19.767, Confs: Morphology, Semanitcs, Syntax, Romance Family/Germany

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LINGUIST List: Vol-19-767. Sun Mar 09 2008. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 19.767, Confs: Morphology, Semanitcs, Syntax, Romance Family/Germany

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1)
Date: 07-Mar-2008
From: Heidrun Bohnet < heidrun.bohnet at uni-konstanz.de >
Subject: Null-subjects, Expletives, and Locatives in Romance

 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2008 11:56:58
From: Heidrun Bohnet [heidrun.bohnet at uni-konstanz.de]
Subject: Null-subjects, Expletives, and Locatives in Romance 
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Null-subjects, Expletives, and Locatives in Romance 

Date: 27-Mar-2008 - 29-Mar-2008 
Location: Konstanz, Germany 
Contact: Eva Remberger 
Contact Email: eva.remberger at uni-konstanz.de 
Meeting URL: http://ling.uni-konstanz.de/pages/home/remberger/Koll2008/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Morphology; Semantics; Syntax 
Language Family(ies): Romance 

Meeting Description: 

The aim of the workshop "Null-subjects, Expletives, and Locatives in Romance" is
to bring together different views on the interpretation of null subjects,
expletives and locatives in order to explore the syntactic, semantic and
morphological correlations of these pronouns in Romance. 

For the full programm description and time table, see:
http://ling.uni-konstanz.de/pages/home/remberger/Koll2008/

Organizers: Georg Kaiser / Eva-Maria Remberger (University of Konstanz,  Germany) 

The correlation between non-null-subjects and obligatory expletive pronouns is
one of the best established parametrisations in generative grammar. However, it
has been shown, that both the null-subject-parameter as well as the existence or
not of overt expletives do not just depend on a simple binary parameter setting,
but have to be seen in a more complex system of interdependencies involving
conditions like deixis, topicality, person, referentiality, movement etc.

As far as overt expletive pronouns are concerned, there are (at least) two
types, one stemming from the form of a neuter pronoun (like it, es, il, ello...)
and one having a clear locative origin (like there, da, bi, ci, y ...). Locative
elements play a role in e.g. in impersonal auxiliary constructions in several
Romance languages and varieties. As for existential constructions, they also
show overt locative and expletive elements; however, where they do not (e.g. in
Romanian), null or implicit locatives can be assumed. Furthermore,
phonologically empty elements with a locative meaning seem to be complemented by
phonologically overt, but meaningless elements, as they appear to be
incorporated in the full verb counterparts of auxiliaries (e.g. in several
Italian dialects).

This is a joint conference of the projects A-19 (Evolution and Variation of
Expletive and Neuter Pronouns in Romance Languages / Georg Kaiser) and A-27
(Romance Auxiliary Verbs: Status - Development - Variation/ Eva-Maria Remberger)
of the SFB 471 "Variation and Development in the Lexicon'', funded by the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.






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