28.3265, Calls: Comp Ling, Lang Acquisition, Psycholing, Semantics, Syntax/Germany

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-3265. Wed Aug 02 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.3265, Calls: Comp Ling, Lang Acquisition, Psycholing, Semantics, Syntax/Germany

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Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2017 10:44:48
From: Ingo Reich [i.reich at mx.uni-saarland.de]
Subject: Relating Elliptical Utterances to Information in Context

 
Full Title: Relating Elliptical Utterances to Information in Context 
Short Title: AG12 

Date: 07-Mar-2018 - 09-Mar-2018
Location: Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany 
Contact Person: Ingo Reich
Meeting Email: i.reich at mx.uni-saarland.de
Web Site: http://pragmatics.uni-saarland.de/ellipsis/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Psycholinguistics; Semantics; Syntax 

Call Deadline: 15-Aug-2017 

Meeting Description:

Invited Speakers:

Jason Merchant (University of Chicago)
Colin Phillips (University of Maryland)

Workshop description:

Intuitively, the explanation of elliptical utterances seems to be
straightforward at first sight: When we as a hearer or reader stumble across a
non-sentential or elliptical utterance, we start from the assumption that the
unarticulated information is in one way or another accessible from the context
of utterance. Likewise, we as a speaker or writer will (arguably) leave only
those parts of an utterance or message unarticulated, which we think the
addressee can easily reconstruct from the context of utterance. In a sense,
then, ellipsis is simply a matter of redundancy: If some information can be
easily reconstructed from the context, it is redundant; if it is redundant, it
can be left unarticulated.

As we learned from the rich research on ellipsis in the last 30-40 years or
so, things turn out to be more complicated though: Some kinds of ellipses need
to be related to a linguistic antecedent and are licensed by
information-structural notions like e-Givenness (Merchant 2001) which might
add to the rapid access found in psycholinguistic studies (cf. Phillips &
Parker 2014) . Other kinds of incomplete utterances – like the (in)famous A
decaf cappucino, please! – directly relate the fragment to the context of
utterance (e.g. Klein 1993). Here, it has been argued that this needs to be
understood as a process of pragmatic or conceptual enrichment (e.g. Carston
2002, Stainton 2006). Still other kinds of incomplete utterances like the
omission of functional expressions (e.g. complementizer deletion or article
drop in headlines). have been argued to be constrained by information
theoretical principles like the »uniform information density« principle (e.g.
Jaeger 2010).

In this workshop, we would like to explicitly reconsider the way elliptical
utterances of very different sorts relate to the information provided by the
context of utterance (including visual and prosodic information, script
knowledge etc.). In particular, we would like to ask the following two
questions: Is it possible that there is one overarching principle or mechanism
that relates the relevant information to the ellipsis site? And what are the
core factors that are necessary to identify / predict the relevant
information? (And the reverse question: what happens if redundancy formation
fails and reduction still takes place?).

Selected References: 
Carston, R. (2002): Thoughts and Utterances. Blackwell. J
aeger, F. (2010). Redundancy and Reduction: Speakers Manage Syntactic
Information Density. Cognitive Psychology 61, 23-62. 
Klein, W. (1993). Ellipsis. In: Jacobs et al. (eds.): Syntax. An International
Handbook of Contemporary Research. De Gruyter. 763-799.
Merchant, J. (2001). The Syntax of Silence. OUP. 
Phillips, C. & D. Parker (2014): The Psycholinguistics of Ellipsis. Lingua
151, 78-95. 
Stainton, R. (2006). Words and Thoughts. OUP.


2nd Call for Papers:

We invite papers from all kinds of approaches (formal, functionalist,
cognitive, information-theoretical) and from all relevant fields (in
particular theoretical syntax, semantics/pragmatics, computational
linguistics, psycholinguistics and language acquisition). Abstracts should be
no more than two pages in length (including examples and references), in
12-point font, US Letter size or A4 paper with 1-inch/2.5cm margins, single
spaced, in PDF format. Please submit your abstract through the web form that
is available at the workshop's homepage (see above). (In case you do not get a
confirmation of submission by e-mail – which you should – please try again and
make sure that your e-mail address is correct.)

Deadline for submitting abstracts: August 15, 2017
Notification of acceptance: September 15, 2017

Please note that accepted speakers need to provide a personalized short
abstract of about 1 page (details shortly) by the end of October 2017. This
short abstract is then published as part of the DGfS 2018 conference booklet.




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