[Lingtyp] 1st Call for Papers -- Workshop "Specificity, definiteness and article systems across languages"

Tue Jun 20 08:50:35 UTC 2017

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"Specificity, definiteness and article systems across languages"

Workshop at the 40th Annual Meeting of the DGfS (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft) 
7-9 March 2018, University of Stuttgart

== WORKSHOP WEBSITE ==

Website: https://artsysworkshop.wordpress.com/

== IMPORTANT DATES ==

Submission deadline:  20 August, 2017
Notification deadline: 15 September, 2017
Workshop: 7-9 March, 2018

== ORGANIZERS ==

Kata Balogh, Anja Latrouite and Robert Van Valin
(SFB991, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf)

== MISSION STATEMENT ==

It has been observed that a multitude of the world’s languages can do without formal marking of the concepts of definiteness and specificity through articles (see e.g. Dryer 2013a-b, Dayal 2017, Czardybon 2017, Šimík 2014).  At the same time languages like some North American Indian languages have been described as having up to 12 different articles (e.g. Lakota, Ullrich 2016), making fine-grained distinctions not only with respect to animacy and countability, but also with respect to different types of givenness in discourse. 
One of the main questions that inspires this workshop is how languages with and without an article system go about referent coding and helping the hearer to recognize whether a given NP should be interpreted as definite, specific or non-specific.

Hawkins (2004) regards the use of articles as pragmatically redundant, assuming that the discourse context should suffice to determine whether a noun phrase is definite or not. Tanaka (2011) suggests that a language without an article system like Japanese employs deictic strategies through all levels of grammar, while a language like English is said to use more anaphoric than deictic strategies in discourse and grammar. In order to explain the development of article systems, certain grammatical features, e.g. the loss or lack of certain nominal categories, have been argued to be influential. For example, Hewson & Bubenik (2006) find a correlation between the loss of case marking and the rise of an article system.
Hence a second central question of the workshop concerns the grammatical consequences of having or lacking an article system.

Different typologies have been suggested with respect to articles systems. Jenks (to appear) assumes three types of languages: (i) bipartite languages with two separate articles for anaphoric and unique definites (e.g. Germanic languages and Lakhota), (ii) marked anaphoric languages with a definite article restricted to anaphoric definite environments (e.g. Fante Akan and some Wu Chinese dialects) and (iii) generally marked definite languages with a single definite form used in both contexts (e.g. English). Schaeffer and Matthewson (2005) propose that languages differ in that article distinctions rely on the state of the common ground between speaker and hearer in some, while others  rely on speaker beliefs. 
So a third question concerns the specific semantic-pragmatic parameters along which article systems may vary.

== CALL FOR PAPERS == 

The workshop will bring together researchers from theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics,
typology, semantics and pragmatics, and seeks to stimulate an interdisciplinary discussion.

** Topics of interest **

We invite submissions in the topics including (but not limited to):
	(1) grammatical implications of having an article system vs. not having any articles at all; 
	(2) the (dis-)similarity with respect to reference coding in languages with and without article systems; 
	(3) the contextual restrictions on the omission of articles in languages with an article system; 
	(4) the psycholinguistic implications of the different ways of coding definiteness and specificity across languages.

** Formatting requirements **

We invite anonymous abstracts of max. 2 pages long (A4 format, font size min. 12pt and margins of 2cm).
Every author can submit at most one single-authored and one co-authored abstract. 

** Submission **

Please submit your abstract(s) via EasyChair following the link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=artsys18
Abstracts must be submitted no later than August 20, 2017.

== SELECTED RELEVANT LITERATURE ==

Abbott, B. 2003. Definiteness and indefiniteness. In: Horn L. and G. Ward (eds). Handbook of Pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell. 122-49. 

Brocher, A., S. Lindemann and K. von Heusinger. 2016. Effects of Information Status and Uniqueness Status on Referent Management in Discourse Comprehension and Planning. Discourse Processes. December 2016. pp. 1-25.

Czardybon, A. 2017. Definiteness in a Language without Articles - A Study on Polish. PhD Dissertation. Dissertations in Language and Cognition, SFB991. Vol. 3. Düsseldorf University Press.

Dayal, V. 2017. Determining (In)definiteness in the Absence of Articles. In Hohaus, V. and W. Rothe (ads). Proceedings of TripleA 3: Fieldwork Perspectives on the Semantics of African, Asian and Austronesian Languages. University of Tübingen.

Dryer, M. S. 2013a. Definite Articles. In Dryer, M. S. & Haspelmath, M. (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.  (Available online at http://wals.info)

Dryer, M. S. 2013b. Indefinite Articles. In Dryer, M. S. & Haspelmath, M. (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.  (Available online at http://wals.info)

Hawkins J. 1978. Definiteness and indefiniteness. London: Croom Helm

Hawkins J. 1991. On (in)definite articles: Implicatures and (un)grammaticality prediction. Journal of Linguistics 27: 405–42.

Hawkins J. 2004. Efficiency and complexity in grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Pres

Heim, I. 2011. Definiteness and indefiniteness. In von Heusinger, K., C. Maienborn and P. Portner (eds). Semantics. An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning. Vol. 2. Berlin: de Gruyter, 996-1025.

Hewson, J. and V. Bubenik. 2006. From Case to Adposition. The development of configurational syntax in Indo-European languages. John Benjamins.

Jenks, P. (to appear). Articulated definiteness without articles. Linguistic Inquiry.

Lyons, Ch. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Ullrich, J. 2016. Lakhota Grammar Handbook. Lakhota Language Consortium.

Schaeffer, J. and L. Matthewson. 2005. Grammar and Pragmatics in the Acquisition of Article Systems. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 23(53). 

Schroeder, Ch. 2006. Articles and article systems in some areas of Europe. In Bernini, G. and M. L. Schwarz (eds). Pragmatic organization of discourse in the languages of Europe. Mouton de Gryuter.

Sharma D. (2005). Language transfer and discourse universals in Indian article use. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 27. 535-566. 

Šimík , R. 2014. Definiteness and articleless languages. Manuscript. University of Potsdam/SFB632.

Šimík, R. & M. Wierzba (to appear). Expression of information structure in West Slavic: Modeling the impact of prosodic and word order factors. Language.

Tanaka, S. 2011. Deixis und Anaphorik. De Gruyter.

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