28.3861, Calls: Gen Ling, Pragmatics, Psycholing, Semantics, Text/Corpus Ling/Estonia

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-3861. Wed Sep 20 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.3861, Calls: Gen Ling, Pragmatics, Psycholing, Semantics, Text/Corpus Ling/Estonia

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Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2017 14:51:21
From: Lena Karssenberg [lena.karssenberg at kuleuven.be]
Subject: Workshop on Preverbal Indefinite Subjects

 
Full Title: Workshop on Preverbal Indefinite Subjects 

Date: 29-Aug-2018 - 01-Sep-2018
Location: Tallinn, Estonia 
Contact Person: Lena Karssenberg
Meeting Email: lena.karssenberg at kuleuven.be

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Pragmatics; Psycholinguistics; Semantics; Text/Corpus Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 01-Nov-2017 

Meeting Description:

Workshop on Preverbal indefinite subjects

In languages with Subject Verb word order, preverbal subjects tend to be
definite rather than indefinite (e.g. Givón 1976, 1978; Leonetti 1998).
However, the acceptability and frequency of preverbal indefinite subjects
(henceforth PIS) vary cross-linguistically. For instance, it is reported that
PIS are hardly acceptable in spoken French (1) (Lambrecht 1988, 1994; Van De
Velde 2005; Cappeau & Deulofeu 2006; Cappeau 2008; Dobrovie-Sorin & Beyssade
2012), whereas they are much less problematic in English (see translation in
(1)).

(1) ? Un ami m’a apporté ce livre.
‘A friend brought me that book.’
(Cappeau & Deulofeu 2001:4, our translation)

The awkwardness of (1) may be related to the fact that in French (as in other
discourse-configurational languages), preverbal subjects are usually
discourse-given and topical in the sense of ‘that which the sentence is about’
(Givón 1976). Indefinite constituents, however, generally refer to
discourse-new referents and are dispreferred as topics. As a consequence,
speakers of French make extensive use of ‘presentational constructions’ such
as the il y a cleft in order to introduce discourse-new, indefinite
constituents (Lambrecht 2002; Karssenberg 2016, 2017; Karssenberg & Lahousse
2017).

(2)  Il y a une voiture qui se fait remorquer par une dépanneuse dans le
parking... 
‘There’s a car that’s getting towed by a tow truck in the parking lot.’ 
(Karssenberg 2017:183)

In a similar vein, although PIS are acceptable in Dutch when accompanied by
prosodic stress (3a), other presentational constructions, such as “er is + NP
+ VP” can also be used in order to introduce discourse-new indefinite
referents (3b).

(3) a. IEMAND heeft koffie over haar arm gemorst. 
SOMEONE has coffee over her arm spilled. 
“Someone spilled coffee over her arm.”
b. Er is een trein ontspoord. 
There is a train derailed.
“A train has derailed.”
(Belligh 2016)

Other licensing conditions have also been reported. For instance, Cheng &
Downing (2014) argue that PIS in Durban Zulu (see (4)) can be accounted for in
terms of the presence of a presupposition of existence rather than the
opposition topical/non-topical.

(4) úúma ámá-nye ámá-phutha á-bálúlékiile, ngéké sí-khíphe lencwáadi
if 6-some 6-error 6SUBJ-be.major.tam never we-publish this.book 
‘If (some) mistakes are major, we will never publish this book.’
(Cheng & Downing 2014:20)

The goal of this workshop is to bring together insights about PIS in different
languages with SV word order, in order to come to a better understanding of
the acceptability and frequency of PIS and their licensing conditions.
Questions we intend to address in this workshop include, but are not limited
to, the following:

- Which types of PIS are acceptable in languages with SV word order (e.g.
indefinite pronouns, partitive or quantified NPs…)?
- What is the distribution of PIS across different genres/usage contexts (e.g.
newspaper vs. online forum, spoken vs. written) of a given language?
- Which are the (semantic, morphosyntactic, information structural) licensing
factors for PIS?
- To what extent do licensing conditions for PIS vary cross-linguistically?
- How can cross-linguistic differences in the acceptability and/or frequency
of PIS be explained?
- How can different methodological approaches (e.g. corpus linguistic methods,
experimental approaches) be combined to gain a deeper and more complete
insight into PIS?
- …

We welcome contributions about all languages with SV word order and we are
particularly interested in analyses that are based on empirical work (corpus
research, experimental studies).


Call for Papers:

Please send an abstract of max. 300 words (excluding references) that clearly
states the research questions, data analysis and results to
lena.karssenberg at kuleuven.be before November 1 2017. You will later have the
chance to revise your abstract before January 2018.

Convenors:

Lena Karssenberg (KU Leuven)
Laura Rosseel (University of Cologne)
Tricia Irwin (Swarthmore College)




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