27.3967, Calls: Disc Analysis, Lang Documentation, Pragmatics, Semantics, Typology/Switzerland

Wed Oct 5 18:50:06 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-3967. Wed Oct 05 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.3967, Calls: Disc Analysis, Lang Documentation, Pragmatics, Semantics, Typology/Switzerland

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Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2016 14:49:52
From: Manuel Widmer [manuel.widmer at uzh.ch]
Subject: Rethinking Evidentiality

Full Title: Rethinking Evidentiality 

Date: 10-Sep-2017 - 13-Sep-2017
Location: Zurich, Switzerland 
Contact Person: Manuel Widmer
Meeting Email: manuel.widmer at uzh.ch

Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis; Language Documentation; Pragmatics; Semantics; Typology 

Call Deadline: 01-Nov-2016 

Meeting Description:

Ever since evidentiality became a topic of interest in mainstream linguistics
in the early nineteen eighties, a vast number of cross-linguistic and
language-specific studies have considerably enhanced our understanding of the
phenomenon. They have given rise to the widely accepted standard definition of
evidentiality as a grammatical category that specifies the information source
on which a statement is based. At the same time, this progress has led to new
questions. 

One of the most fundamental issues that remains unresolved is the question of
how we can diagnose and identify an evidential as such. In both typological
and descriptive studies, morphemes are sometimes referred to as
''evidentials'' without reflecting on whether this is the most adequate
functional characterization. This issue has been touched upon in some recent
studies that question the analysis of certain bona fide ''evidential''
subcategories as true evidentials. For example, Bruil (2014, 2015) has argued
that reportative markers do not primarily mark information source, but rather
signal a shift in epistemic authority. In the same vein, Widmer (2016,
forthcoming) has argued that egophoricity (a.k.a. ''participatory evidence''),
does not specify one's source of information but the quality of one's
knowledge as ''exclusive / personal'' or ''non-exclusive / impersonal''. This
has important implications for the typological classification of evidentiality
(see Plungian 2010; San Roque & Loughnane 2012; Hengeveld & Dall'Aglio
Hattnher 2015 for some recent proposals).

The issue of diagnosing evidential semantics is directly linked to the
question of which methodology should best be used to study and evidential
categories. Within functional linguistics scholars have argued for the use of
natural discourse including conversations (Aikhenvald 2004) and the use of
techniques from discourse analysis (Gipper 2011). Within formal semantics,
scholars have argued for elaborate elicitation methods that help to determine
the felicity of the use of evidentials in specific contexts (see Faller 2002;
Matthewson et al. 2007; Waldie et al. 2009; Peterson 2010; Murray 2010;
Déchaine 2012). 

In this workshop, we would like to bring together scholars working on
evidentiality from empirical, methodological, and / or theoretical
perspectives in order to discuss the question of how evidentials can be
identified and classified. The aim is to discuss how these different
approaches can feed each other in our understanding of evidentiality. We are
especially interested in the following questions (but potential contributors
should not feel restricted by them):

(1) What diagnostics / tests can we use to identify and study evidentials in
the languages of the world?
(2) Is it possible to describe evidential distinctions by reference to other
semantic concepts, e.g. “event situation” vs. “learning time” (Klose 2014)?
(3) Are there other notions that are necessary to adequately describe complex
evidentiality systems, e.g. ''epistemic authority'' (Bruil 2014, 2015),
''perspective'' (Bergqvist in press)?
(4) Are there morphosyntactic and / or semantic criteria that allow us to
group evidentials into cross-linguistically coherent subsystems, e.g.
''representational'' vs. ''interpersonal'' (Hengeveld & Dall'Aglio Hattnher
2015)?
(5) To which extent is it justified to think of evidentiality as a network of
independent epistemic categories that all gravitate towards the notion of
''information source''?

Call for Papers: 

This workshop is intended to form a part of the 50th Annual Meeting of the
Societas Linguistica Europea (SLE), which will be held at the University of
Zurich, 10-13 September 2017. We welcome contributions from all theoretical
frameworks that address any of the issues outlined in the workshop
description. Furthermore, we encourage linguists who study underdescribed
languages to contribute with descriptions of evidentials in their languages of
study. Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words excluding examples and
references and submitted to manuel.widmer at uzh.ch and martine.bruil at cnrs.fr in
pdf format by November 1, 2016.

Important Dates: 

1 November 2016: deadline for submission of 300-word abstracts to the workshop
organizers
15 November 2016: notification of acceptance by the workshop organizers
25 November 2016: submission of the workshop proposals to SLE 
25 December 2016: notification of acceptance of workshop proposals from SLE
15 January 2017: deadline for submission of abstracts to SLE for review
31 March 2017: notification of paper acceptance
10-13 September 2017: SLE conference

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