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Second call for abstracts<br>
<br>
Workshop <i><b>Polysemy and coercion of clause-embedding predicates</b></i><br>
<br>
Session of the annual conference of the German Linguistics Society
(DGfS); <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://dgfs2017.uni-saarland.de/wordpress/">http://dgfs2017.uni-saarland.de/wordpress/</a><br>
Location: Saarbrücken, Germany<br>
Date: March 8-10, 2017<br>
Organizers: Marie-Luise Popp & Barbara Stiebels (Universität
Leipzig)<br>
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Workshop description:<br>
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<p>Unlike typical Standard Average European languages such as German
or English, many under-researched languages display only a small
inventory of clause-embedding (or “complement-taking”) predicates
(CEPs), with the consequence that many of these predicates are
highly polysemous or vague (e.g., <i>nɔrkatɛ</i> (Lonwolwol;
Paton 1973): ‘grasp, believe, trust, remember etc.’). But even in
languages with a richer inventory of CEPs, polysemy appears in
many facets (e.g., English <i>tell</i> ‘narrate, order, inform’
or Spanish <i>esperar</i> ‘hope, wish, expect, demand’). The
polysemy of the predicates may influence their complementation
patterns (e.g., <i>know that</i> vs. <i>know how to</i>): often,
only polysemous CEPs show the full range of the language-specific
complementation patterns, with close associations of
complementation types and specific readings of the polysemous CEP.
Other distributional properties are also affected by polysemy, for
instance: (a) the dual use of ‘begin’, ‘start’, ‘stop’, ‘promise’,
‘threaten’ and possibly other predicates as raising and control
predicates; (b) the restriction of NEG-raising with Spanish <i>esperar</i>
to its ‘expect’ reading (Popp 2016); (c) the reading-specific
selection of mood/modality in the embedded clause (Spanish <i>sentir</i>:
‘feel’ with indicative, ‘regret’ with subjunctive).</p>
<p> Predicates that do not exhibit clausal arguments in their base
entry may be turned into CEPs, e.g., verbs of sound emission (<i>shriek</i>
→ <i>shriek that</i> ...). Here, notions such as “coercion”
(Pustejovsky 1995, Asher 2011), “lexical subordination” (Levin and
Rapoport 1988) or “conflation” (Talmy 1985) may be brought into
play. The syntactic flexibility of restricted CEPs can also be
enhanced by coercion (e.g., the factive German CEP <i>bedauern</i>
‘regret’ may be used parenthetically if interpreted as ‘utter with
regret’).</p>
<p>Invited speaker: Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten (Simon Fraser
University)</p>
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<p>We invite abstracts for 30min talks (including discussion period)
dealing with the following questions (inter alia):</p>
<ul>
<li>Which patterns of polysemy can be observed in CEPs? Are there
predictable/systematic patterns of polysemy?</li>
<li>Are there cross-linguistic tendencies of co-lexification in
CEPs? The CLICS data-base (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://clics.lingpy.org/">http://clics.lingpy.org/</a>), for
instance, reveals that ‘ask’ often shows up with the two
readings ‘question’ and ‘request’. Likewise, ‘believe’ and
‘think’ and ‘know’ and ‘understand’, respectively, are
co-lexified in quite a number of languages. </li>
<li>Which distributional properties of CEPs are affected by
polysemy?</li>
<li>Which coercion patterns yield CEPs or affect CEPs? Does the
availability of coercion depend on general conflation patterns
in the respective languages? Do CEPs resulting from coercion
exhibit specific complementation patterns?</li>
<li>How should the polysemy of CEPs be modeled? </li>
<li>Are there specific diachronic processes that lead to the rise
or loss of polysemy in CEPs? Does the emergence or disappearance
of synonymous or semantically similar CEPs play a role? How does
the rise or loss of polysemy relate to the complementation
pattern of the respective predicates?</li>
<li>Which role does the polysemy of CEPs play for their processing
or acquisition?</li>
<li>Which patterns of polysemy copying of CEPs can be observed in
language contact?</li>
</ul>
<p>Please submit a one-page abstract (single-spaced, 12pt;
references and examples can be added on a second page) as pdf
document to Marie-Luise Popp (marie_luise [dot] popp [at]
uni-leipzig.de).</p>
<p>Deadline: August 15, 2016<br>
Notification of acceptance: September 15, 2016</p>
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With kind regards,<br>
Barbara Stiebels<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Prof. Dr. Barbara Stiebels
Institut für Linguistik
Universität Leipzig
Beethovenstr. 15
04107 Leipzig
Tel. +341/97-37604</pre>
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