Call for Papers Countability in natural languages

[Patricia Cabredo Hofherr]

Empirical, Theoretical and Computational Approaches to Countability in  
Natural Language
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, September 22-24, 2010

A conference organized by the Linguistics Department  
(Sprachwissenschaftliches Institut) of Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany.

Conference website: http://www.linguistics.rub.de/countability2010/

Invited Speakers
	Hagit Borer (University of Southern California, Los Angeles)
	Francis Jeffry Pelletier (Simon Fraser University, Burnaby)
	Henriette de Swart (OTS, Universiteit Utrecht)

Abstracts no longer than six pages should be sent to countability2010 at linguistics.rub.de 
  not later than May 31, 2010.

>

Aims and scope

The distinction between mass and count nouns has been addressed in a  
variety of linguistic (and also extra-linguistic) approaches.  
Initially, it has been suggested that the distinction is a property of  
lexemes, or that it can be derived from properties of the objects  
denoted by the respective nouns. This assumption has been severely  
challenged by a variety of approaches, leading to the assumption that  
countability is a property of constructions and phrases. Yet, a  
critical survey of the most advanced work on the count-mass  
distinction has shown that multiple, partially conflicting views on  
this phenomenon are still competing.

As an illustration for unsettled questions, consider the following:

    * If the mass-count distinction is actually dependent on formal
      syntactic and/or semantic marking, how are nouns to be classified
      that lack such a marking, e.g., nouns in preposition-noun
      combinations (determinerless PPs)?
    * If mass is taken to be a basic property of nouns to which
      syntactic marking must be added to transform the noun into a count
      noun, why do certain languages already require such marking for
      mass terms (e.g., Romance languages)?
    * How can the apparent tension between theoretical constructional
     (i.e., token-based, and hence construction-specific) and
     computational (i.e. primarily type-based, and hence possibly
     lexical-class-based) classification be resolved?

The goal of this conference is to bring researchers from all areas of  
linguistics together to clarify the numerous existing theories  
concerning the count-mass distinction and also to offer a platform for  
new insights and constructive criticism.

We therefore invite original contributions which relate to the  
following issues within or around the count-mass distinction:

    * Cross-linguistic empirical and/or theoretical analysis of the
      count-mass distinction
    * Empirical and/or theoretical analysis of countability in a
      specific natural language
    * Psycholinguistic experiments
    * Manual or computer-aided classification/annotation of countability
    * Historical/etymological contributions

Conference Organizers

Tibor Kiss
Tobias Stadtfeld
Antje Müller
Katja Keßelmeier
Claudia Roch
Jan Strunk
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