30.2396, Calls: Semantics, Syntax, Typology/Germany

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-30-2396. Mon Jun 10 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.2396, Calls: Semantics, Syntax, Typology/Germany

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Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2019 19:08:17
From: Ryan Bochnak [ryan.bochnak at gmail.com]
Subject: Variation in the Lexical Semantics of Adjectives and their Crosslinguistic Kin

 
Full Title: Variation in the Lexical Semantics of Adjectives and their Crosslinguistic Kin 

Date: 04-Mar-2020 - 06-Mar-2020
Location: Hamburg, Germany 
Contact Person: Ryan Bochnak
Meeting Email: lexsemlexcat at gmail.com

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics; Syntax; Typology 

Call Deadline: 31-Aug-2019 

Meeting Description:

(Workshop of 42nd Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society)

Semantic theories of gradability and comparison (e.g., Kamp 1975; Cresswell
1977; Klein 1980 and many following) have been developed based on data from a
very small sample of languages - almost exclusively English and German. Recent
work extending such theories from a crosslinguistic perspective (e.g., Kennedy
2007; Beck et al. 2010; Bochnak 2015) has shown that translationally
equivalent expressions do not always exhibit the same entailment behaviors,
and can additionally have different morphosyntactic properties (Francez &
Koontz-Garboden 2017). These findings therefore present new facts that
theoreticians have sought to tie together: In some cases through the positing
of crosslinguistic semantic differences with i) some languages lacking a
degree semantics (e.g., Washo, Bochnak 2015); and ii) some gradable
expressions built on lexical items that have a mass noun semantics (Francez &
Koontz-Garboden 2017). These proposals contrast with degree-relation or
context-dependent individual-characterizing semantics assigned to adjectives
in more familiar languages. 

This workshop aims to provide a forum for work that pushes the crosslinguistic
agenda in the semantics of adjectives, their crosslinguistic non-adjectival
equivalents, and the syntax and semantics of constructions of gradability and
comparison in which they appear, with the specific aim of identifying
variation in this domain. We invite contributions that address any aspect of
this agenda in addition to the following specific questions tied to it: 

- Are all degreeless languages alike, or are there different kinds of
degreelessness (cf. Deal and Hohaus 2019)? 

- Are all ''degree-ful'' languages alike, or are there semantically
consequential, crosslinguistic differences in the kinds of degrees a language
might have (whether as portions, as in Francez & Koontz-Garboden, degrees,
states, or as something else)? 

- What is the semantic relationship between adjectives in familiar languages
and translationally equivalent non-adjectival expressions? Do adjectives
(e.g., wise, as argued by Menon & Pancheva (2014) have the kinds of meaning
observed transparently in possessive constructions of the kind discussed by
Francez & Koontz-Garboden 2017 (e.g., have wisdom)? 

- How do the meanings of gradable stative verbs (e.g., love, hate, etc.)
relate to the meanings of adjectives? Are they built on a common ontology, as
argued by Baglini (2015)? 

- What drives variation in the adjectival domain in languages with and without
this category? Do languages exhibit semantic differences or is the observed
variation merely the result of different realizations of the same functional
material (Menon & Pancheva 2014)?


Call for Papers:

Submissions for contributions (20 minutes + 10 minutes questions) related to
the workshop themes should be sent as an anonymous pdf to
lexsemlexcat at gmail.com by August 31, 2019. Abstracts must be no longer than 2
pages, including references.

This workshop is part of the 42nd Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic
Society (DGfS 2020) to be held at the University of Hamburg from March 4-6,
2020. Participants will have to register for the full conference. According to
DGfS rules, participants are not allows to present a single-authored talk at
any of the parallel DGfS workshops, though co-authored talks are excluded from
this rule. A limited number of travel grants of up to 500 Euro each are
available for accepted contributions by DGfS members without/with low income.
Participants should contact us for more information as soon as possible after
receiving their acceptance if they believe they may qualify.

Invited Speakers:

Thomas Grano (Indiana)
Roumyana Pancheva (USC)

Important Dates:

Abstract submission: August 31, 2019
Notification of acceptance: September 15, 2019
Workshop dates: March 4-6, 2020

Submission email: lexsemlexcat at gmail.com

Organizers:
Ryan Bochnak
Margit Bowler
Emily Hanink
Andrew Koontz-Garboden




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