21.1836, Calls: Semantics, Syntax/Spain

Thu Apr 15 18:04:04 UTC 2010

LINGUIST List: Vol-21-1836. Thu Apr 15 2010. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 21.1836, Calls: Semantics, Syntax/Spain

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1)
Date: 14-Apr-2010
From: Olga Borik < Olga.Borik at uab.cat >
Subject: Verb Meaning, Event Semantics and Argument Structure

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:02:54
From: Olga Borik [Olga.Borik at uab.cat]
Subject: Verb Meaning, Event Semantics and Argument Structure

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Full Title: Verb Meaning, Event Semantics and Argument Structure 

Date: 02-Dec-2010 - 03-Dec-2010
Location: Barcelona, Spain 
Contact Person: Olga Borik
Meeting Email: cr.clt at uab.cat

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics; Syntax 

Call Deadline: 20-Jun-2010 

Meeting Description:

Workshop on the Lexicon-Syntax Interface: 
Verb Meaning, Event Semantics and Argument Structure

The design of the lexicon-syntax interface in the architecture of the language
faculty remains one of the most fascinating and controversial issues in
theoretical linguistics. Continuing attempts to improve our understanding of
this interface help us gain further insights into many intriguing puzzles,
including the linguistic behaviour of verbs and their arguments.

Location: 
The workshop will be hosted by CLT Centre de Lingüística Teòrica, Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain
(http://webs2002.uab.es/clt/index.html)

Contact: 
Olga Borik (Olga.Borik at uab.cat) 
Jaume Mateu Fontanals (Jaume.Mateu at uab.cat) 

Call for Papers

This workshop aims at bringing together researchers working on the relation
between verb meaning, event semantics and argument structure. The relationship
between verb meaning and argument realization has been a widely debated topic in
linguistics for decades but no general consensus has been reached despite the
amount of high quality research in the area. A relatively recent concept of
event structure (since Pustejovsky 1991) has been extensively argued to play a
major role in argument realization.

Notably, a large body of knowledge has accumulated in the field. On the one
hand, a crucial distinction is commonly assumed between structural meaning and
idiosyncratic/root verbal meaning, which plays a role in argument realization.

One of the debated issues, however, is how precisely this distinction affects
the interface issues, in particular those related to argument realization and
alternations. Different solutions have been proposed by Borer (2005), Goldberg
(1995), Hale & Keyser (2002), Levin & Rappaport-Hovav (2005), Marantz (2001),
Ramchand (2008) and many others. A related question is whether the meaning
ingredients that largely determine argument realization are syntactic or
semantic in nature (cf. (neo-)constructionist vs. projectionist approaches). Yet
another problem is to determine which aspects of idiosyncratic/root meaning (if
any) contribute to argument realization and how this contribution should be
modeled (e.g. Levin & Rappaport-Hovav 2005, Reinhart & Siloni 2005).

On the other hand, there is a considerable variation in the morphosyntactic
realization of arguments and possible argument structure alternations of the
same type of verbs, both within one language, and cross-linguistically. The
question that arises is how to account for the observed variations and what are
the ingredients involved in predicting possible alternations? 

The challenge of the present workshop is to attempt to successfully combine
these observations in a theory of lexicon-syntax interface, which is powerful
and restrictive enough to account for both regularities and variation in the
verbal domain.

Invited Speakers: 
Hagit Borer (University of Southern California) 
Andrew McIntyre (Université de Neuchâtel)
Paul M. Pietroski (University of Maryland)
Malka Rappaport Hovav (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) 

Abstracts are invited for oral presentations (30-minute presentation plus 10-
minute discussion) on any topic that contributes to improving our understanding
of the relationship between verb meaning, event structure and argument
structure, including, but not limited to the following questions: 

- What kind of guiding principles should be adopted to draw a distinction
between lexical knowledge and syntactic/semantic computation? 
- When dealing with the interface between lexical semantics and syntax, what are
the minimal tools required to derive all aspects of argument realization? 
- Do we need event structure or any other system to mediate the relation between
a verbal root and its syntactic realization? 
- To what extent is the elasticity of verb meaning lexically determined?
- What are the precise mechanisms to establish a connection between root meaning
and structural meaning? Is there any pre-syntactic/lexical semantic correlation
between root meaning and event and/or argument structure? 
- How are argument structure alternations to be dealt with in different models
of the lexicon-syntax interface? 
- How is cross-linguistic variation in argument alternations to be dealt with in
different models of the lexicon-syntax interface?

Abstracts should be at most two pages long (A4 paper), including examples and
references, with 1 inch/2.5 cm margins on all sides and 12pt font size. The
abstract should have a title but should not identify the author(s). Submissions
are limited to 1 individual and 1 joint abstract per author, or 2 joint
abstracts per author. Abstracts should be written in English. 

Abstracts must be submitted electronically, ONLY in PDF format to the following
address: cr.clt at uab.cat

The subject of the message should be: Abstract Lexicon-Syntax workshop. 

The body of the message should include the title of the abstract, the name of
the author(s), his/her (their) affiliation(s) and contact details.

Important Dates: 
June 20, 2010: Deadline for abstract submission 
July 31, 2010: Notification of acceptance 
December 2-3, 2010: Workshop

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