[Lingtyp] CfP: Ad hoc categories and their linguistic construction - Workshop at the 49th SLE meeting, Naples Aug. 31-Sept. 3, 2016

Wed Oct 14 10:52:52 UTC 2015

*Call for papers*

(*apologies for multiple posting*)

*Ad hoc categories and their linguistic construction. *

*Typology, diachrony and use*

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Workshop proposal for the 49th SLE meeting,

Naples, August 31 – September 3, 2016

*Convenors:*

Caterina Mauri (University of Pavia), Andrea Sansò (Insubria University)

*Background and aims of the workshop:*

A large bulk of psycholinguistic research (Barsalou 1983, Smith & Samuelson
1997, among many others) has shown that the traditional view of categories
as fundamentally stable objects is untenable in various respects.
Categories, instead, as Croft & Cruse (2004: 92) put it, “are inherently
variable, and created on-line as and when needed”.

Languages have overt strategies that make the online construction of
categories “visible” and explicitly allow the hearer to identify some
relevant exemplars as the starting point for an abstraction process leading
to the on-line construction of a contextually relevant category.

These strategies include things as diverse as:
(i) so-called list constructions or general extenders (e.g. Engl. “central
Iowa and stuff” as a strategy to construct on-line the ad-hoc category
“RURAL AREAS OF THE USA”),
(ii) associative or similative plural constructions (cf. (1) see Moravcsik
2003), by which speakers may extend the reference of a given noun to
include some individual or entities typically associated with the referent
of that noun,
(iii) derivational collective morphology (cf. (2)), which can be used
productively to create new lexical labels for ad hoc categories,
(iv) so-called representative (Haspelmath 2007) or non-exhaustive
connectives (cf.(3)), i.e. connectives that specifically encode that the
two (or more) items that they connect are just members of a category
including other similar elements,
(v) reduplication (cf. (4)), which in some may be used with such a
function, etc.

The on-line construction of categories is thus much more pervasive in
grammar than one might assume, involving such diverse grammatical domains
as number and plurality, lexical derivation, connectives and more
transparent constructions such as general extenders. All these construction
types share a common function but differ as to the way the category is
abstracted away from the given exemplars.

This workshop aims to provide a unified approach to these constructions and
to their common abstracting function, by gathering together studies that
explicitly deal with the strategies that languages use to construct ad hoc
categories on-line. We welcome cross-linguistic studies, taking into
account more than one language, as well as studies dealing with the
diachrony of these constructions and with their patterning in discourse and
interaction, based on corpus data.

*See examples in the attached file!*

*Topics*
*Possible phenomena to be investigated include:*

- exemplifying constructions (meaning ‘for instance’, ‘such as’, etc.)
- general extenders
- connectives and their exemplifying functions
- associative and similative plurals
- nonce compounds
- reduplication leading to a ‘X and so on’ reading
- collectives and their relation to the construction of categories
- derivational strategies leading to contextually dependent categories or
sets
- …

*Possible topics include:*

-  cross-linguistic studies on constructions used to build ad hoc categories
-   diachronic studies
-   corpus-based research on the referential continuity of the exemplars
and the category
-   analyses of the discourse relevance and discourse phenomenology of ad
hoc categories
-    the cooperation of speaker and hearer in the construction of ad hoc
categories in interaction
-   psycholinguistic evidence for how these constructions are processed and
the ad hoc categories construed
-   semantics and pragmatics of exemplification
-   …

*Abstracts*

We invite short abstracts of 300 words, excluding references and examples.
Abstracts should be in an editable format (e.g. .doc or .docx; no pdf will
be considered). Abstracts should be sent *to the two workshop organizers*:

caterina.mauri at unipv.it

andrea.sanso at uninsubria.it

The workshop will be part of the 49th annual meeting of the SLE in Naples,
August 31 – September 3, 2016. Presentations will be maximally 20 minutes,
allowing 10 minutes for discussion and room changes.

*Important dates*

The deadline for the submission of the short abstract is *November 10, 2015*.

Note that if your abstract has been included in the workshop and the
workshop has been accepted, you will also have to prepare a full abstract
and submit it to be reviewed by the SLE scientific committee. The deadline
for the submission of full abstracts is *January 15, 2016*.

*References*

Barsalou, L W. (1983) “Ad hoc categories” *Memory and Cognition* 11/3,
211-227.

Corbett, G. (2000) *Number*, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Croft, W. & A. D. Cruse. 2004. *Cognitive Linguistics*. Cambridge: CUP.
Haspelmath M. (2007). Coordination. In: T. Shopen (ed.), *Language typology
and syntactic* *description*, vol. II: *Complex constructions*, 1-51,
Cambridge: CUP.
Moravcsik, E. (2003). “A semantic analysis of associative plurals”, *Studies
in Language* 27/3: 469-503.
Smith, L. B. & L. K. Samuelson. 1997. Perceiving and remembering: category
stability, variability and development. In: K. Lamberts & D. Shanks
(eds.). *Knowledge,
concepts and categories*, 161–95. Hove: Psychology Press.

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Caterina Mauri
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici- Sezione di Linguistica
Universita' di Pavia
Strada Nuova, 65
I-27100 PAVIA

Tel. +390382984687
E-mail: caterina.mauri at unipv.it
Homepage: http://studiumanistici.unipv.it/?pagina=docenti&id=1114
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