29.1008, Calls: Gen Ling, Pragmatics, Text/Corpus Ling, Typology/Germany

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-1008. Mon Mar 05 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.1008, Calls: Gen Ling, Pragmatics, Text/Corpus Ling, Typology/Germany

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Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2018 18:34:56
From: Dejan Matic [matic at uni-muenster.de]
Subject: Information Structure in Spoken Language Corpora 3: Discourse and Information Structure

 
Full Title: Information Structure in Spoken Language Corpora 3: Discourse and Information Structure 
Short Title: ISSLaC 3 

Date: 07-Dec-2018 - 08-Dec-2018
Location: Münster, Germany 
Contact Person: Dejan Matic
Meeting Email: ISSLAC3 at uni-muenster.de

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Pragmatics; Text/Corpus Linguistics; Typology 

Call Deadline: 10-Apr-2018 

Meeting Description:

While most linguistic work in the past decades has paid lip service to the
fact that information structure (IS) is a function of context and thus rooted
in discourse, IS has rarely been studied as a discourse phenomenon. This lack
of interest in the discourse roots of IS is a corollary of the top-bottom
approach that dominates the IS scene. The categories are predefined and the
research is confined to the identification of the structures through which
these purported categories are realised. On this view, the ways information is
packaged over larger stretches of speech, its relation to intentionality of
communication and the cognitive states of the interlocutors are irrelevant.

This conference looks at IS from the opposite, bottom-up perspective. No a
priori categories are assumed. Linguistically conveyed information can be
structured so as to fit the assumptions about the hearer’s knowledge, or it
can be structured so as to render transparent rhetorical relations, or the
current intentions of the speaker, or anything else that speakers consider
relevant in communication. The task of the IS research is to trace down
communicative and interpersonal factors that determine the decisions
concerning the form in which the utterance is produced and deduce
language-specific categories of IS from the identification of these factors.


Call for Papers:

We invite contributions that attempt to uncover regularities of the
relationship between IS and discourse. Some of the possible topics include the
following:

- Discourse partition and IS: Are there structures that are regularly
associated with certain positions in discourse, such as paragraph beginnings
or ends, perspective switches, etc.?
- Rhetorical relations between utterances and IS: Is there a conventionalised
connection between rhetorical relations such as elaboration, cause,
parallelism, etc.  on the one hand and certain types of IS configurations on
the other? 
- Intentional structure of discourse and IS: Do certain speaker intentions
regularly trigger certain types of IS? Is there a tendency for some types of
speech acts such as questions and answers, corrections, commands, etc. to be
associated with certain IS strategies?
- Interpersonal stance and IS: Are some linguistic structures which appear to
be IS-related also related to interactional aspects of the message, such as
persuasion, hedging, or different types of politeness?
- Referent tracking and IS: How are discourse referents with different degrees
of discourse relevance encoded and is there a conventional association between
certain types of IS and certain types of discourse referents?
- Interlocutors’ mental states and IS: Does the speaker’s estimation of the
current state of common ground have an impact on the way information is
presented? Does contextual givenness play a role? 

With all these possible relationships between IS and discourse, there is
always a superordinate question of the nature of this connection. If a certain
IS configuration is regularly associated with a rhetorical relation, a type of
speech act, etc., is this as a function of more primitive IS categories, such
as the traditional notions of topic and focus? Or are these purported IS
configurations in fact dedicated markers of the given rhetorical relation,
speech act, etc.? In-between solutions relying on conventionalisations of the
originally compositional structures are also conceivable. Take DO-support in
English, which often occurs with adversative rhetorical relations, as in: ‘I
DO like vegetables, but I hate broccoli’. Does the adversative reading stem
from some polarity focus meaning, or does DO-support function as a dedicated
marker of adversative relations? Or is this one of the semi-conventionalised
usages of the otherwise underspecified structure?

This call is open for proposals that deal with any of the suggested topics or
other issues related to the relationship between discourse and IS. Empirical
contributions based on natural language corpora of lesser-known languages are
particularly welcome, but theoretical work and studies of better-known
languages are of equal interest for the conference. 

Participants can receive partial subsidy for travel and accommodation pending
financial approval.

Abstract submissions should be sent to ISSLAC3 at uni-muenster.de by April 10.
Enquiries please to Dejan Matic, matic at uni-muenster.de. The abstract should
include the name(s) and e-mail address(es) of the author(s) and be no longer
than 500 words, plus references and examples.

Abstract: 500 words (not including references and examples) to
ISSLAC3 at uni-muenster.de
Abstract deadline: April 10
Notification of acceptance: April 25
Date: December 7-8




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