27.4677, Calls: Syntax, Text/Corpus Linguistics/Switzerland

Tue Nov 15 20:01:28 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4677. Tue Nov 15 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.4677, Calls: Syntax, Text/Corpus Linguistics/Switzerland

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Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2016 15:01:18
From: Barbara Sonnenhauser [barbara.sonnenhauser at uzh.ch]
Subject: Vagueness and Ambiguity in Syntax

Full Title: Vagueness and Ambiguity in Syntax 

Date: 10-Sep-2017 - 13-Sep-2017
Location: Zurich, Switzerland 
Contact Person: Barbara Sonnenhauser
Meeting Email: barbara.sonnenhauser at uzh.ch

Linguistic Field(s): Syntax; Text/Corpus Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 20-Nov-2016 

Meeting Description:

Since Zwicky and Sadock’s (1975) seminal paper on “Ambiguity tests and how to
fail them” ambiguity and other kinds of ‘indeterminedness’ have come to the
fore in syntactic analysis. Some syntactic constructions, sentences or
utterances have more than one interpretation: their intended reading is
usually indicated by the context or world knowledge. Ambiguity, e.g. unclear
argument structures, is triggered by unclear anaphoric relations, etc.  Cf.
(1), where žene ʻwifeʼ could be the indirect object of izmenjatʼ komu-toDAT 
ʻto betray somebodyDATʼ or the dative subject of the impersonal construction
nel’zja komu-toDAT ‘oneDAT it not allowedʼ, and (2), where the antecedent of
the relative pronoun der could be either einen Mann ʻa manʼ or mit einem Hund
ʻwith a dogʼ:

(1) žene izmenjat’ nel’jzja (Russ)
(i) ‘a woman is not allowed to betray’  
(ii) ‘it is not allowed to betray a woman’

(2) Ich sah einen Manni mit einem Hundj,der? bellte. (Ger)
 ‘I saw a mani with a dogj whoi/that/j barked’

While in (1) and (2), the different interpretations can be related to distinct
underlying structures, other cases do not seem to allow for such clear cut
mapping of interpretations and overt structures. In (3), frankly may be
attributed to the speaker or to Pat, in (4), kakь may be interpreted as
introducing a complement or adverbial clause: 

(3) Pat frankly criticized our proposal. (Wasow 2015: 35)
(4) da pokaže namъ kakъ verata e gubitelnica na grěxovetě (19th c Bulg) 
‘[…] in order to show us how/that faith corrupts sin’

(3) and (4) are not ambiguous in the above mentioned sense. They are rather
“syntactically vague”, since one and the same structure seems to describe
different states of affairs.  

Moreover, cases can be found that do not necessarily offer more than one
reading, but defy a unequivocal classification. Here, ambiguity and vagueness
are located on the level of linguistic description; cf. constructions
oscillating between indirect interrogative and complementizer clauses (5) or
free relatives that are related to conditional clauses (6):

(5) He asked me who came > I wonder who came > I know who came > I know that
he came
(6) Wenn wer was wagt, gewinnt > wer wagt, gewinnt > wer wagt, der gewinnt >
der, der wagt, gewinnt

At first glance, syntactically vague constructions seem to be a mainly
classificatory and terminological issue that may be resolved by applying finer
grained parametric approaches. However, they play a pivotal role in language
change and posit challenges for corpus linguistics. Therefore, we think that
they deserve a closer look. In particular, we are interested the following
questions:

- Relation between ambiguity, polysemy and syntactic vagueness
- Typology of ambiguous and syntactically vague structures
- Sources of vagueness or ambiguity
- Role of vagueness and ambiguity in diachronic developments
- Vagueness, ambiguity and register, particularly spoken discourse
- Challenges of ambiguity and vagueness for corpus linguistics 

Call for Papers:

Please send your abstract (max. 300 words excl. references) to
barbara.sonnenhauser at unizh.ch and imke.mendoza at sbg.ac.at by November 20. 

The workshop is planned to be part of the “50th Annual Meeting of the Societas
Linguistica Europaea (SLE 2017)” which takes place in Zurich, September 10-13
2017. Workshop description and abstracts will be submitted to the organizers
by November 25. Notification of the workshop’s acceptance or rejection by the
SLE organizers will be given by December 15.

Important Dates:

- 20 November 2016: Deadline for submission of 300-word abstracts (excluding
references) to the workshop organizers 
- 25 November 2016: Notification of acceptance by the workshop organizers and
submission of the workshop proposal to SLE
- 15 December 2016: Notification of acceptance of workshop proposals from SLE
organizers to workshop organizers 
- 15 January 2017: Submission of full abstracts (500 words, excluding
references), taking into account any feedback from the covenors, for review by
SLE
- 31 March 2017: Notification of acceptance of individual workshop
contributions 
- 10-13 September 2017: SLE conference.

Please send your abstract (max. 300 words excluding references) to
barbara.sonnenhauser at uzh.ch and imke.mendoza at sbg.ac.at by November 20.

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