27.2254, Calls: General Ling, Pragmatics, Semantics, Syntax, Typology/Spain

Wed May 18 15:13:12 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-2254. Wed May 18 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.2254, Calls: General Ling, Pragmatics, Semantics, Syntax, Typology/Spain

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Date: Wed, 18 May 2016 11:13:03
From: Antonio Fábregas [antonio.fabregas at uit.no]
Subject: The Syntax-Discourse Interface: Approaches, Phenomena, and Variation

Full Title: The Syntax-Discourse Interface: Approaches, Phenomena, and Variation 

Date: 10-Nov-2016 - 11-Nov-2016
Location: Barcelona, Spain 
Contact Person: Antonio Fábregas
Meeting Email: antonio.fabregas at uit.no

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Pragmatics; Semantics; Syntax; Typology 

Call Deadline: 18-Jul-2016 

Meeting Description:

CLT, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 10 - 11 of November 2016

Keynote speakers

Francisco Ordóñez, Stony Brook University
Dennis Ott, University of Ottawa
Cecilia Poletto, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main

In the last 20 years, a great deal of attention has been paid within
syntactic, semantic and pragmatic studies to the syntax-discourse interface
(word order phenomena, topic-focus articulation, the left periphery of the
clause, complemetizers and discourse particles, illocutionary force,
subordination, speaker anchoring, etc.; cf. Rizzi 1997, Chomsky 2008, Haegeman
2011, Wiltschko 2014, among many others). This workshop aims at widening and
deepening our understanding of the approaches and phenomena within this
complex interface through the lense of variation: what remains constant across
languages, and what is the range of possibilities allowed within the space
defined by the independent constraints imposed by UG or the third factor? The
specific questions we are interested in include, but are not restricted, to
the following:

- There are two main views of the syntax-discourse interface within generative
grammar: the cartographic view (Rizzi 1997, Haegeman 2011) proposes that
complementisers must be split in a rich sequence of ordered heads, each one of
them designated to define a very specific component (focus, topic, force...);
in contrast, the Minimalist view (Chomsky 2008, Abels 2012, Ott 2012) argues
that one single head, C, is responsible for all these functions, which
ultimately can be expressed in the form of multiple specifiers or coordination
+ ellipsis, with independent relativised minimality effects and constraints on
movement determining the relative height of such specifiers, when two or more
co-occur. What is the available evidence for an against each one of these
views? 
- The traditional notions of focus and topic have been argued to be rough
characterisations of families of elements, and it has been proposed that in
fact different distinct types of focus and topic must be distinguished both by
their semantic and syntactic behaviour –for instance, familiarity topic,
contrastive topic and aboutness-shift topic in Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl
(2007)–. What are the empirical facts about these subclassifications across
languages? 
- Similarly, within this debate, it has been claimed that information
structure should not be considered a purely left-periphery phenomenon, as
other domains, such as DPs or vPs, seem to be able to define notions such as
focus (eg., Aboh 2004, Poletto 2006). What are the facts, and what is the
behaviour of these DP and vP foci and topics within natural languages?
- Some languages and constructions allow foci or topics to be linearised at
the right edge of the clause, but for instance Clitic Left Dislocation seems
to be more general and available than Clitic Right Dislocation. What are,
again, the facts, and which approach do they support?

Call for Papers: 

Submissions
We invite submissions for 45 (35+10) minute long oral presentations.
Submissions should be sent by attachment, as anonymous pdfs, to:

syntaxdiscourseinterface at gmail.com

Submissions must be no longer than two single-spaced pages, in Times New Roman
12, with 2.5 cms margins, including references and examples. Here are the
important dates:

- Deadline for submissions: 18 of July
- Notification of acceptance: 12 of September
- Conference dates: 10-11 of November (CLT, UAB, Barcelona)

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