33.2454, Calls: Pragmatics, Psycholinguistics, Semantics/France

Wed Aug 10 07:02:31 UTC 2022

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-2454. Wed Aug 10 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.2454, Calls: Pragmatics, Psycholinguistics, Semantics/France

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Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2022 07:01:42
From: Keny Chatain [hnm1.workshop at aol.com]
Subject: 1st Workshop on Homogeneity and Non-Maximality in Plurals and Beyond

Full Title: 1st Workshop on Homogeneity and Non-Maximality in Plurals and Beyond 
Short Title: HNM1 

Date: 17-Nov-2022 - 18-Nov-2022
Location: Online, France 
Contact Person: Keny Chatain
Meeting Email: hnm1.workshop at aol.com
Web Site: https://homogeneity-workshop.netlify.app/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics; Psycholinguistics; Semantics 

Call Deadline: 15-Sep-2022 

Meeting Description:

This online workshop aims to gather semanticists and psycholinguists
interested by homogeneity gaps and non-maximality, in plural predication and
beyond. The workshop will feature 30 minutes talks reporting on new research
in this area, as well as round tables discussing the state of the art and
avenues for future research.

Organizers : 
- Omar Agha (NYU)
- Keny Chatain (ENS/PSL)
- Nina Haslinger (University of Göttingen)

A long-standing observation (since at least Fodor 1970) is that in certain
contexts, sentences containing plurals exhibit gaps between their truth and
falsity conditions. If John read half of the books he was assigned, neither
(1-a) nor (1-b) seems true; furthermore, in three-valued judgment tasks (Križ
& Chemla 2015), speakers tend to judge sentences like (1-a) ''neither
completely true nor completely false'' in such scenarios.

(1)
a. John read the books.
b. John didn't read the books.

This curious gap in meaning has been dubbed homogeneity. For definite plurals
and type e conjunctions, homogeneity effects have been studied extensively and
are attested in unrelated language families (e.g. Szabolcsi & Haddican 2004).
But homogeneity effects have also been observed in other domains: mass and
group nouns (Löbner 2000), generics (von Fintel 1997, Löbner 2000 a.o.), time
(Agha 2021), embedded questions (Križ 2015; Blok & Chark 2021), conditionals
(von Fintel 1997 a.o.), neg-raising predicates (Gajewski 2005), t-based
conjunctions (Schmitt 2013), donkey anaphora (Krifka 1996, Champollion et al.
2019), clefts (Büring & Križ 2012) etc.

The stability and pervasiveness of homogeneity call for a general theory. Yet,
despite extensive theoretical work (Schwarzschild 1994; Löbner 2000; Gajewski
2005; Križ 2015; Magri 2014; Križ & Spector 2021, Bar-Lev 2021), many things
remain unknown, from the precise conditions under which homogeneity is found
to its potential connection to other gappy phenomena.

Another set of open questions concerns the relation between homogeneity and
imprecision or non-maximality: In some contexts, (1-a) can still be judged
true if John read, say, 7 out of 10 assigned books (see Brisson (1998),
Malamud (2012), Križ (2015), Burnett (2017) a.o. for discussion).
Non-maximality is characteristic of plural definites, but absent in
constructions like (2) that also lack homogeneity. This raises the question of
whether homogeneity and non-maximality are due to the same underlying
mechanism (see e.g. Križ 2015, Bar-Lev 2021, Križ & Spector 2021, Feinmann
2020 for discussion).

(2) John read all the books.

Call for Papers:

Abstract requirements:

- The abstract is for a 30 minutes presentation.
- The main text of the abstract should be at most 3 pages (Times New Roman,
12pt, 2.5cm margin).
- References, figures and glossed examples may be added on additional pages
exceeding the 3-page limit.
- Abstracts should be anonymized and submitted in PDF format.
- Deadline: September 15 2022, 12:00pm noon Eastern Standard Time.
- Any questions may be sent to hnm1.workshop at aol.com
- Submit to Easy Chair: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=hnm1

The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers working on
homogeneity and non-maximality and start a discussion on some of the
outstanding issues related to homogeneity and non-maximality. We invite
contributions on any of the following problems:

- Which semantic phenomena should be analyzed in terms of homogeneity,
especially beyond the standard cases of definite plurals and conjunctions?
- How does homogeneity project, i.e. how can the truth-value gaps of complex
expressions be predicted from the truth-value gaps of their parts?
- Do non-maximality and homogeneity have a common semantic source, and if so,
how does the pragmatics of non-maximality constrain semantic theories of
homogeneity?
- Which semantic/pragmatic mechanisms give rise to homogeneity effects? How
does homogeneity relate to presuppositions, scalar implicatures and other
gappy phenomena?
- What is the relation between homogeneity and vagueness? How, if at all, can
we distinguish homogeneity-related gaps from borderline cases of scalar
predicates like tall?
- What is the semantics of homogeneity-canceling expressions? Which
generalizations are there about the set of expressions that remove
homogeneity?
- What is the cross-linguistic landscape of homogeneity and non-maximality? Is
there substantial cross-linguistic variation in this domain?
- Which differences between child and adult language are there in the domain
of non-maximality and homogeneity, and what are their theoretical
consequences?

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