27.2193, Calls: General Ling, Pragmatics, Semantics, Syntax, Typology/Germany

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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-2193. Thu May 12 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.2193, Calls: General Ling, Pragmatics, Semantics, Syntax, Typology/Germany

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Date: Thu, 12 May 2016 12:28:25
From: Charlotte Coy [charlotte.coy at uni-tuebingen.de]
Subject: Existential Constructions between EXISTENCE and LOCATION

 
Full Title: Existential Constructions between EXISTENCE and LOCATION 

Date: 01-Dec-2016 - 02-Dec-2016
Location: Tübingen, Germany 
Contact Person: Charlotte Coy
Meeting Email: charlotte.coy at uni-tuebingen.de
Web Site: http://www.sfb833.uni-tuebingen.de/c-bereich-variation/c4-dessi-schmidjaegerkochwinter-froemel/workshop-existentials.html 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Pragmatics; Semantics; Syntax; Typology 

Call Deadline: 31-Jul-2016 

Meeting Description:

Between EXISTENCE and LOCATION: Empirical, Formal and Typological Approaches
to Existential Constructions

English there is, French il y a, or German es gibt are typical examples of so
called existential constructions (1) and have been intensely studied in the
last 30 years (cf. among others Lyons 1967, Clark 1987, Freeze 1992, Hartmann
2008, Leonetti 2008, McNally 2011, Koch 2012, Bentley 2013, Creissels 2014,
Bentley et al. 2015).

(1) There are lions in Africa.
    Il y a des lions en Afrique.
    In Afrika gibt es Löwen.

As Clark (1978) already pointed out, in many languages existential
constructions are systematically related to locative and possessive
constructions (2a,b). The exact nature of this alternation, the delimitation
of the cognitive domains EXISTENCE and LOCATION, and the cross-linguistic/
typological distribution of recurrent patterns organizing the semantic space
EXISTENCE/LOCATION/POSSESSION are however still subject of discussion (Koch
2012, Creissels 2014), and will be one central topic of the workshop.

(2)a. There is a book on the table. / The book is on the table. / The book is
Tom's.
   b. Il y a un livre sur la table. / Jean a un livre.

A second major concern of the conference will be the relation of
EXISTENCE/LOCATION and existential constructions to information structure.
Existential constructions in some languages exhibit the definiteness effect
(Milsark 1977), that has been partially explained in terms of
information-structural restrictions (Ward & Birner 1995, McNally 1997,
Leonetti 2008). Depending on the language or the diatopic/diastratic variety
within one language (e.g. Spanish haber, cf. among others De Mello 1991, Claes
2014), existential constructions are construed personally or impersonally
(sometimes with an expletive subject). As a consequence, the grammatical
status of the pivot noun phrase in existential constructions is quite often
unclear, and varies between subject, object or ''something-in-between'' (cf.
''actant H'' in Lazard 1994). Additionally, these constructions have been
analyzed as a subgroup of presentative constructions, so that their relation
to information structure and general principles of discourse organization is
also a wider issue (Lambrecht 1994).

Although a lot of research on existential constructions deals with English,
there are also studies taking an explicit comparative perspective (Clark 1978,
Freeze 1992, Zeshan & Perniss 2008, Koch 2012, Creissels 2014) or focusing on
languages other than English (Leonetti 2008, Koontz-Garboden 2009, Weinert
2013, Bentley et al. 2015). There has recently also been an increasing
interest in diachronic studies (Pfenninger 2009, Ciconte 2011). These studies
reveal systematic reoccurring cross-linguistic and diachronic patterns and
thus offer interesting insights into the cognitive and linguistic principles
that govern the expression of EXISTENCE and LOCATION. The range of
experimental or psycholinguistic research on the topic is however still
limited, so that we especially invite contributions presenting experimental
studies.

The workshop aims to bring together scholars from all frameworks working on
existential constructions in order to provide a platform for fruitful
scientific debate on the topic.


Call for Papers: 

We invite original research contributions that present empirical research on
existential constructions (typological data, corpus studies, psycholinguistic
and experimental data) or theoretical studies of existential constructions, or
a combination of both. Papers taking a cross-linguistic, comparative or
diachronic perspective or that present experimental data are especially
welcome. Contributions could address, but are not limited to, one of the
following topics:

- the conceptual and/or linguistic link between EXISTENCE and LOCATION (and/or
POSSESSION)
- the relation of existential constructions and copula constructions (or
constructions involving ''near-copula'' verbs, like German posture verbs)
- the relation of existential constructions (e.g. there be), verbs of ''coming
into being/presence'' (e.g. to appear) and verbs of existence (e.g. to exist)
- existential constructions and information structure
- existential constructions and presentativity
- existential constructions and impersonal constructions
- the status of the pivot noun phrase
- typological approaches to the study of existential constructions
- experimental approaches to existential constructions
- diachronic variation and grammaticalization of existential constructions
- ...

Invited Speakers
Delia Bentley (Manchester)
Denis Creissels (Lyon)
Manuel Leonetti (Madrid)

Abstract Submission
Please send your abstract of about 300-500 words to
charlotte.coy[at]uni-tuebingen.de before July 31st, 2016. Abstracts should be
written in English, anonymous, and formatted in pdf. Please include author
information (affiliation, contact address) and the title of your abstract in
the body of the e-mail.

Important Dates
Deadline for Abstract Submission: 31st Jul. 2016
Notification of Acceptance: 30 Sep. 2016
Workshop: 1st & 2nd Dec. 2016

Organizers
Projects C4 and A7 of SFB 833 Universität Tübingen
Organizing Committee: Charlotte Coy, Jutta Hartmann, Sarah Dessì Schmid

References
Bentley, Delia (2013): ''Subject canonicality and definiteness effects in
Romance there-sentences.'' In Language 89.4, 675-712.
Bentley, Delia/ Ciconte, Francesco M. / Cruschina, Silvio (2015): Existentials
and Locatives in Romance Dialects of Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ciconte, Francesco M. (2011). ''The emergence and the reanalysis of the
existential proform: evi-dence from early Italo-Romance.'' In Transactions of
the Philological Society 109(3), 284-306.
Claes, Jeroen (2014): ''A Cognitive Construction Grammar approach to the
pluralization of presentational haber in Puerto Rican Spanish''. In Language
Variation and Change 26, 219-246.
Clark, Eve (1978): ''Locationals: Existential, locative and possessive
constructions''. In J. Greenberg (ed.): Universals of Human Language.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 85-126.
Creissels, Denis (2014): ''Existential predication in typological
perspective.'' MS, University of Lyon;
http://www.deniscreissels.fr/public/Creissels-Exist.Pred.pdf.
DeMello, George (1991): ''Pluralización del verbo haber en el español hablado
culto de once ciudades''. In Thesaurus 46, 445-471.
Freeze, Ray (1992): ''Existentials and other locatives.'' In Language 68,
553-595.
Hartmann, Jutta M. (2008): Expletives in Existentials: English there and
German da. (LOT Dissertation Series 181). Utrecht: LOT.
Koch, Peter (2012): ''Location, existence, and possession: a
constructional-typological exploration''. In Linguistics 50, 533-603.
Koontz-Garboden, Andrew (2009): ''Locative and existential constructions in
Ulwa.'' In Anthropological Linguistics 51(3-4), 244-68.
Lambrecht, Knud (1994): Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus,
and the Mental Representation of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Lazard, Gilbert (1994): ''L'actant H : sujet ou objet ? '' In Bulletin de la
Société de Linguistique de Paris 89.1, 1-28.
Leonetti, Manuel (2008): ''Definiteness effects and the role of the coda in
existential constructions''. In H. Høeg-Muller, (ed.): Essays on nominal
determination: from morphology to discourse management. Amsterdam
/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 131-162.
Lyons, John (1967): ''A note on possessive, existential and locative
sentences''. In Foundations of Language 3, 390-396.
McNally, Louise (1997): A Semantics for the English Existential Construction.
New York/London: Garland.
McNally, Louise (2011): ''Existential Sentences''. In K. von Heusinger et al.
(eds.): Semantics, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1829-1848.
Milsark, Gary (1977): ''Toward an Explanation of Certain Peculiarities in the
Existential Construction in English''. In Linguistic Analysis, 3, 1-30.
Pfenninger, Simone E. (2009): Grammaticalization Paths of English and High
German Existential Constructions. Bern: Peter Lang.
Ward, Gregory/ Birner, Betty (1995): ''Definiteness and the English
Existential.'' In Language 71 (4), 722-742.
Weinert, Regina (2013): ''Presentational/existential structures in spoken
versus written German: es gibt and sein.'' In Journal of Germanic Linguistics
25(1), 37-79.
Zeshan, Ulrike/ Perniss, Pamela (eds.) (2008): Possessive and Existential
Constructions in Sign Languages. Sign Language Typology Series No. 2.
Nijmegen: Ishara Press.




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