28.5121, Calls: Ling Theories, Psycholing, Semantics, Syntax/USA

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LINGUIST List: Vol-28-5121. Tue Dec 05 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.5121, Calls: Ling Theories, Psycholing, Semantics, Syntax/USA

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Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2017 15:21:17
From: Ivy Sichel [isichel at ucsc.edu]
Subject: Pronouns in Competition

 
Full Title: Pronouns in Competition 

Date: 27-Apr-2018 - 28-Apr-2018
Location: Santa Cruz California, USA 
Contact Person: Ivy Sichel
Meeting Email: pronouns-group at ucsc.edu
Web Site: https://sites.google.com/ucsc.edu/pronounsincompetition 

Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories; Psycholinguistics; Semantics; Syntax 

Call Deadline: 19-Jan-2018 

Meeting Description:

Long distance dependencies involving pronouns have figured prominently both in
theories of competence and in theories of performance. Bringing these diverse
lines of inquiry closer together is a challenging, yet fundamental, goal for
linguistic theory. In this workshop we propose to study the role(s) that
competition and optimality may play in these domains. 

The idea that the distribution of pronouns, even some aspects of their
interpretation, may be governed by competition with a more optimal
alternative, is not new. However, so far relatively little progress has been
made towards a general theory of pronominal competitions and especially on the
question of how the candidate set for comparison is determined. We propose to
broaden the empirical domain of inquiry by considering pronominal competitions
of various kinds, and across languages: between pronouns and anaphors,
pronouns and gaps in A-bar dependencies, pronouns and demonstratives, overt
vs. null pronouns, pronouns and definite descriptions (in ‘Condition C’
effects) and so on.

The idea that competition plays a role in sentence processing has long been
recognized and it is inherent in computational models of constraint
satisfaction as well as in theories of encoding and retrieval from working
memory. In the past decade especially, the empirical breadth of sentence
processing research on pronouns has increased dramatically. And interestingly
there are many recent experiments on bound pronouns (primarily reflexives, but
also resumptives) that give evidence that initial interpretive processes can
be selective and non-competitive. So an important goal of the workshop will be
to consider whether or how notions of competition that can explain
distributional facts about pronouns are related to mechanisms of sentence
production and comprehension. We also hope that discussions which take place
might guide future explorations of the territory.

Invited Speakers:

- Isabelle Charnavel (Harvard)
- Elsi Kaiser (USC)
- Aya Meltzer-Asscher (Tel Aviv)
- Ken Safir (Rutgers)
- Shayne Sloggett (Northwestern)
- Sandhya Sundaresan (Leipzig)

Organizers:

Jim McCloskey
Ivy Sichel
Matt Wagers


Call for Papers:

The workshop is intended to explore state-of-the-art thinking on the origin,
formal properties and function of pronouns in long-distance dependencies and
other contexts involving binding and to interrogate the interface between
formal, grammatical analysis and language processing.  

In addition to six invited talks, there will be a number of slots for
submitted spoken presentations as well as a poster session.

Some of the themes we want to explore in the workshop are:

- Pronouns as elsewhere devices in language, and whether the elsewhere status
holds of  pronouns of all sorts: personal, resumptive, reflexive, null, etc.
- Whether and how conceptions of “competition” from different research
traditions are commensurate
- How diverse lexical and grammatical solutions may arise from common language
processing pressures

You can submit an abstract to the workshop via email to
pronouns-group at ucsc.edu. Attach the abstract as a PDF. 
The deadline for abstract submission is January 19. Abstracts should be no
longer than 2 pages (A4 or letter size) with 1-in margins, set single-spaced
in a 12pt font. 

By default all abstracts will be considered for spoken presentation or a
poster session. Please indicate in your email if you only wish your abstract
to be considered for one or the other.




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