27.4646, Calls: Hist Ling, Semantics, Syntax/Switzerland

Mon Nov 14 20:33:21 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4646. Mon Nov 14 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.4646, Calls: Hist Ling, Semantics, Syntax/Switzerland

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Helen Aristar-Dry, Robert Coté,
                                   Michael Czerniakowski)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
                       Fund Drive 2016
                   25 years of LINGUIST List!
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Kenneth Steimel <ken at linguistlist.org>
================================================================

Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2016 15:33:06
From: Alexander Bergs [abergs at uos.de]
Subject: Fragments and Ellipsis in Synchrony and Diachrony

Full Title: Fragments and Ellipsis in Synchrony and Diachrony 

Date: 10-Sep-2017 - 13-Sep-2017
Location: Zurich, Switzerland 
Contact Person: Alexander Bergs
Meeting Email: abergs at uos.de

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Semantics; Syntax 

Call Deadline: 23-Nov-2016 

Meeting Description:

Oral (mainly) as well as written texts are full of fragments, besides complete
sentences, for example, ''Now!'', ''From Europe.'', and ''Don't we?''.

A crucial question posed in previous studies is whether fragments are
sentential or not. Moreover, the interpretation of fragments and their force
has been at the center of the relevant research (Barton 1990; Stainton 2006).
Analyses vary from those that follow an ''ellipsis approach,'' or a
deletion-based analysis of fragments (among others, Hankamer 1979; Morgan 1973
- Stanley 2000; Reich 2003; Brunetti 2003 - Merchant 2001, 2004, 2008), to
those of the direct interpretation approach, or ''direct generation'' account
(among others, Ginzburg & Sag 2000; Barton 1990; Stainton 1998 - van Riemsdijk
1978; Culicover & Jackendoff 2005).

According to the first type of approaches, a deletion transformation is
proposed (for instance, see Hankamer 1979), which complicates the syntax with
an unpronounced structure. For Hankamer (1979), both fragments and gapping
belong to the same category of ellipsis: both of them do not occur in embedded
contexts (Boone 2014). Merchant (2004), on the other hand, assimilates
fragment answers to sluicing and considers fragments as having moved to a
clause-peripheral position. The difference between fragments and sluicing
concerns the landing site and the feature that triggers non-pronunciation of
the clause. 

Ellipsis is not involved in the case of fragments, according to the second
type of approaches: this means that the syntax of a fragment is just the
phrase of the fragment itself and there are no unpronounced parts. A
proposition can arise from an NP with a revision of the usual mappings
(complicating the syntax-semantics mapping). According to this type of
approaches, there are two types of fragments: fragments that can be resolved
through structural identity with an explicit linguistic source; and other
fragments that can be resolved through inference, since no linguistic source
is available for them (among others, Ginzburg & Sag 2000; Ginzburg & Cooper
2004; Kempson et al. 2015 - cf. also Ford, Fox & Thompson 2002 and
Couper-Kuhlen 2011).      

A historical perspective of the analysis of fragments reveals many aspects of
their characteristics and nature. Nykiel (2015), for instance, has examined
historical aspects of the ellipsis in English, mainly with regard to the
possibility of omission of the preposition:

(1) A: I'm here for the audition. B: (For) Which audition? [Sluicing]
(2) A: Pat is trying to get away from who? B: (From) Old Mother. [Stranded
phrases that are semantically equivalent to full clauses, or in Nykiel's
terms, bare argument ellipsis]                       

Nykiel has argued that semantic dependencies between verbs and prepositions
have strengthened, and this tendency resulted in a preference for NP (over PP)
remnants in Present-Day English. According to this view, the strengthening of
the semantic dependencies is connected to the emergence of combinations of
verbs and prepositions (for instance, count on, take after) and the increased
number of prepositional verbs.  

Alexander Bergs (Universität Osnabrück) & Nikolaos Lavidas (Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki)

2nd Call for Papers:

The idea of the workshop is to bring together scholars interested in a
systematic study of the synchrony and diachrony of fragments. The focus will
be on changes in characteristics of ellipsis and fragments. The aim of the
workshop is to open perspectives in the research of the diachrony of ellipsis
and the related phenomena. The issues to be addressed include, among others,
the following:

- The theoretical analyses of fragments and ellipsis 
- The synchrony and diachrony of fragments and ellipsis 
- Fragments / ellipsis and different registers 
- Fragments and Grammar - Fragments and Communication 
- Fragments as elements in an 'interactional grammar'
- The notion of the 'complete sentence'.

The workshop is planned as part of the 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas
Linguistica Europaea (SLE 2017), to be held September 10-13, 2017, in Zurich.
Please send us (abergs at uos.de; nlavidas at enl.auth.gr) a 300-word preliminary
abstract of your paper no later than November 23, 2016. 

Important Dates:

November 23, 2016: Deadline for submission of 300-word abstracts to the
workshop conveners
November 25, 2016: Notification of acceptance by the workshop conveners
November 25, 2016: Submission of the workshop proposals to SLE
December 25, 2016: Notification of acceptance of workshop proposals from SLE
January 15, 2017: Deadline for submission of abstracts to SLE for review
March 31, 2017: Notification of paper acceptance
September 10-13, 2017: SLE conference

Alexander Bergs (Universität Osnabrück) & Nikolaos Lavidas (Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki)

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

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
                       Fund Drive 2016
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

        Thank you very much for your support of LINGUIST!

----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4646	
----------------------------------------------------------
Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated
from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:
          http://multitree.org/