37.2523, Confs: Panel at IPC20: Projective Content, (Not-)at-issueness, Information Structure, and the Common Ground (Finland)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2523. Fri Jul 31 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2523, Confs: Panel at IPC20: Projective Content, (Not-)at-issueness, Information Structure, and the Common Ground (Finland)

Moderator: Steven Moran (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Valeriia Vyshnevetska
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Daniel Swanson
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Editor for this issue: Valeriia Vyshnevetska <valeriia at linguistlist.org>

================================================================


Date: 29-Jul-2026
From: Fabian Schlotterbeck [fabian.schlotterbeck at uni-tuebingen.de]
Subject: Panel at IPC20: Projective Content, (Not-)at-issueness, Information Structure, and the Common Ground


Panel at IPC20: Projective Content, (Not-)at-issueness, Information
Structure, and the Common Ground

Date: 27-Jun-2027 - 02-Jul-2027
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Contact: Fabian Schlotterbeck
Contact Email: fabian.schlotterbeck at uni-tuebingen.de
Meeting URL: https://uni-tuebingen.de/de/299499

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories;
Pragmatics; Psycholinguistics; Semantics

Submission Deadline: 08-Oct-2026

The panel seeks to advance our understanding of the nature of
information that is ‘taken for granted’ in an utterance. Linguistic
phenomena related to such information, most prominently
presuppositions and conventional implicatures, received different
analyses, e.g. as projective or not-at-issue content. Current debates
center around the questions (i) whether a single analysis can capture
all characteristics of this heterogenous set of phenomena; (ii) how
they connect to information-structural distinctions like
focus-background or topic-comment; and (iii) how such information
enters and is represented in common ground. To address these
questions, the panel aims at bringing together researchers from
different theoretical camps with the growing field of experimental
pragmatics.
Potts (2005) analyzed conventional implicatures, e.g., the content
expressed by parentheticals, appositives and expressives,
as not-at-issue, drawing a distinction between the asserted
proposition (at-issue content), which is typically taken to be an
answer to a question under discussion (e.g. Roberts, 1996/2012;
Tonhauser, 2012; but see Koev (2018) for different conceptions), and a
range of other entailments and presuppositions conveyed in an
utterance (not-at-issue content). Since Potts’ seminal work,
characterising the difference between at-issue and not-at-issue
content sparked great interest in theoretical as well as experimental
research (e.g. Tonhauser, 2012; Murray, 2014; Stevens et al., 2017;
Stolterfoht, 2026). One line of research drew connections between
projective content and not-at-issueness, stating that diverse
phenomena can be subsumed under the premise that they all project
because they do not contribute at-issue content themselves but rather
serve as its background (e.g. Roberts et al., 2009; Simons et al.,
2010). Despite this uniformity, recent experimental findings
highlighted variability and gradience in at-issueness and projection
(e.g. Tonhauser, 2018; Barnes & Ebert, 2023). Only recently, research
focused on factors determining the observed variability by
systematically testing the influence and interplay of lexical meaning,
prior beliefs and at-issueness (e.g. Degen & Tonhauser, 2025).
Moreover, first attempts have been made to implement the effects of
such factors in probabilistic pragmatic models (Scontras & Tonhauser,
2025). Another important desideratum is a model of how different types
of content are processed incrementally (e.g. by introducing a second
processing stage linked to a second layer of meaning designated to
not-at-issue content; e.g. Axel-Tober et al., 2024; Czypionka et al.,
2025), and also how the incremental left-to-right nature of language
processing affects core properties of projection (e.g. asymmetric
filtering; Mandelkern, et al., 2020; Kalomoiros & Schwarz, 2024;
Tonhauser & Degen, to appear).
To shed further light on the issues sketched above, we invite
contributions related to topics such as:
- Links between (not-)at-issueness, projection, and information
structural concepts, and their representation in common ground
- Factors influencing the processing of projective or not-at-issue
content
- Theoretical and empirical approaches to the gradience of
at-issueness
- Differences/similarities of (conventional) implicatures and
presuppositions
Submission:
Abstracts should be anonymous and max. one A4 page (regular font size)
plus one additional page for references and figures. Submissions and
can be made at: https://ipra2027.exordo.com
- Deadline for submission: 08 October 2026
- Notification: early November 2026
- Workshop: 27 June – 02 July 2027
Please note that a membership in the in the International Pragmatics
Association is required to make a submission. For more information on
the submission procedure visit:
https://pragmatics.international/page/CfP2027
Invited Speakers:
- Judith Tonhauser (University of Stuttgart)
- Florian Schwarz (University of Pennsylvania)
Organizers:
Katrin Axel-Tober, Jennifer Hüge, Fabian Schlotterbeck & Britta
Stolterfoht
SFB 1718 “Common Ground”, University of Tübingen
Selected References:
- Axel-Tober, K. Schlotterbeck, F. & Stolterfoht, B. (2024).
Common-Ground Management: Polyfunctional Particles in Processing and
Diachronic Development. Poster presented at XPrag.it, Venice.
osf.io/jnarz
- Barnes, K., & Ebert, C. (2023). The information status of iconic
enrichments: Modelling gradient at-issueness. Theoretical Linguistics,
49(3–4), 167–223. doi.org/10.1515/tl-2023-2009
- Czypionka, A., Reimer, L., Kharaman, M., & Eulitz, C. (2025).
Processing at-issue and non-at-issue content: Evoked and induced brain
activities reveal early and long-lasting differences. PLOS One, 20(5),
Article e0321953. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0321953
- Degen, J., & Tonhauser, J. (2025). Projection inferences: On the
relation between prior beliefs, at-issueness, and lexical meaning.
Glossa Psycholinguistics, 4(1), 1–34. doi.org/10.5070/G6011.20798
- Kalomoiros, A., & Schwarz, F. (2024). Presupposition Projection From
‘and’ vs. ‘or’: Experimental Data and Theoretical Implications.
Journal of Semantics, 41(3–4), 331–372. doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae011
- Koev, T. (2018). Notions of at‐issueness. Language and Linguistics
Compass, 12(12), Article e12306. doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12306
- Mandelkern, M., Zehr, J., Romoli, J., & Schwarz, F. (2020). We’ve
discovered that projection across conjunction is asymmetric (and it
is!). Linguistics and Philosophy, 43(5), 473–514.
doi.org/10.1007/s10988-019-09276-5
- Murray, S. E. (2014). Varieties of update. Semantics and Pragmatics,
7, 1–53. doi.org/10.3765/sp.7.2
- Potts, C. (2005). The logic of conventional implicatures. Oxford
University Press.
- Roberts, C., Simons, M., Beaver, D., & Tonhauser, J. (2009).
Presupposition, conventional implicature, and beyond: A unified
account of projection. In N. Klinedist & D. Rothschild (Eds.), New
Directions in the Theory of Presupposition. European Summer School in
Logic, Language and Information.
- Roberts, C. (1996/2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards
an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics and Pragmatics,
5, 1–69. doi.org/10.3765/sp.5.6
- Scontras, G., & Tonhauser, J. (2025). Projection without
lexically-specified presupposition: A model for “know.” Proceedings of
Sinn Und Bedeutung, 29 (2024): 1431–1448.
doi.org/10.18148/SUB/2024.V29.1286
- Simons, M., Tonhauser, J., Beaver, D., & Roberts, C. (2010). What
projects and why. Proceedings of SALT 20, 309–327.
doi.org/10.3765/salt.v0i20.2584
- Stevens, J. S., de Marneffe, M.-C., Speer, S. R., & Tonhauser, J.
(2017). Predicting projection from rational use of prosody in manner
adverb utterances. Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society Annual
Meeting 2017. hdl.handle.net/2078.5/216290
- Stolterfoht, B. (2026). Adverbial modification and (non-)at-issue
content. In A. Konietzko & S. Winkler (Eds.), Information Structure
and Discourse in Generative Grammar (pp. 315–336). De Gruyter.
doi.org/10.1515/9781501514425-010
- Tonhauser, J. & J. Degen (to appear). I don’t know if naturalness
ratings distinguish presuppositions from nonpresuppositions. Did
Mandelkern et al. 2020 discover that they do?. Linguistics &
Philosophy.
- Tonhauser, J. (2012). Diagnosing (not-)at-issue content. Proceedings
of SULA 6, 239–254.
- Tonhauser, J., Beaver, D. I., & Degen, J. (2018). How Projective is
Projective Content? Gradience in Projectivity and At-issueness.
Journal of Semantics, 35(3), 495–542. doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffy007



------------------------------------------------------------------------------

********************** LINGUIST List Support ***********************
Please consider donating to the Linguist List, a U.S. 501(c)(3) not for profit organization:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=87C2AXTVC4PP8

LINGUIST List is supported by the following publishers:

Australian Linguistics Society https://als.asn.au/Home

Bloomsbury Publishing http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/

Cambridge University Press http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics

Cascadilla Press http://www.cascadilla.com/

De Gruyter Brill https://www.degruyterbrill.com/?changeLang=en

Edinburgh University Press http://www.edinburghuniversitypress.com

European Language Resources Association (ELRA) http://www.elra.info

John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/

Language Science Press http://langsci-press.org

Lincom GmbH https://lincom-shop.eu/

MIT Press http://mitpress.mit.edu/

Multilingual Matters http://www.multilingual-matters.com/

Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG http://www.narr.de/

Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT) http://www.lotpublications.nl/

Peter Lang AG http://www.peterlang.com

SIL International Publications http://www.sil.org/resources/publications


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2523
----------------------------------------------------------