linguistics in order to allow for a novel
perspective on linguistic data and patterns. We aim to bring together
researchers interested in combining methods and insights from the fields
of Visual Analytics and Linguistics: despite the fact that statistical
methods for language analysis have proliferated in the last two decades,
computational linguistics has so far only marginally availed itself of
techniques from InfoVis and Visual Analytics (e.g., Collins et al. 2009,
Collins 2010, Honkela et al. 1995, Mayer et al. 2010a,b, Rohrdantz et
al. 2011, Neumann et al. 2007). Besides standard visualization
techniques such as bar charts, scatterplots or line charts, a large
number of advanced novel methods have been developed within these
fields. Prominent examples are treemaps, showing hierarchical data,
pixel displays, or the sophisticated visualizations of graphs that are
an intuitive and beneficial way of modeling interactions. The workshop
aims to investigate how complex linguistic questions can profit from
such visual analysis.

We especially encourage submission on the following topics:

* using visual analysis to probe change in language over time (historical
linguistics) and differences in structure across languages (typology)

* experimenting with methods for the exploration of high dimensional
spaces like vector spaces for analyses of, for example, lexical semantic
or thematic information

* exploring of linguistic patterns in terms of integrating geo-spatial
locations with hierarchical data structures and temporal dimensions

* designing multifactorial visual analyses of the interacting linguistic
factors

Uncovering Language History from Multilingual Resources
-------------------------------------------------------

The second subtopic of the joint workshop focuses on the usage of
multilingual resources in computational historical linguistics. In the
past 20 years, the application of quantitative methods in historical
linguistics has received increasing attention among linguists (e.g., Dunn
et al. 2005, Heggarty et al. 2010, McMahon and McMahon 2006),
computational linguists (e.g., Kondrak 2001, Hall and Klein 2010), and
evolutionary anthropologists (e.g., Gray and Atkinson 2003). Due to the
application of these quantitative methods, the field of historical
linguistics is undergoing a renaissance. One of the main problems that
researchers face is the limited amount of suitable data, often falling
back on relatively restricted 'Swadesh type' wordlists. One solution is
to use synchronic data, like dictionaries or texts, which are available
for many languages. For example, in Kondrak (2001), vocabularies of four
Algonquian languages were used in the task of automatic cognate
identification. Another solution employed by Snyder et al. (2010) is to
apply a non-parametric Bayesian framework to two non-parallel texts in
the task of text deciphering. Although very promising, these approaches
have so far only received modest attention. Thus, many questions and
challenges in the automatization of language resources in computational
historical linguistics remain open and ripe for investigation.

We especially encourage submissions related to the following topics:

* computational approaches that uncover sound correspondences and sound
change

* automatic identification of cognates and/or loanwords across
languages

* linguistically-informed n-gram comparisons, e.g. using flexible n-gram
length or using more advanced sound similarities between languages

* comparison of Wordnet structures from different languages

* treatment of dictionaries as translation graphs and comparison of graph
structures between dictionaries

* exploration of meaning shifts as instantiated through differences in
usage in texts

================
Invited Speakers
================

Christopher Collins (University of Ontario Institute of Technology)
Grzegorz Kondrak (University of Alberta)

===============
Important Dates
===============

Deadline for submission: January 30, 2012
Notification of acceptance: February 24, 2012
Revised version of papers: March 9, 2012
Workshop: April 23-24, 2012

====================
Organizing Committee
====================

LINGVIS:
Miriam Butt (Universität Konstanz)
Sheelagh Carpendale (University of Calgary)
Gerald Penn (University of Toronto)

UNCLH:
Jelena Prokic (LMU Munich)
Michael Cysouw (LMU Munich)
Thomas Mayer (LMU Munich)
Steven Moran (LMU Munich)

=================
Program Committee
=================

Quentin Atkinson (University of Auckland)
Christopher Collins (University of Ontario)
Chris Culy (University of Tübingen)
Dan Dediu (MPI Nijmegen)
Michael Dunn (MPI Nijmegen)
Sheila Embleton (York University, Toronto)
Simon Greenhill (University of Auckland)
Harald Hammarström (University of Nijmegen)
Wilbert Heeringa (Meertens Institute, Amsterdam)
Gerhard Heyer (University of Leipzig)
Paul Heggarty (EVA MPI, Leipzig)
Eric Holman (UCLA)
Gerhard Jäger (University of Tübingen)
Daniel Keim (University of Konstanz)
Tibor Kiss (University of Bochum)
Jonas Kuhn (University of Stuttgart)
John Nerbonne (University of Groningen)
Anke Lüdeling (Humboldt University, Berlin)
Don Ringe (University of Pennsylvania)
Hinrich Schütze (University of Stuttgart)
Tandy Warnow (University of Texas at Austin)
Søren Wichmann (EVA MPI, Leipzig)

=======
Contact
=======

LINGVIS: Annette Hautli (annette.hautli at uni-konstanz.de)
UNCLH: Jelena Prokic (unclh2012 at gmail.com)

=======================
Submission Instructions
=======================

All submissions must be submitted electronically as PDF via the EACL
submission system:

https://softconf.com/eacl2012/LINGVIS-UNCLH/

All papers must follow the two-column format of EACL proceedings.
Authors are strongly recommended to use the style files available on the
conference web site:

http://eacl2012.org/information-for-authors/index.html

Papers may consist of up to eight (8) pages of content and any number of
additional pages containing references only. We invite different
submission modalities:
(i) regular long papers (8 content pages + 1 page for references);
(ii) short papers (4 content pages + 1 page for references).
In addition, authors can specify whether they also want to be considered
for poster presentations.

As the reviewing will be blind, papers must not include the authors'
names and affiliations.



-- 

-----
Claire Bowern
Associate Professor
Department of Linguistics
Yale University
370 Temple St
New Haven, CT 06511
North American Dialects survey:
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~clb3/NorthAmericanDialects/
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From kemmer at rice.edu  Sun Dec 11 15:35:59 2011
From: kemmer at rice.edu (Suzanne Kemmer)
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2011 09:35:59 -0600
Subject: CSDL deadline extended
Message-ID: <SUN.11.DEC.2011.093559.0600.KEMMER@RICE.EDU>

One of the most eclectic conferences in Linguistics.
--S.K.

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


*** Deadline for abstract submission has been extended***

***The new deadline is December 16, 2011***


CSDL 11: Final Call for Papers
================================================
The 11th conference on:

CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE, DISCOURSE, AND LANGUAGE

May 17-20, 2012
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
================================================
Abstracts are due December 16, 2011. They should not exceed 500 words, with a possible extra page for data, references, or figures. Please submit your abstract in PDF format.

You can reach the abstract submission link from our home page:
http://csdl2012.sites.olt.ubc.ca/
================================================
The theme of the conference is:

LANGUAGE AND THE CREATIVE MIND

The joint study of language and cognitive mechanisms has created a number of analytical tools and opened many new research questions. Similar concepts are now applied to the study of language structure, gesture and sign language, but also to more centrally creative modalities. It is time to give all researchers interested in cognition, communication, and the creative mind an opportunity to work towards a more integrated approach.

We welcome a broad range of papers in cognitive, functional, and discourse linguistics and related research areas in cognitive psychology, situated cognition, etc. Papers are especially encouraged bearing on, but not limited to, the following topics related to the special conference theme:

Cognition, Gesture, and Sign
Multimodal Communication and Cognition
Conceptual Blending and Metaphor
Language and Music
Embodiment
Cognitive Underpinnings of Creativity
Visual Artifacts
Grammar and Creative Thought
Literary Discourse and Cognition

To facilitate cross-links and conversations, we will start with a day of workshop-style plenary talks on themes related to the connections between language and various creative modalities. The remaining three days will be filled with more focused research presentations, in parallel sessions, poster sessions, and in plenary format.

The following invited speakers will lecture at the conference:

Arie Verhagen (Leiden University)
Cornelia Mueller (European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder))
Mark Turner (Case Western Reserve University)
Daniel Casasanto (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics/New School for Social Research)
Eve Sweetser (University of California, Berkeley)
Peter Stockwell (Nottingham University)
Seana Coulson (University of California, San Diego)
Teenie Matlock (University of California, Merced)
Terry Janzen (University of Manitoba)
Rena Sharon (University of British Columbia)
Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson (University of British Columbia)

Parallel session talks will be 20 minutes in length, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. There will be 2-3 parallel sessions of regular papers.

-- 
Barbara Dancygier
Professor
Department of English
University of British Columbia
397-1873 East Mall
Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z1
Canada
tel:   +1.604.8225738
fax:   +1.604.8226906
email: barbara.dancygier at ubc.ca
     barbara.dancygier at telus.net
web:   <http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/bdancygier>

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From Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen at manchester.ac.uk  Fri Dec 16 14:56:19 2011
From: Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen at manchester.ac.uk (Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen)
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:56:19 +0000
Subject: Funding for Ph.D.-students in French linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.16.DEC.2011.145619.0000.MAJBRITT.MOSEGAARDHANSEN@MANCHESTER.AC.UK>

Funding for Doctoral Research in French Studies
University of Manchester

December 2011

The University of Manchester is offering a number of awards to which individuals wishing to work on PhD topics related to French Studies are encouraged to apply. French Studies at Manchester achieved one of the best scores for its field in the most recent Research Assessment Exercise. Our research is strongly interdisciplinary, and we run a thriving Centre for Research in the Visual Cultures of the French-Speaking World (CRIVCOF<http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/crivcof/>). PhD students at Manchester are supported by a dynamic research culture and excellent opportunities for research training (http://www.artsmethods.manchester.ac.uk/).


We offer expert PhD supervision across a wide range of areas, including:

  *   Linguistics; pragmatics; semantics; variation/change; discourse/interaction; functional/cognitive linguistics (Prof Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen<http://staffprofiles.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/Profile.aspx?Id=Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen>)

·         Discourse markers; context construction; cohesion in discourse; biolinguistics; argumentation theory (Dr Thanh Nyan<http://staffprofiles.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/Profile.aspx?Id=t.nyan>)
For further information on individual colleagues' research interests and publications, visit: http://staffprofiles.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/StaffList.aspx?ou=I4042.
The two main sources of funding, which comprise a fee-bursary and a maintenance grant, are AHRC awards and the University-funded President's Doctoral Scholar Awards.

1. AHRC awards

Awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) are competitive and provide payment of tuition fees and a maintenance stipend for UK students, and tuition fees (and a maintenance stipend, subject to eligibility criteria) for EU students. The closing date for AHRC applications is Friday 2 March 2012.
2.  President's Doctoral Scholar Awards
The University of Manchester has launched a new 2.5m investment in PhD training with the creation of the President's Doctoral Scholar Awards. These awards are open to all new PhD students from all nationalities and research areas. The award covers tuition fees (home/EU or international, as appropriate) and the equivalent of the research council stipend (£13,590 in 2011-12). A completed funding application form should be submitted by Friday 2 March 2012 at the latest.

To ensure that you are holding an offer of a place by the funding closing date, please submit your online application for a place on the PhD programme no later than Wednesday 15 February 2012.
For funding information and guidelines about how to apply, please visit: http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduate/funding/

For informal inquiries about the academic side of the application process, please contact: Professor Dee Reynolds (dee.reynolds at manchester.ac.uk<mailto:dee.reynolds at manchester.ac.uk>)
For questions about the administrative side of the application process, please contact: Ms Rachel Corbishley (Rachel.Corbishley at manchester.ac.uk<mailto:Rachel.Corbishley at manchester.ac.uk> )


__________________________________________________________
Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen
Professor of French Language and Linguistics
School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, The University of Manchester
Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom
Tel.: +44(0)161 306-1733
Web site: http://staffprofiles.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/Profile.aspx?Id=Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen

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From werner_abraham at t-online.de  Thu Dec 22 11:01:56 2011
From: werner_abraham at t-online.de (Werner Abraham)
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:01:56 +0100
Subject: Munich conferences on modality May 2012 - call for papers!
Message-ID: <THU.22.DEC.2011.120156.0100.WERNERABRAHAM@TONLINE.DE>

 
> www.lmu.de/modality2012
> 
> might interest you!
> Please, also forward - and/or submit!
> 
> -- 
> ****************************
> Prof.Dr. Werner Abraham
> Universität Wien, Allg. Sprachwissenschaft
> Studies in Language/LA/SLCS/SDG
> http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_series_list.cgi?t=b
> www.stauffenburg.de
> http://www.let.rug.nl/abraham/
> home: Lindwurmstrasse 120c  
> D-80337 München - +49-(0)89-76996923
> werner.abraham at lmu.de
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From caterina.mauri at unipv.it  Thu Dec 29 14:41:52 2011
From: caterina.mauri at unipv.it (Caterina Mauri)
Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:41:52 +0100
Subject: 2nd Call for Papers - SLE 2012 Workshop on "The meaning and form
 of vagueness: a cross-linguistic perspective"
Message-ID: <THU.29.DEC.2011.154152.0100.CATERINA.MAURI@UNIPV.IT>

*** WE APOLOGIZE FOR CROSS-POSTING ***

------------------------
Workshop on:
THE MEANING AND FORM OF VAGUENESS: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE

45th Annual Meeting of Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE2012)
Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University
Stockholm (Sweden), 29 August-1 September 2012
http://www.societaslinguistica.eu
http://sle2012.eu

Workshop Website: https://sites.google.com/site/workshopvagueness2012/
------------------------
 
CONVENORS:

Francesca Masini (University of Bologna) – francesca.masini at unibo.it 
Caterina Mauri (University of Pavia) – caterina.mauri at unipv.it
Lucia Tovena (University of Paris VII) – tovena at linguist.jussieu.fr
Miriam Voghera (University of Salerno) – voghera at unisa.it
 
SUBFIELDS

Historical linguistics, intonation, lexicon, pragmatics, semantics, syntax, typology.
 
KEYWORDS

Approximation, categorization, identification, (in)definiteness, (in)determinacy, vagueness.
 
CALL FOR PAPERS - Important dates

Abstracts should be submitted to SLE by 15 January 2012 via the conference site (http://www.sle2012.eu/), specifying that the abstract is intended as an “Oral Presentation” in our workshop. The slots last 30 minutes (including discussion: 20+10).

Abstracts should be anonymous and contain between 400 and 500 words (exclusive of references). They should state research questions, approach, method, data and (expected) results.

Abstracts will receive three scores, two by two members of the SLE 2012 Scientific Committee and one by the workshop convenors. Notification of acceptance will be given by 31 March 2012.

For any information please contact workshop.vagueness2012 at gmail.com.

For news and updates, please visit the workshop website: https://sites.google.com/site/workshopvagueness2012/


DESCRIPTION

“Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn’t the indistinct one often exactly what we need?” (Wittgenstein 1953). Indeed, vagueness is a basic property of human languages, which manifests itself at all level of signification and in a number of different ways (Channel 1994). Vagueness is basic in that it fulfills the important communicative task of conveying a piece of information that is indefinite, imprecise, in a word “vague”.
The notion of vagueness is part of different scholar traditions and has received numerous definitions. Traditionally, for philosophers and formal linguists, a sentence is vague when it does not give rise to precise truth conditions, and the vagueness of an expression originates in imperfect discrimination (Sorensen 2006, van Rooij 2011), e.g. gradable adjectives or quantity adjectives. In this tradition, a vague expression is not well defined with respect to the specific entities in its domain of application, or when truth is not preserved when moving from a case of which it is true to qualitatively very similar cases (sorites) (Hyde 2005), or when the cutoff point of a series is not known. However, the coverage of the term can be broadened, since vagueness may also concern the information that is communicated and may affect the identification of the referent, be it a class or an entity. Therefore we can recognize two different levels of vagueness: a systemic vagueness, closely related to the notion of indeterminacy, which responds to the general need of multiplicity of meaning in linguistic expressions, and a contextual vagueness, which refers to the multiple determinability of the meaning and function of words or expressions depending on specific speakers’ choices and situational needs.
In other words, forms of vagueness may also concern the very content a sentence is meant to convey. We refer to this as “intentional vagueness”. The aim of the workshop is to gather together scholars working on the form and meaning of intentional vagueness, namely on the fact that some constructions (at whatever level, of whatever type) are used by the speakers precisely to encode a vague referent or state of affairs.
This type of vagueness can be conveyed by a variety of forms at different levels of encoding, which, by virtue of their belonging to different domains, are often studied by distinct subfields and linguistic traditions:
a)   syntax: see binominal constructions with approximators of the sort/kind type (cf. Tabor 1994, Denison 2002 for English; Mihatsch 2007, Masini 2010 for Romance languages), some of which have developed into hedges with a more metalinguistic function (Lakoff 1972, Kay 1997), but also some kinds of list constructions, which have been proved to have an approximating function (Bonvino, Masini & Pietrandrea 2009), or again connectives that encode the non-finite nature of the set of linked elements, thus serving as vagueness markers;
b)   lexicon and semantics: see the relationship between the coding of vagueness and a specific type of lexical source which is recurrent in different languages, e.g. the class of taxonomic nouns, such as Italian tipo (Voghera to appear), Swedish typ (Rosenkvist & Skärlund to appear), French genre (Fleischmen & Yaguello 2004);
c)   pragmatics: discourse studies have a special role in the investigation of vagueness, since a number of expressions encoding vagueness (e.g. adverbs, connectives, vague category identifiers or general extenders, cf. Channel 1994, Overstreet 1999, Mihatsch 2009) have been mainly examined in terms of their function in discourse, rather than as markers that bear a grammatical meaning (cf. Dubois 1992, Dines 1980, Aijmer 1985 who assimilate these constructions to discourse markers);
d)   and, recently, intonation: it is generally recognized that vagueness is more frequent in spoken discourse than in written language (Biber et al. 1999) and that prosody can play a crucial role in conveying a vague interpretation of a chunk of speech (Warren 2007).
What emerges from this picture is a great specialization in individual areas, but very little communication between the various subfields and methodologies. 
Moreover, we observe a lack of a true cross-linguistic perspective.
 
This workshop aims at investigating the following three lines of research:
 
1) Cross-linguistic variation and diachronic paths in the coding of intentional vagueness
-     How are the various types of vagueness encoded in the world’s languages? Is it possible to identify recurrent patterns? Are there significant typological differences?
-     On what levels may vagueness be encoded (intonation, lexicon, morphology, syntax, discourse)? Do different levels match with different types of vagueness (e.g. vagueness conveyed syntactically vs. vagueness conveyed phonetically)?
-     Are there recurrent diachronic patterns leading to the coding of vagueness?
-     Are specific categories more apt to be reanalyzed as vagueness markers (e.g. connectives, generic nouns, epistemic adverbs)?
 
The latter question is directly related to the second line of research we propose to explore.
 
2) Intentional vagueness and other functional domains: delimitation issues
-     How is intentional vagueness connected with phenomena such as indefiniteness, indeterminacy and non-factuality/irrealis that have been discussed in the literature (cf. Lyons 1999, Jayez & Tovena 2006, Mauri & Sansò to appear)?
-       Assuming that vagueness is a category of its own, then how can we tell it apart from the above-mentioned domains?
-       Assuming, instead, that vagueness is a larger category, can we say that there are different types of vagueness that typically trigger different encoding strategies across the world’s languages (e.g. indefinite reference is typically encoded by pronouns, adjectives and adverbs)?
-       In any of the above cases, what would be the best way to represent the relation between all these expressions and their distribution in the languages of the world (e.g. a semiotic hierarchy, a functional map)?
 
3) Theoretical and metalinguistic issues: how to talk about vagueness?
Given the great intra- and cross-linguistic variation in the coding of vagueness, and the lack of a systematic analysis of intentional vagueness, there is a tendency to overproduce ad-hoc categories for given strategies, suffice it to mention the great variety of terms used to name so-called general extenders (Overstreet 1999), e.g.: set marking tags (Dines 1980), utterance-final tags (Aijmer 1985), extension particles (Dubois 1993), vague category identifiers (Channel 1994), post-detailing component (Selting 2006). This probably depends on various factors:
-       first, the defining criteria of traditional grammatical categories are of little help in identifying the vagueness functions of the investigated constructions. What about items such as English etcetera or Italian tipo: does it say something about their semantics to describe them in terms of “adverbs”? Another case in point is the Italian connective piuttosto che, which has recently developed the value ‘or something like that’ in particular syntactic contexts (Mauri & Giacalone Ramat 2011): is it useful to still analyze it as a connective even if it does not link anything in such contexts?
-       secondly, vagueness markers are difficult to classify because they may have a reduced or broader distribution than other items of the same grammatical class;
-       third, vagueness is not only a semantic phenomenon, nor a purely morphosyntactic one, but it may be rather encoded across different levels, and can require multilevel criteria and representation tools.
All these factors – we believe – produce great terminological variation and many distinctions. In our opinion, a better understanding of such a complex phenomenon would take great advantage of an effort also on the metalinguistic side: this would be a decisive step not only forward a better descriptive adequacy, but also forward a better explicative adequacy. In other words, we should try to be less ‘vague’ when we talk about vagueness if we want to develop a good theory of vagueness.
 
TOPICS

We welcome submissions discussing the form and meaning of vagueness from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective, in line with the questions raised above. Topics of interest include:

- identification and description of specific constructions encoding intentional vagueness (at any level of analysis) in one or more languages;
- identification and description of strategies (e.g. connectives, adverbs, etc.) used for coding intentional vagueness intra- and cross-linguistically;
- typological studies describing recurrent patterns in the coding of intentional vagueness;
- synchronic and diachronic analyses regarding the relation of vagueness with (what seem to be) functionally related domains (such as indeterminacy, indefiniteness, non-factuality/irrealis);
- diachronic analyses regarding the emergence of constructions encoding intentional vagueness in the languages of the world;
- cognitive or formal representations of intentional vagueness, as part of the meaning encoded by a linguistic expression.
 

References

Aijmer, Karin. 1985. What happens at the end of our utterances? The use of utterance-final tags introduced by ‘and’ and ‘or’. Papers from the 8th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, 366-389. Copenhagen: Institut for Philologie, Kopenhaven University.

Biber, Douglas et al. 1999. Longman Grammar of Written and Spoken Language. Essex, England: Pearson Education.

Bonvino, Elisabetta, Francesca Masini & Paola Pietrandrea. 2009. List constructions: a semantic network. Paper presented at the 3rd International AFLiCo Conference –Grammars in Construction(s), Paris, May 27-29, 2009.

Channell, Joanna. 1994. Vague Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Denison, David. 2002. History of the sort of construction family. Paper presented at the Second International Conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG2), Helsinki, September 6-8, 2002.

Dines, Elizabeth. 1980. Variation in discourse–and stuff like that. Language in Society 1: 13-31.

DuBois, Sylvie. 1993. Extension particles, etc. Language Variation and Change 4: 179-203.

Fleischman, Suzanne & Marina Yaguello. 2004. Discourse markers across languages: evidence from English and French. In Carolin Lynn Moder & Aida Martinovic-Zic (eds.), Discourse across languages and cultures, 129–148. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Hyde, Dominic. 2005. Sorites. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox.

Jayez, Jacques & Lucia M. Tovena. 2006. Epistemic determiners. Journal of Semantics 23(3). 217-250.

Kay, Paul. 1997. The kind of / sort of constructions. In Paul Kay, Words and the meaning of context, 145-158. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

Lakoff, George. 1972. Hedges: a study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. In Paul Peranteau et al. (eds.), Papers from the Eighth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 183-228. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.

Lyons, Christopher. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Margerie, Hélène. 2010. On the rise of (inter)subjective meaning in the grammaticalization of kind of/kinda. In Kristine Davidse et al. (eds.), Subjectification, intersubjectification and grammaticalization, 315-346.  Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Masini, Francesca (2010), Binominal constructions in Italian of the N-di-N type: towards a typology of light noun constructions. Paper presented at the Workshop on Binominal syntagms as a neglected locus of synchronic variation and diachronic change: Towards a unified approach, 43rd SLE Annual Meeting, Vilnius, 2-5 September 2010.

Mauri Caterina & Anna Giacalone Ramat. 2011. Restricted indefiniteness: the case of Italian piuttosto che. Paper presented at the 44th SLE Annual Meeting. Logroño, 9-11 September 2011.

Mauri, Caterina & Andrea Sansò (eds.). To appear. What do languages encode when they encode reality status? Special issue to appear in Language Sciences.

Mithasch, Wiltrud. 2007. The construction of vagueness: “sort of” expressions in Romance languages. In Günter Radden, Klaus-Michael Köpke, Thomas Berg & Peter Siemund (eds.), Aspects of meaning constructiong meaning: from concepts to utterances, 225-245. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Mithasch, Wiltrud. 2009. The approximators French comme Italian come, Portuguese como Spanish como from a grammaticalization perspective. In Corinne Rossari et al. (eds.), Grammaticalization and pragmatics: facts, approaches, theoretical issues, 65-92. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Overstreet, Marianne 1999. Whales, Candlelight, and Stuff Like That: General Extenders in English

Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press.

Overstreet, Maryann. 2005. And stuff und so: investigating pragmatics expressions in English and German. Journal of Pragmatics 37. 1845-1864.

Rooij, Rob van. 2011. Vagueness and linguistics. In Giuseppina Ronzitti (ed.), Vagueness: a guide. Heidelberg: Springer.

Rosenkvist, Henrik & Sanna Skärlund. To appear. Grammaticalization in the present – The changes of Modern Swedish typ. In Anna Giacalone Ramat, Caterina Mauri & Piera Molinelli (eds.),  Synchrony and diachrony: a dynamic interface. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Selting, Margret. 2007. Lists as embedded structures and the prosody of list construction as an interactional resource. Journal of Pragmatics 39. 483-526.

Sorensen, Roy. 2006. Vagueness. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vagueness/.

Tabor, Whitney. 1994. The gradual development of degree modifier sort of and kind of. A corpus proximity model. In Katherine Beals et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 451-465. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.

Voghera Miriam. To Appear. A case study on the relationship between grammatical change and synchronic variation: the emergence of tipo[-N] in the Italian language. In Anna Giacalone Ramat, Caterina Mauri & Piera Molinelli (eds.),  Synchrony and diachrony: a dynamic interface. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Warren, Martin. 2007. { / [ OH ] not a < ^ LOT > }: discourse intonation and vague language. In  Joan Cutting (ed.), Vague language explored, 182-197. London: Palgrave McMillan



---
Caterina Mauri
Dept. of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
University of Pavia
Strada Nuova 65
27100 Pavia Italy

Email: caterina.mauri at unipv.it
Homepage: http://lettere.unipv.it/diplinguistica/docenti.php?&id=1114

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From claire.bowern at yale.edu  Wed Dec  7 12:43:29 2011
From: claire.bowern at yale.edu (Claire Bowern)
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2011 07:43:29 -0500
Subject: Fwd: CFP Uncovering Language History from Multilingual Resources
In-Reply-To: <ACF55646-CE8D-45EC-A6AD-E96069281D2D@eva.mpg.de>
Message-ID: <WED.7.DEC.2011.074329.0500.CLAIRE.BOWERN@YALE.EDU>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael Cysouw <cysouw at eva.mpg.de>
Date: Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 3:52 AM
Subject: CFP Uncovering Language History from Multilingual Resources
To: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org


=================================================================

                      CALL FOR PAPERS

       EACL 2012 Joint Workshop of LINGVIS & UNCLH
          Visualization of Linguistic Patterns
                         and
 Uncovering Language History from Multilingual Resources
        https://sites.google.com/site/lingvisunclh/

           April 23-24, 2012, Avignon, France

          Submission deadline: January 30, 2012

=================================================================

The overall aim of the workshop is to explore how methods developed in
computational linguistics, statistics and computer science can help
linguists in exploring various language phenomena. The workshop focuses
particularly on two special subtopics:
1) visualization of linguistic patterns (LINGVIS);
2) usage of multilingual resources in computational historical
linguistics (UNCLH).

Visualization of Linguistic Patterns
------------------------------------

The aim of the first subtopic of this joint workshop is to combine
techniques developed in the vibrant fields of Information Visualization
(InfoVis) and Visual Analytics with methodology and analyses from
theoretical and computational linguistics in order to allow for a novel
perspective on linguistic data and patterns. We aim to bring together
researchers interested in combining methods and insights from the fields
of Visual Analytics and Linguistics: despite the fact that statistical
methods for language analysis have proliferated in the last two decades,
computational linguistics has so far only marginally availed itself of
techniques from InfoVis and Visual Analytics (e.g., Collins et al. 2009,
Collins 2010, Honkela et al. 1995, Mayer et al. 2010a,b, Rohrdantz et
al. 2011, Neumann et al. 2007). Besides standard visualization
techniques such as bar charts, scatterplots or line charts, a large
number of advanced novel methods have been developed within these
fields. Prominent examples are treemaps, showing hierarchical data,
pixel displays, or the sophisticated visualizations of graphs that are
an intuitive and beneficial way of modeling interactions. The workshop
aims to investigate how complex linguistic questions can profit from
such visual analysis.

We especially encourage submission on the following topics:

* using visual analysis to probe change in language over time (historical
linguistics) and differences in structure across languages (typology)

* experimenting with methods for the exploration of high dimensional
spaces like vector spaces for analyses of, for example, lexical semantic
or thematic information

* exploring of linguistic patterns in terms of integrating geo-spatial
locations with hierarchical data structures and temporal dimensions

* designing multifactorial visual analyses of the interacting linguistic
factors

Uncovering Language History from Multilingual Resources
-------------------------------------------------------

The second subtopic of the joint workshop focuses on the usage of
multilingual resources in computational historical linguistics. In the
past 20 years, the application of quantitative methods in historical
linguistics has received increasing attention among linguists (e.g., Dunn
et al. 2005, Heggarty et al. 2010, McMahon and McMahon 2006),
computational linguists (e.g., Kondrak 2001, Hall and Klein 2010), and
evolutionary anthropologists (e.g., Gray and Atkinson 2003). Due to the
application of these quantitative methods, the field of historical
linguistics is undergoing a renaissance. One of the main problems that
researchers face is the limited amount of suitable data, often falling
back on relatively restricted 'Swadesh type' wordlists. One solution is
to use synchronic data, like dictionaries or texts, which are available
for many languages. For example, in Kondrak (2001), vocabularies of four
Algonquian languages were used in the task of automatic cognate
identification. Another solution employed by Snyder et al. (2010) is to
apply a non-parametric Bayesian framework to two non-parallel texts in
the task of text deciphering. Although very promising, these approaches
have so far only received modest attention. Thus, many questions and
challenges in the automatization of language resources in computational
historical linguistics remain open and ripe for investigation.

We especially encourage submissions related to the following topics:

* computational approaches that uncover sound correspondences and sound
change

* automatic identification of cognates and/or loanwords across
languages

* linguistically-informed n-gram comparisons, e.g. using flexible n-gram
length or using more advanced sound similarities between languages

* comparison of Wordnet structures from different languages

* treatment of dictionaries as translation graphs and comparison of graph
structures between dictionaries

* exploration of meaning shifts as instantiated through differences in
usage in texts

================
Invited Speakers
================

Christopher Collins (University of Ontario Institute of Technology)
Grzegorz Kondrak (University of Alberta)

===============
Important Dates
===============

Deadline for submission: January 30, 2012
Notification of acceptance: February 24, 2012
Revised version of papers: March 9, 2012
Workshop: April 23-24, 2012

====================
Organizing Committee
====================

LINGVIS:
Miriam Butt (Universit?t Konstanz)
Sheelagh Carpendale (University of Calgary)
Gerald Penn (University of Toronto)

UNCLH:
Jelena Prokic (LMU Munich)
Michael Cysouw (LMU Munich)
Thomas Mayer (LMU Munich)
Steven Moran (LMU Munich)

=================
Program Committee
=================

Quentin Atkinson (University of Auckland)
Christopher Collins (University of Ontario)
Chris Culy (University of T?bingen)
Dan Dediu (MPI Nijmegen)
Michael Dunn (MPI Nijmegen)
Sheila Embleton (York University, Toronto)
Simon Greenhill (University of Auckland)
Harald Hammarstr?m (University of Nijmegen)
Wilbert Heeringa (Meertens Institute, Amsterdam)
Gerhard Heyer (University of Leipzig)
Paul Heggarty (EVA MPI, Leipzig)
Eric Holman (UCLA)
Gerhard J?ger (University of T?bingen)
Daniel Keim (University of Konstanz)
Tibor Kiss (University of Bochum)
Jonas Kuhn (University of Stuttgart)
John Nerbonne (University of Groningen)
Anke L?deling (Humboldt University, Berlin)
Don Ringe (University of Pennsylvania)
Hinrich Sch?tze (University of Stuttgart)
Tandy Warnow (University of Texas at Austin)
S?ren Wichmann (EVA MPI, Leipzig)

=======
Contact
=======

LINGVIS: Annette Hautli (annette.hautli at uni-konstanz.de)
UNCLH: Jelena Prokic (unclh2012 at gmail.com)

=======================
Submission Instructions
=======================

All submissions must be submitted electronically as PDF via the EACL
submission system:

https://softconf.com/eacl2012/LINGVIS-UNCLH/

All papers must follow the two-column format of EACL proceedings.
Authors are strongly recommended to use the style files available on the
conference web site:

http://eacl2012.org/information-for-authors/index.html

Papers may consist of up to eight (8) pages of content and any number of
additional pages containing references only. We invite different
submission modalities:
(i) regular long papers (8 content pages + 1 page for references);
(ii) short papers (4 content pages + 1 page for references).
In addition, authors can specify whether they also want to be considered
for poster presentations.

As the reviewing will be blind, papers must not include the authors'
names and affiliations.



-- 

-----
Claire Bowern
Associate Professor
Department of Linguistics
Yale University
370 Temple St
New Haven, CT 06511
North American Dialects survey:
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~clb3/NorthAmericanDialects/
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From kemmer at rice.edu  Sun Dec 11 15:35:59 2011
From: kemmer at rice.edu (Suzanne Kemmer)
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2011 09:35:59 -0600
Subject: CSDL deadline extended
Message-ID: <SUN.11.DEC.2011.093559.0600.KEMMER@RICE.EDU>

One of the most eclectic conferences in Linguistics.
--S.K.

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


*** Deadline for abstract submission has been extended***

***The new deadline is December 16, 2011***


CSDL 11: Final Call for Papers
================================================
The 11th conference on:

CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE, DISCOURSE, AND LANGUAGE

May 17-20, 2012
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
================================================
Abstracts are due December 16, 2011. They should not exceed 500 words, with a possible extra page for data, references, or figures. Please submit your abstract in PDF format.

You can reach the abstract submission link from our home page:
http://csdl2012.sites.olt.ubc.ca/
================================================
The theme of the conference is:

LANGUAGE AND THE CREATIVE MIND

The joint study of language and cognitive mechanisms has created a number of analytical tools and opened many new research questions. Similar concepts are now applied to the study of language structure, gesture and sign language, but also to more centrally creative modalities. It is time to give all researchers interested in cognition, communication, and the creative mind an opportunity to work towards a more integrated approach.

We welcome a broad range of papers in cognitive, functional, and discourse linguistics and related research areas in cognitive psychology, situated cognition, etc. Papers are especially encouraged bearing on, but not limited to, the following topics related to the special conference theme:

Cognition, Gesture, and Sign
Multimodal Communication and Cognition
Conceptual Blending and Metaphor
Language and Music
Embodiment
Cognitive Underpinnings of Creativity
Visual Artifacts
Grammar and Creative Thought
Literary Discourse and Cognition

To facilitate cross-links and conversations, we will start with a day of workshop-style plenary talks on themes related to the connections between language and various creative modalities. The remaining three days will be filled with more focused research presentations, in parallel sessions, poster sessions, and in plenary format.

The following invited speakers will lecture at the conference:

Arie Verhagen (Leiden University)
Cornelia Mueller (European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder))
Mark Turner (Case Western Reserve University)
Daniel Casasanto (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics/New School for Social Research)
Eve Sweetser (University of California, Berkeley)
Peter Stockwell (Nottingham University)
Seana Coulson (University of California, San Diego)
Teenie Matlock (University of California, Merced)
Terry Janzen (University of Manitoba)
Rena Sharon (University of British Columbia)
Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson (University of British Columbia)

Parallel session talks will be 20 minutes in length, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. There will be 2-3 parallel sessions of regular papers.

-- 
Barbara Dancygier
Professor
Department of English
University of British Columbia
397-1873 East Mall
Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z1
Canada
tel:   +1.604.8225738
fax:   +1.604.8226906
email: barbara.dancygier at ubc.ca
     barbara.dancygier at telus.net
web:   <http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/bdancygier>

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From Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen at manchester.ac.uk  Fri Dec 16 14:56:19 2011
From: Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen at manchester.ac.uk (Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen)
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:56:19 +0000
Subject: Funding for Ph.D.-students in French linguistics
Message-ID: <FRI.16.DEC.2011.145619.0000.MAJBRITT.MOSEGAARDHANSEN@MANCHESTER.AC.UK>

Funding for Doctoral Research in French Studies
University of Manchester

December 2011

The University of Manchester is offering a number of awards to which individuals wishing to work on PhD topics related to French Studies are encouraged to apply. French Studies at Manchester achieved one of the best scores for its field in the most recent Research Assessment Exercise. Our research is strongly interdisciplinary, and we run a thriving Centre for Research in the Visual Cultures of the French-Speaking World (CRIVCOF<http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/crivcof/>). PhD students at Manchester are supported by a dynamic research culture and excellent opportunities for research training (http://www.artsmethods.manchester.ac.uk/).


We offer expert PhD supervision across a wide range of areas, including:

  *   Linguistics; pragmatics; semantics; variation/change; discourse/interaction; functional/cognitive linguistics (Prof Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen<http://staffprofiles.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/Profile.aspx?Id=Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen>)

?         Discourse markers; context construction; cohesion in discourse; biolinguistics; argumentation theory (Dr Thanh Nyan<http://staffprofiles.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/Profile.aspx?Id=t.nyan>)
For further information on individual colleagues' research interests and publications, visit: http://staffprofiles.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/StaffList.aspx?ou=I4042.
The two main sources of funding, which comprise a fee-bursary and a maintenance grant, are AHRC awards and the University-funded President's Doctoral Scholar Awards.

1. AHRC awards

Awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) are competitive and provide payment of tuition fees and a maintenance stipend for UK students, and tuition fees (and a maintenance stipend, subject to eligibility criteria) for EU students. The closing date for AHRC applications is Friday 2 March 2012.
2.  President's Doctoral Scholar Awards
The University of Manchester has launched a new 2.5m investment in PhD training with the creation of the President's Doctoral Scholar Awards. These awards are open to all new PhD students from all nationalities and research areas. The award covers tuition fees (home/EU or international, as appropriate) and the equivalent of the research council stipend (?13,590 in 2011-12). A completed funding application form should be submitted by Friday 2 March 2012 at the latest.

To ensure that you are holding an offer of a place by the funding closing date, please submit your online application for a place on the PhD programme no later than Wednesday 15 February 2012.
For funding information and guidelines about how to apply, please visit: http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduate/funding/

For informal inquiries about the academic side of the application process, please contact: Professor Dee Reynolds (dee.reynolds at manchester.ac.uk<mailto:dee.reynolds at manchester.ac.uk>)
For questions about the administrative side of the application process, please contact: Ms Rachel Corbishley (Rachel.Corbishley at manchester.ac.uk<mailto:Rachel.Corbishley at manchester.ac.uk> )


__________________________________________________________
Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen
Professor of French Language and Linguistics
School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, The University of Manchester
Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom
Tel.: +44(0)161 306-1733
Web site: http://staffprofiles.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/Profile.aspx?Id=Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen

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From werner_abraham at t-online.de  Thu Dec 22 11:01:56 2011
From: werner_abraham at t-online.de (Werner Abraham)
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:01:56 +0100
Subject: Munich conferences on modality May 2012 - call for papers!
Message-ID: <THU.22.DEC.2011.120156.0100.WERNERABRAHAM@TONLINE.DE>

 
> www.lmu.de/modality2012
> 
> might interest you!
> Please, also forward - and/or submit!
> 
> -- 
> ****************************
> Prof.Dr. Werner Abraham
> Universit?t Wien, Allg. Sprachwissenschaft
> Studies in Language/LA/SLCS/SDG
> http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_series_list.cgi?t=b
> www.stauffenburg.de
> http://www.let.rug.nl/abraham/
> home: Lindwurmstrasse 120c ?
> D-80337 M?nchen - +49-(0)89-76996923
> werner.abraham at lmu.de
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From caterina.mauri at unipv.it  Thu Dec 29 14:41:52 2011
From: caterina.mauri at unipv.it (Caterina Mauri)
Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:41:52 +0100
Subject: 2nd Call for Papers - SLE 2012 Workshop on "The meaning and form
 of vagueness: a cross-linguistic perspective"
Message-ID: <THU.29.DEC.2011.154152.0100.CATERINA.MAURI@UNIPV.IT>

*** WE APOLOGIZE FOR CROSS-POSTING ***

------------------------
Workshop on:
THE MEANING AND FORM OF VAGUENESS: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE

45th Annual Meeting of Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE2012)
Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University
Stockholm (Sweden), 29 August-1 September 2012
http://www.societaslinguistica.eu
http://sle2012.eu

Workshop Website: https://sites.google.com/site/workshopvagueness2012/
------------------------
 
CONVENORS:

Francesca Masini (University of Bologna) ? francesca.masini at unibo.it 
Caterina Mauri (University of Pavia) ? caterina.mauri at unipv.it
Lucia Tovena (University of Paris VII) ? tovena at linguist.jussieu.fr
Miriam Voghera (University of Salerno) ? voghera at unisa.it
 
SUBFIELDS

Historical linguistics, intonation, lexicon, pragmatics, semantics, syntax, typology.
 
KEYWORDS

Approximation, categorization, identification, (in)definiteness, (in)determinacy, vagueness.
 
CALL FOR PAPERS - Important dates

Abstracts should be submitted to SLE by 15 January 2012 via the conference site (http://www.sle2012.eu/), specifying that the abstract is intended as an ?Oral Presentation? in our workshop. The slots last 30 minutes (including discussion: 20+10).

Abstracts should be anonymous and contain between 400 and 500 words (exclusive of references). They should state research questions, approach, method, data and (expected) results.

Abstracts will receive three scores, two by two members of the SLE 2012 Scientific Committee and one by the workshop convenors. Notification of acceptance will be given by 31 March 2012.

For any information please contact workshop.vagueness2012 at gmail.com.

For news and updates, please visit the workshop website: https://sites.google.com/site/workshopvagueness2012/


DESCRIPTION

?Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn?t the indistinct one often exactly what we need?? (Wittgenstein 1953). Indeed, vagueness is a basic property of human languages, which manifests itself at all level of signification and in a number of different ways (Channel 1994). Vagueness is basic in that it fulfills the important communicative task of conveying a piece of information that is indefinite, imprecise, in a word ?vague?.
The notion of vagueness is part of different scholar traditions and has received numerous definitions. Traditionally, for philosophers and formal linguists, a sentence is vague when it does not give rise to precise truth conditions, and the vagueness of an expression originates in imperfect discrimination (Sorensen 2006, van Rooij 2011), e.g. gradable adjectives or quantity adjectives. In this tradition, a vague expression is not well defined with respect to the specific entities in its domain of application, or when truth is not preserved when moving from a case of which it is true to qualitatively very similar cases (sorites) (Hyde 2005), or when the cutoff point of a series is not known. However, the coverage of the term can be broadened, since vagueness may also concern the information that is communicated and may affect the identification of the referent, be it a class or an entity. Therefore we can recognize two different levels of vagueness: a systemic vagueness, closely related to the notion of indeterminacy, which responds to the general need of multiplicity of meaning in linguistic expressions, and a contextual vagueness, which refers to the multiple determinability of the meaning and function of words or expressions depending on specific speakers? choices and situational needs.
In other words, forms of vagueness may also concern the very content a sentence is meant to convey. We refer to this as ?intentional vagueness?. The aim of the workshop is to gather together scholars working on the form and meaning of intentional vagueness, namely on the fact that some constructions (at whatever level, of whatever type) are used by the speakers precisely to encode a vague referent or state of affairs.
This type of vagueness can be conveyed by a variety of forms at different levels of encoding, which, by virtue of their belonging to different domains, are often studied by distinct subfields and linguistic traditions:
a)   syntax: see binominal constructions with approximators of the sort/kind type (cf. Tabor 1994, Denison 2002 for English; Mihatsch 2007, Masini 2010 for Romance languages), some of which have developed into hedges with a more metalinguistic function (Lakoff 1972, Kay 1997), but also some kinds of list constructions, which have been proved to have an approximating function (Bonvino, Masini & Pietrandrea 2009), or again connectives that encode the non-finite nature of the set of linked elements, thus serving as vagueness markers;
b)   lexicon and semantics: see the relationship between the coding of vagueness and a specific type of lexical source which is recurrent in different languages, e.g. the class of taxonomic nouns, such as Italian tipo (Voghera to appear), Swedish typ (Rosenkvist & Sk?rlund to appear), French genre (Fleischmen & Yaguello 2004);
c)   pragmatics: discourse studies have a special role in the investigation of vagueness, since a number of expressions encoding vagueness (e.g. adverbs, connectives, vague category identifiers or general extenders, cf. Channel 1994, Overstreet 1999, Mihatsch 2009) have been mainly examined in terms of their function in discourse, rather than as markers that bear a grammatical meaning (cf. Dubois 1992, Dines 1980, Aijmer 1985 who assimilate these constructions to discourse markers);
d)   and, recently, intonation: it is generally recognized that vagueness is more frequent in spoken discourse than in written language (Biber et al. 1999) and that prosody can play a crucial role in conveying a vague interpretation of a chunk of speech (Warren 2007).
What emerges from this picture is a great specialization in individual areas, but very little communication between the various subfields and methodologies. 
Moreover, we observe a lack of a true cross-linguistic perspective.
 
This workshop aims at investigating the following three lines of research:
 
1) Cross-linguistic variation and diachronic paths in the coding of intentional vagueness
-     How are the various types of vagueness encoded in the world?s languages? Is it possible to identify recurrent patterns? Are there significant typological differences?
-     On what levels may vagueness be encoded (intonation, lexicon, morphology, syntax, discourse)? Do different levels match with different types of vagueness (e.g. vagueness conveyed syntactically vs. vagueness conveyed phonetically)?
-     Are there recurrent diachronic patterns leading to the coding of vagueness?
-     Are specific categories more apt to be reanalyzed as vagueness markers (e.g. connectives, generic nouns, epistemic adverbs)?
 
The latter question is directly related to the second line of research we propose to explore.
 
2) Intentional vagueness and other functional domains: delimitation issues
-     How is intentional vagueness connected with phenomena such as indefiniteness, indeterminacy and non-factuality/irrealis that have been discussed in the literature (cf. Lyons 1999, Jayez & Tovena 2006, Mauri & Sans? to appear)?
-       Assuming that vagueness is a category of its own, then how can we tell it apart from the above-mentioned domains?
-       Assuming, instead, that vagueness is a larger category, can we say that there are different types of vagueness that typically trigger different encoding strategies across the world?s languages (e.g. indefinite reference is typically encoded by pronouns, adjectives and adverbs)?
-       In any of the above cases, what would be the best way to represent the relation between all these expressions and their distribution in the languages of the world (e.g. a semiotic hierarchy, a functional map)?
 
3) Theoretical and metalinguistic issues: how to talk about vagueness?
Given the great intra- and cross-linguistic variation in the coding of vagueness, and the lack of a systematic analysis of intentional vagueness, there is a tendency to overproduce ad-hoc categories for given strategies, suffice it to mention the great variety of terms used to name so-called general extenders (Overstreet 1999), e.g.: set marking tags (Dines 1980), utterance-final tags (Aijmer 1985), extension particles (Dubois 1993), vague category identifiers (Channel 1994), post-detailing component (Selting 2006). This probably depends on various factors:
-       first, the defining criteria of traditional grammatical categories are of little help in identifying the vagueness functions of the investigated constructions. What about items such as English etcetera or Italian tipo: does it say something about their semantics to describe them in terms of ?adverbs?? Another case in point is the Italian connective piuttosto che, which has recently developed the value ?or something like that? in particular syntactic contexts (Mauri & Giacalone Ramat 2011): is it useful to still analyze it as a connective even if it does not link anything in such contexts?
-       secondly, vagueness markers are difficult to classify because they may have a reduced or broader distribution than other items of the same grammatical class;
-       third, vagueness is not only a semantic phenomenon, nor a purely morphosyntactic one, but it may be rather encoded across different levels, and can require multilevel criteria and representation tools.
All these factors ? we believe ? produce great terminological variation and many distinctions. In our opinion, a better understanding of such a complex phenomenon would take great advantage of an effort also on the metalinguistic side: this would be a decisive step not only forward a better descriptive adequacy, but also forward a better explicative adequacy. In other words, we should try to be less ?vague? when we talk about vagueness if we want to develop a good theory of vagueness.
 
TOPICS

We welcome submissions discussing the form and meaning of vagueness from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective, in line with the questions raised above. Topics of interest include:

- identification and description of specific constructions encoding intentional vagueness (at any level of analysis) in one or more languages;
- identification and description of strategies (e.g. connectives, adverbs, etc.) used for coding intentional vagueness intra- and cross-linguistically;
- typological studies describing recurrent patterns in the coding of intentional vagueness;
- synchronic and diachronic analyses regarding the relation of vagueness with (what seem to be) functionally related domains (such as indeterminacy, indefiniteness, non-factuality/irrealis);
- diachronic analyses regarding the emergence of constructions encoding intentional vagueness in the languages of the world;
- cognitive or formal representations of intentional vagueness, as part of the meaning encoded by a linguistic expression.
 

References

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Biber, Douglas et al. 1999. Longman Grammar of Written and Spoken Language. Essex, England: Pearson Education.

Bonvino, Elisabetta, Francesca Masini & Paola Pietrandrea. 2009. List constructions: a semantic network. Paper presented at the 3rd International AFLiCo Conference ?Grammars in Construction(s), Paris, May 27-29, 2009.

Channell, Joanna. 1994. Vague Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Denison, David. 2002. History of the sort of construction family. Paper presented at the Second International Conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG2), Helsinki, September 6-8, 2002.

Dines, Elizabeth. 1980. Variation in discourse?and stuff like that. Language in Society 1: 13-31.

DuBois, Sylvie. 1993. Extension particles, etc. Language Variation and Change 4: 179-203.

Fleischman, Suzanne & Marina Yaguello. 2004. Discourse markers across languages: evidence from English and French. In Carolin Lynn Moder & Aida Martinovic-Zic (eds.), Discourse across languages and cultures, 129?148. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Hyde, Dominic. 2005. Sorites. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox.

Jayez, Jacques & Lucia M. Tovena. 2006. Epistemic determiners. Journal of Semantics 23(3). 217-250.

Kay, Paul. 1997. The kind of / sort of constructions. In Paul Kay, Words and the meaning of context, 145-158. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

Lakoff, George. 1972. Hedges: a study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. In Paul Peranteau et al. (eds.), Papers from the Eighth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 183-228. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.

Lyons, Christopher. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Margerie, H?l?ne. 2010. On the rise of (inter)subjective meaning in the grammaticalization of kind of/kinda. In Kristine Davidse et al. (eds.), Subjectification, intersubjectification and grammaticalization, 315-346.  Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Masini, Francesca (2010), Binominal constructions in Italian of the N-di-N type: towards a typology of light noun constructions. Paper presented at the Workshop on Binominal syntagms as a neglected locus of synchronic variation and diachronic change: Towards a unified approach, 43rd SLE Annual Meeting, Vilnius, 2-5 September 2010.

Mauri Caterina & Anna Giacalone Ramat. 2011. Restricted indefiniteness: the case of Italian piuttosto che. Paper presented at the 44th SLE Annual Meeting. Logro?o, 9-11 September 2011.

Mauri, Caterina & Andrea Sans? (eds.). To appear. What do languages encode when they encode reality status? Special issue to appear in Language Sciences.

Mithasch, Wiltrud. 2007. The construction of vagueness: ?sort of? expressions in Romance languages. In G?nter Radden, Klaus-Michael K?pke, Thomas Berg & Peter Siemund (eds.), Aspects of meaning constructiong meaning: from concepts to utterances, 225-245. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Mithasch, Wiltrud. 2009. The approximators French comme Italian come, Portuguese como Spanish como from a grammaticalization perspective. In Corinne Rossari et al. (eds.), Grammaticalization and pragmatics: facts, approaches, theoretical issues, 65-92. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Overstreet, Marianne 1999. Whales, Candlelight, and Stuff Like That: General Extenders in English

Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press.

Overstreet, Maryann. 2005. And stuff und so: investigating pragmatics expressions in English and German. Journal of Pragmatics 37. 1845-1864.

Rooij, Rob van. 2011. Vagueness and linguistics. In Giuseppina Ronzitti (ed.), Vagueness: a guide. Heidelberg: Springer.

Rosenkvist, Henrik & Sanna Sk?rlund. To appear. Grammaticalization in the present ? The changes of Modern Swedish typ. In Anna Giacalone Ramat, Caterina Mauri & Piera Molinelli (eds.),  Synchrony and diachrony: a dynamic interface. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Selting, Margret. 2007. Lists as embedded structures and the prosody of list construction as an interactional resource. Journal of Pragmatics 39. 483-526.

Sorensen, Roy. 2006. Vagueness. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vagueness/.

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Voghera Miriam. To Appear. A case study on the relationship between grammatical change and synchronic variation: the emergence of tipo[-N] in the Italian language. In Anna Giacalone Ramat, Caterina Mauri & Piera Molinelli (eds.),  Synchrony and diachrony: a dynamic interface. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Warren, Martin. 2007. { / [ OH ] not a < ^ LOT > }: discourse intonation and vague language. In  Joan Cutting (ed.), Vague language explored, 182-197. London: Palgrave McMillan



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Caterina Mauri
Dept. of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
University of Pavia
Strada Nuova 65
27100 Pavia Italy

Email: caterina.mauri at unipv.it
Homepage: http://lettere.unipv.it/diplinguistica/docenti.php?&id=1114

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