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<p><div><b>Conference Announcement</b></div> <div> </div> <div>(IN) DEFINITES AND WEAK REFERENCE</div> <div> </div> <div>We are pleased to announce the conference (In)Definites and Weak Reference, which will be held at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina – UFSC - in Florianopolis (Brazil), on August 20-21, 2012.</div> <div> The conference is part of the activities of the CAPES-COFECUB Cooperation Project.</div> <div> </div> <div>Invited Speakers:</div> <div>Greg Carlson (University of Rochester)</div> <div>Claire Beyssade (CNRS – IJN Paris)</div> <div>Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin (CNRS – Paris 7)</div> <div> </div> <div>Important Dates:</div> <div>Abstract Submission: May 15<br> Notification of acceptance/rejection: June 15<br> Program: June 20</div> <div> </div><p>Information about the conference: <a href="http://www.barenominals.ufsc.br">http://www.barenominals.ufsc.br</a>/</p> <div> </div> <div>Committees</div> <div>Scientific Committee:</div> <div>Claire Beyssade (CNRS – IJN Paris)</div> <div>Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin (Université Paris 7, CNRS)</div> <div>Greg Carlson (Rochester)</div> <div>Roberta Pires de Oliveira (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina/CNPq)</div> <div>Ana Müller (Universidade de São Paulo/CNPq)</div> <div>Isidora Stojanovic (CNRS – IJN Paris)</div> <div>Ernesto Perini (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais/ CNPq)</div> <div>Maria Luíza Cunha Lima (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais/CNPq)</div> <div>Mailce Borges Mota (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina/CNPq)</div> <div>Luiz Henrique Dutra (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina/CNPq)</div> <div> </div> <div>Conference Organizers:</div> <div>Renato Basso (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina)</div> <div>Roberta Pires de Oliveira (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina/CNPq)</div><div> </div> <div><b>Call for Papers</b></div> <div>We invite submission of abstracts for 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion, or posters. Abstracts must not exceed two pages in letter-size or A4 paper, including examples and references, with 1 inch margins on all sides and 12 point font size.</div><p align="justify">Abstracts should have a clear title but should not identify the author(s). They must be submitted anonymously in PDF format.</p><p align="justify">Submissions are limited to 1 individual and 1 joint abstract per author, or 2 joint abstracts per author.</p><p align="justify">Abstracts should be in English</p><p align="justify">They should be sent to <a href="mailto:ropiolive@gmail.com">ropiolive@gmail.com</a> until May 15. The message should include the title of the abstract, the author(s) name(s) and affiliation(s), and address for contact, including the email address.</p><p align="justify">When you submit your abstract, please indicate whether you would like it to be considered for a talk, a poster or both.</p><div>The conference aims to encourage discussions between linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists on the notion of weak reference, definite and indefinite.</div><div> <br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><p align="justify">Milsark (1977) introduced the distinction between weak and strong determiners: a determiner is weak if it can occur in existential sentences and it is strong if it can’t. He observed that indefinites may be weak or strong in the subject position of stage level predicates while they always get a strong reading in subject positions of individual predicates. Then, because of the number of data which seem to be sensible to this distinction, various refinements in the definition of weakness and strength have been proposed: the distinction has been treated in terms of properties of determiners (e.g. Barwise and Cooper (1981)), of discourse semantic properties such as presupposition or specificity (e.g. Diesing (1992)) or of semantic type (Ladusaw (1994), McNally and van Geenhoven(1998)). Weak NPs have been analyzed as property-denoting expressions and lots of works on the various mechanisms of semantic incorporation appeared to account for the semantic composition of such NPs with verbs. </p><p align="justify">The weak-strong distinction has played an important role in studies about indefinites and, at first sight, it seemed that definite were strong, since they trigger a double presupposition: existence and uniqueness. Nevertheless, Poesio (1994) showed that some definite descriptions seem to have lost their presupposition status and may appropriately occur in contexts where their referent wasn’t unique. It is the case of the definite description « the living room wall » in the sentence « The boy scribbled on the living room wall ». Although rooms have four walls, the definite NPs is appropriate and interpretable. Poesio called this type of definite descriptions weak definites. Further, Baker (2005) and Carlson & Sussman (2005) exhibit other examples of definite descriptions which they qualified as weak. Barker focused on possessives (like « It wrapped itself around the finger of the surgeon ») and Carlson & Sussman (2005) are interested in a subset of definite descriptions that shares a semantics with bare count singulars. They suggested comparing the definite description in « Mary went to the store » with the bare nouns in « Mary was in town / at home ». Thus the idea that only indefinites could be weak was jeopardized. Moreover, the concept of weak definitess used by these different authors has also evolved, and the unity of the class of weak uses of definite was also put at issue (cf. Cieschinger (2011)).</p><div>From a very different perspective, and without any reference to the opposition between definites and indefinites, the notion of weak reference has been used by philosophers of language, such as Perry (1970), Dummett (1973) and more recently Moltmann (2007). They suggest that certain expressions of natural language only weakly refer. In a study about absolute and relative identity, Dummett wrote, for example, that once relative identity statements are understood properly, they will not require a notion of relative identity, but rather a notion of weak reference. Weak reference corresponds to reference without identity conditions. He proposes to analyze the demonstrative pronouns this and that as referring to mere portions of reality, pre-individuated parts of reality. Weakly referential terms involve a more fundamental level of reference, reference without identity.</div><div><br></div><div>The aim of this conference is to bring together data and works on different languages on the distinction between strong and weak reference. Because lots of works have been done on weak indefinites, we would like to encourage discussions on weak reference of definites and bare nouns. One issue is to identify the conditions under which these NPs give rise to weak interpretation. The following questions could be adressed :</div><div> <br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><p>(i) What distinguishes weak reference from strong reference? On which criterion to anchor the distinction between strong and weak reference?</p><p align="justify">(ii) Can we transpose the distinction between strong and weak readings from indefinites to definites? What weak definites and weak indefinites have in common, which properties do they share?</p><p align="justify">(iii) What is the relationship between weak reference and semantic incorporation, and between weak reference and number neutrality?</p><p align="justify">(iv) Do we have to analyze weak definites as functional terms?</p><p align="justify">(v) Are weak definites kind-referring expressions? Could we say, as Aguilar-Guevara & Zwarts (2010), that weak definites are expressions that refer to the same sort of kind individuals that definite generics refers to?</p><p>(vi) Since only certain nouns, when associated with certain verbs, can give rise to weak definite readings, how articulate questions of lexical and compositional semantics? Is there a relation between weak reference and concepts? Why read the newspaper give rise to a weak reading, while read the book doesn’t ?</p><div>References</div><div>Aguilar-Guevara, Ana & Joost Zwart. 2010. Weak definite and reference to kinds. Proceedings of SALT, vol. 20, 1-15.</div><div>Baker, Chris. 2005. Possessive weak definite. Possession and Beyond: Semantics and Syntax. 89-113. </div><div>Barwise, Jon and Robin Cooper. 1981. Generalized quantifiers and natural language. Linguistics and Philosophy 4: 159-219. </div><div>Carlson, Gregory & Rachel Sussman. 2005. Seemingly indefinite definite. Linguistic evidence: empirical, theoretical and computational perspectives. 26-30</div><div>Cieschinger, Maria. 2011. Definite Reference. Talk at the “Defniteness and Reference” seminar. University of Osnabrück.</div><div>Diesing, Molly.1992.Indefinites. MITPress, Cambridge.</div><div>Dummett, Michael. 1973. Frege. Philosophy of Language. Duckworth, London.</div><div>Ladusaw, William.1994. Thetic and categorical, stage and individual, weak and strong. In: M. Harvey & L. Santelmann (eds.), From NP to DP. Vol.1 The Syntax and Semantics of Noun Phrases. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 211-237.</div><div>McNally, L. and V van Geenhoven .1998. Redefining the weak/strong distinction. Ms. Barcelona/Nijmegen: Universitat Pompeu Fabra/Max Plank Institut.</div><div>Milsark, Gary .1977. Toward an explanation of certain peculiarities in the existential construction in English. Linguistic Analysis 3, 1-30</div><div>Moltmann, F. 2007. Weak Reference or the True Semantics of Relative Identity Statements. Manuscript. Oxford-Paris Philosophy of Language Workshop, IHPST, Paris, December 16-17, 2007 (also given at: MIT philosophy work-in-progress seminar; ENS MENS seminar November 16, CUNY, May 16, 2007; First Oxford-Paris Workshop, December 11, 2006; CUNY Graduate Center, New York, March 2007).</div><div>Perry , John. 1970 The Same F. The Philosophical Review 79.2, 181-200.</div><div>Poesio, Maximo. 1994. Weak definite. Proceedings of the fourth Conference of Semantics and Linguistic Theory. SALT.</div><div><br></div>
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