28.915, Calls: Gen Ling, Morphology, Phonology, Semantics, Syntax/UK

Fri Feb 17 14:48:39 UTC 2017

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-915. Fri Feb 17 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.915, Calls: Gen Ling, Morphology, Phonology, Semantics, Syntax/UK

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Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2017 09:48:30
From: Melisa Rinaldi [m.g.rinaldi at qmul.ac.uk]
Subject: Roots V

Full Title: Roots V 

Date: 17-Jun-2017 - 18-Jun-2017
Location: London, United Kingdom 
Contact Person: Melisa Rinaldi
Meeting Email: m.g.rinaldi at qmul.ac.uk
Web Site: https://actlblog.wordpress.com/roots/ 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Morphology; Phonology; Semantics; Syntax 

Call Deadline: 24-Feb-2017 

Meeting Description:

Roots V will be hosted by the Department of Linguistics of Queen Mary,
University of London and the Department of Linguistics of University College
London on June 17-18, 2017 (with an opening session on the evening of June
16).

Organizers: Hagit Borer (QMUL), Andrew Nevins (UCL)

The relationship between syntactic structure and syntactic terminals has
always been at the core of important debates within generative grammar. Are
such terminals phonologically abstract or concrete? Do they correspond to
features, to 'morphemes', or are they fully listed items, possibly 'words' or
'lexemes'? If the latter, do such terminals correspond to well-defined units
of meaning? Do they have syntactic properties which inform the structure they
project, or do the properties of terminals derive from the structure that they
are embedded within, and with the structure itself otherwise constructed?
Finally, are there 'syntactic terminals' in the commonly understood sense
altogether?

In the past two decades or so, a body of research has emerged which seeks to
disassociate the hitherto assumed link between syntactic terminals and 'words'
or 'lexemes'. In their stead, the syntactic terminals of functional heads are
frequently assumed to consist of abstract formal features which are
phonologically realized post-syntactically, while non-functional terminals are
frequently assumed to consist of roots, with the latter presumed to have no
syntactic category, and little, if any, other properties which could impact
the syntax. Within such approaches, the 'lexeme' as such, is at best a
derivative notion, and the 'word' is treated as an emerging configuration
created by syntactic combinatorial processes, and corresponding, within any
given phonological system, to some well-formed phonotactic unit (e.g., the
domain of main stress in English).

This research agenda remains incomplete, however, without a fuller theoretical
articulation of the way in which the combination of roots and formal features
conspire to give rise to the properties traditionally associated with 'words'
or 'lexemes'. 

Constructive dialogues intending to elaborate on the properties of roots have
informed a series of workshops in the past 9 years, and we view this workshop
as the latest among them, bringing together researchers working within
different approaches to discuss the place of roots in present day linguistic
modeling:

1. Can roots be inserted in any syntactic context (with clashes conceptually
and contextually excluded), or do roots come with some properties that delimit
their syntactic insertion (e.g. ontological types or selected arguments)?
2. How does syntactic category come about, in the absence of listed
categorical specification for roots?
3. What (if any) are the phonological properties of roots? Is there root
suppletion? Do roots exercise (morpho)phonological selection, and if so, how
is it delimited?
4. What (if any) are the phonological realizations of formal features
(Vocabulary items, in DM)? Can Vocabulary Items exercise (morpho)phonological
selection?
5. What (if any) are the semantic properties of roots? Do roots have meaning,
or content, in isolation? How do they acquire content in context?
6. How can we model the non-compositional content of complex words? Note that
this is a question regardless of whether roots in isolation have content.
7. What psycho- and neurolinguistic evidence can be brought to bear on the
existence of roots as well as possibly formal features as syntactic terminals?

Invited Speakers:

Edit Doron (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Noam Faust (Université Paris 8)
Heidi Harley (University of Arizona)
Jason Merchant (University of Chicago)
Neil Myler (Boston University)
Adam Ussishkin (University of Arizona)

2nd Call for Papers:

Roots V will be hosted by the Department of Linguistics of Queen Mary,
University of London and the Department of Linguistics of University College
London on June 17-18, 2017 (with an 
opening session on the evening of June 16). 

Organizers: Hagit Borer (Queen Mary, University of London), Andrew Nevins
(UCL)

For more details about the conference please visit
https://actlblog.wordpress.com/roots/

We invite submission of abstracts for 40-min (30+10), or 50-min (40+10) oral
presentations, and/or poster presentations in a 2 hour poster session on June
17.

Abstracts are due at 11:59 pm, EST, on February 24, 2017, and should be
submitted on Easychair at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=roots5

The abstract must be at most 2 pages in length, including examples, figures,
references, etc. It must be written on A4 paper with a one-inch margin on all
four sides.  Please mark your submission clearly as to whether it is for a
30+10 presentation, a 40+10 presentation, or a poster.

Each author can only submit at most two abstracts, one single-authored and
one-co-authored.

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