30.389, Confs: Germanic; Romance; General Linguistics, Pragmatics, Syntax/Germany

Wed Jan 23 22:06:01 UTC 2019

LINGUIST List: Vol-30-389. Wed Jan 23 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.389, Confs: Germanic; Romance; General Linguistics, Pragmatics, Syntax/Germany

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Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2019 17:05:31
From: Davide Garassino [davide.garassino at uzh.ch]
Subject: When Data Challenges Theory: Non-Prototypical, Unexpected and Paradoxical Evidence in the Field of Information Structure

When Data Challenges Theory: Non-Prototypical, Unexpected and Paradoxical Evidence in the Field of Information Structure 

Date: 15-Feb-2019 - 16-Feb-2019 
Location: Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany 
Contact: Davide Garassino 
Contact Email: davide.garassino at uzh.ch; daniel.jacob at romanistik.uni-freiburg.de 

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

Language Family(ies): Germanic; Romance 
Meeting Description: 

The goal of this workshop is to explore and discuss 'central' and 'peripheral'
uses of certain syntactic structures, such as cleft constructions, focus
fronting and clitic dislocation, with special regard to Romance and Germanic
languages. As shown by many corpus-based studies, the actual functions of
these structure are more varied and nuanced as commonly assumed in the
literature. Sometimes they even convey values which seem to contradict or even
subvert the ones believed to be more typical, as in the case of the
non-focalizing uses of cleft sentences, which in many text types even
outnumber the 'prototypical' focalizing ones. In the light of these aims, the
invited contributions will address the following open questions:

1. How can the wide spectrum of functions shown by syntactic structures as
cleft sentences, fronting and clitic dislocations be adequately analyzed in
theoretical terms? More specifically: is the intuitive distinction between
more or less prototypical uses well justified or is it only a superficial
phenomenon calling for a deeper explanation (for instance, one involving the
overall discourse structure and organization)?

2. To what extent can the pragmatic functions of a certain syntactic structure
vary depending on the language? Moreover: to what extent can the pragmatic
functions of a syntactic structure vary depending on diamesic factors and
different text types and genres even within the same language? 

3. Regarding the relation between syntax and prosody, more or less
prototypical uses of certain constructions (such as cleft sentences) tend to
be distinguished by different accents and intonational contours. What can
similar empirical observations reveal about the relationship between
information structure and prosody?

4. Methodologically, how can cross-linguistic, corpus-based research
contribute to the study of information structure in context? Which tools, from
a quantitative/statistical point of view, are (the most) suitable for studying
such relations?

The results of the workshop should serve, on the one hand, to better
understand the interaction between syntax and pragmatics. On the other hand,
the workshop should help to promote the synergy between empirical research and
theoretical pragmatics, especially needed at a time in which large amounts of
data are becoming increasingly available and are challenging positions which
have been taken for granted for decades.

Admission is free and no registration is required, but please contact us if
you are interested in attending the workshop.

Organization team: Davide Garassino, Daniel Jacob, Anja Stoll

Funding: Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung and Dr. Jürgen und Irmgard Ulderup-Stiftung

Program:

Friday, 15 February 2019

9:00 - 9:15:
Introduction

9:15 - 10:00:
Dejan Matić (Münster): Information Structure and Inferential Pragmatics

10:00 - 10:45:
Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri (Roma Tre): Distinguishing psychological Given/New
from linguistic Topic/Focus makes things clearer

10:45 - 11:00: Coffee Break

11:00 - 11:45:
Karen Lahousse (Leuven): The Interaction between Contrast and Syntax

11:45 - 12:30:
Arndt Riester (Cologne): Messy text vs. noble theory? Objective discourse
analysis with QUD trees

12:30 - 13:15:
Viviana Masia (Roma Tre): (Re-)assessing the status of Second Occurrence Focus
in information structure: evidence from phonological, processing and
micropragmatic perspectives

13:15 - 14:30: Lunch

14:30 - 15:15:
Manuela Caterina Moroni (Trento) / Matthias Heinz (Salzburg): On unexpected
accents in German and Italian

15:15 - 16:00:
Christoph Gabriel / Jonas Grünke (Mainz): Non-canonical use of marked
syntactic structures in Bulgarian Judeo-Spanish: Evidence from
semi-spontaneous data

16:00 - 16:30: Coffee Break

16:30 - 17:15:
Andreas Dufter (Munich): Tracing the history of non-finite verb fronting in
Medieval French

17:15 - 18:00:
Daniel Jacob (Freiburg): Rhetorical and grammatical paradoxes: On the
impossibility of stating grammatical rules

20:00: Conference Dinner

Saturday, 16 February 2019

9:15 - 10:00:
Pierre Larrivée (Caen): The curious case of the very rare Focus movement in
French

10:00 - 10:45:
Lena Karssenberg (Leuven): French il y a clefts: discourse motivation and
(non)prototypicality

10:45 - 11:00: Coffee Break

11:00 - 11:45:
Aria Adli (Cologne): On the pragmatic relation between question-answer-pairs
and cleft structures

11:45 - 12:30:
Davide Garassino (Zurich): French cleft sentences across genres. What is (not)
prototypical?

12:30 - 13:15:
Uli Reich (Berlin): Ways of Focus: A fine-grained Pragmatics for Cleft
Constructions in Portuguese and Spanish

13:15 - 14:30: Lunch

14:30 - 15:15:
Malte Rosemeyer (Freiburg): An interactional account of the use of clefted
wh-interrogatives in Peninsular and Caribbean Spanish

15:15 - 16:00:
Anna-Maria De Cesare (Basel): Non-prototypical syntactic and information
configurations of focus adverbs

16:00 - 16:30: Coffee Break

16:30 - 17:15:
Margarita Borreguero Zuloaga (Madrid): Cleft sentences in the history of
Spanish: new evidence on the focusing vs. cohesive function debate

17:15 - 18:00:
Marco García García (Cologne): Exclamation Focus

18:00 - 18:30:
Final remarks

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