Call for papers

[Natalia Gagarina]

Call for papers
Workshop on the Acquisition of Aspect

Location: Zentrum fuer Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft,
Universalienforschung und Typologie - Research Centre for General
Linguistics, Berlin (Jaegerstr. 10/11, D-10117, Germany)

Date: 9-11 May 2003
Call Deadline: 20 February 2003
No Workshop Fee

Organisers:
Natalia Gagarina
Dagmar Bittner
Jürgen Weissenborn

Web Site: http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/

Workshop Description
Contemporary research on the acquisition of aspect is characterised by the
high variability of theoretical and empirical approaches. The Workshop
aims at clarifying some of the issues which have received different
treatments in the literature so far, like, for example, the order of the
emergence of aspect and tense and their distinction in the early stages of
language acquisition; the role of aspect in the acquisition of verb
grammar in general, and verb categories in particular. Within these two
general issues, the Workshop will provide a forum for the discussion of
more specific questions, like the emergence of grammatical and lexical
structures expressing aspectual oppositions and the emergence of aspect as
a grammatical category. Issues concerning the relationship between
inherent verb semantics and tense-aspect marking are important for further
stages of aspectual development. The interaction of semantic and
grammatical features in the expression of aspect is of utmost interest,
since the category of aspect stands at the cross-road of the lexicon and
grammar. Related to this issue is the role of +/- Boundedness, +/-
Telicity and of similar semantic- conceptual features in the development
of aspectual oppositions.

We are especially interested in papers which address these issues from a
cross-linguistic, typologically varied perspective and investigate
different types of data: spontaneous and elicited, as well as
experimental. Papers focussing on methodological questions related to the
topic of the workshop are also welcomed.

Submission Details
Abstracts should be up to 500 words in length (max. 1 page) and should
outline the research question as well as the language(s) and the age range
of children studied. Electronic submission is strongly encouraged. Please,
include the abstract in the body of the message (do not send attachments!)
and send two copies of abstracts (one anonymous) to Natalia Gagarina:
gagarina at zas.gwz-berlin.de and Dagmar Bittner: dabitt at zas.gwz-berlin.de
with ‘Aspect-2003’ in the Subject line of the email.

Important Dates
Deadline for Submissions: 20 February, 2003
Notification of Acceptance: 15 March, 2003