33.1598, Calls: General Linguistics, Linguistic Theories, Semantics/Romania

Sun May 8 23:20:57 UTC 2022

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-1598. Sun May 08 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.1598, Calls: General Linguistics, Linguistic Theories, Semantics/Romania

Moderator: Malgorzata E. Cavar (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Student Moderator: Billy Dickson
Managing Editor: Lauren Perkins
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Everett Green, Sarah Goldfinch, Nils Hjortnaes,
      Joshua Sims, Billy Dickson, Amalia Robinson, Matthew Fort
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Everett Green <everett at linguistlist.org>
================================================================

Date: Sun, 08 May 2022 19:20:19
From: Xavier Villalba [Xavier.Villalba at uab.cat]
Subject: Superlatives and Definiteness

Full Title: Superlatives and Definiteness 
Short Title: SuperDef 

Date: 24-Aug-2022 - 27-Aug-2022
Location: Bucharest, Romania 
Contact Person: Ion Giurgea
Meeting Email: giurgeaion at yahoo.com

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Semantics 

Call Deadline: 20-Jul-2022 

Meeting Description:

The use of the definite articles with ‘relative’ superlatives is a much
studied but still unsettled issue in formal linguistics (Szabolcsi 1986, Heim
1999, Farkas & É. Kiss 2000, Sharvit & Stateva 2002, Schwarz 2005, Krasikova
2012, Pancheva & Tomaszewicz 2012, Coppock & Beaver 2014). Other—less
addressed—issues concerning the interaction between superlatives and
definiteness are:

i) the construction of the superlative meanings by combining definiteness
marking and a comparative form. Romance languages, Albanian, Modern Greek,
some Austrian German varieties, Maltese, Neo-Aramaic, Livonian do not have a
dedicated morphological marker for the superlative (no counterpart of the
English -est or most) but instead convey superlative meanings by using
comparative markers associated with definiteness (see Bobaljik 2012:52). For
Romance languages, it has been shown that this morphological uniformity
corresponds to quite different syntactic configurations, depending on whether
the definite article is part of a superlative constituent as in French
postnominal superlatives and in Romanian (Croitor & Giurgea 2016,
Dobrovie-Sorin & Giurgea 2021), or realizes the determiner of the overall
nominal projection, as in Ibero-Romance and Italian (Loccioni 2018). On the
semantic side, attempts have been made of building superlative meanings based
on comparatives (see Dunbar & Wellwood 2016) but definiteness plays no part in
them.

ii) the restriction on the use of indefinite determiners with superlatives.
Such uses are only found in absolute superlatives which involve separate
orderings in each group of a plurality, e.g. This class has a best student
(Herdan & Sharvit 2006). 

iii) the semantics of predicative superlatives. Recently, it has been noticed
that predicative superlatives show interesting properties in languages that
mark superlatives by combining comparatives and definites (Loccioni 2018,
2019, Croitor & Giurgea 2016).

2nd Call for Papers:

Topics include:

1. Crosslinguistic variation. (i) We would like to find out whether the
difference between dedicated superlatives versus superlative meanings based on
comparatives is accompanied by other constraints in the distribution and range
of meanings available for superlatives. (ii) We would like to know whether the
constraints on the relative superlative readings are different in languages
with articles versus languages without articles (Slavic) or languages in which
the definite article has been introduced relatively recently (Bulgarian).  
2. Differences between adnominal and predicative superlatives
3. Modal superlatives (see Schwarz 2005, Romero 2013, Loccioni 2019): their
syntax and semantic composition, and their adnominal vs predicate position
4. Compositional semantics. (i) What is the semantics of superlatives in those
languages (e.g. French and Romanian) in which the definite article is a
‘superlative marker’ directly attached to the adjective in the comparative?
How to get it compositionally? (ii) What is the compositional semantics of
superlatives in those languages (e.g. Italian and Ibero-Romance) in which the
definite article is the determiner of the nominal projection (noun modified by
adjective in the comparative) rather than a ‘superlative marker’? For these
languages, do we need to postulate a null counterpart of the superlative
marker that surfaces as a definite in Romanian and French? (iii) How is the
compositional semantics of adnominal vs predicative superlatives build?

Submission Guidelines:

Abstracts should be anonymous and no longer than two pages A4, including
references and examples, with 2.5 cm margins, font size 12, single-spaced. The
file should be anonymous both in the body of the text and in the filename.
Submissions are limited to a maximum of one individual and one joint abstract
per author for the entire conference; it will not be possible to introduce
changes in authorship after submission. Please indicate in your submission
whether your abstract should be considered for the main session or for the
workshop, and (for main session submissions) whether your paper is to be
considered for oral or poster presentation. Abstracts should be submitted in
PDF format through EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=gr20220)
no later than July 20, 2022 (UTC+2).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

***************************    LINGUIST List Support    ***************************
 The 2020 Fund Drive is under way! Please visit https://funddrive.linguistlist.org
  to find out how to donate and check how your university, country or discipline
     ranks in the fund drive challenges. Or go directly to the donation site:
                   https://crowdfunding.iu.edu/the-linguist-list

                        Let's make this a short fund drive!
                Please feel free to share the link to our campaign:
                    https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-33-1598	
----------------------------------------------------------