37.2181, Confs: Workshop at DGfS 2027: At-issueness Under the Microscope: A Category Between Descriptive Term, Analytical Tool and Theoretical Concept (Germany)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2181. Thu Jun 25 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2181, Confs: Workshop at DGfS 2027: At-issueness Under the Microscope: A Category Between Descriptive Term, Analytical Tool and Theoretical Concept (Germany)

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Date: 24-Jun-2026
From: Daniel Gutzmann and Maik Thalmann [daniel.gutzmann at rub.de]
Subject: Workshop at DGfS 2027: At-issueness Under the Microscope: A Category Between Descriptive Term, Analytical Tool and Theoretical Concept


Workshop at DGfS 2027: At-issueness Under the Microscope: A Category
Between Descriptive Term, Analytical Tool and Theoretical Concept

Date: 03-Mar-2027 - 05-Mar-2027
Location: Jena, Germany
Contact: Maik Thalmann and Daniel Gutzmann
Contact Email: dgfs27-atissueness at ruhr-uni-bochum.de
Meeting URL:
https://www.sprachsystem.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/veranstaltungen/DGfS-2027-Workshop-At-issueness.html.en

Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics; Psycholinguistics; Semantics

Submission Deadline: 23-Aug-2026

Workshop organizers:
- Maik Thalmann   (Ruhr University Bochum)
- Daniel Gutzmann (Ruhr University Bochum)
Invited speakers:
- Cornelia Ebert (University of Frankfurt)
- David Beaver   (University of Graz)
Workshop Description:
At-issueness as a category of linguistic description reflects the
intuition that the meaning of an utterance can be partitioned into
foregrounded (at-issue) and backgrounded (non-at-issue) contents. To
date, the at-issue/non-at-issue divide has been fruitfully linked to
the analysis of projection, anaphoric potential and the
well-formedness of answers. However, it remains an open question
whether this distinction reflects a unified underlying notion or an
umbrella term covering several distinct phenomena.
Even though research has established a range of well-documented
conventional sources of non-at-issue content---e.g., non-restrictive
relative clauses, presuppositions, and expressives---it has also
uncovered a variety of factors that may overrule an expression’s
conventional (non-)at-issue status. For example, clause-final
non-restrictive relative clauses are easier to interpret as
contributing at-issue content than clause-medial ones. Similarly,
narrow focus marking on the triggering expression may turn an
ordinarily non-at-issue presupposition into part of the assertive
content. Finally, some operators have been argued to shift certain
non-at-issue meanings into the at-issue dimension.
Thus, rather than being purely conventional and monolithic,
at-issueness status appears to be a discourse-sensitive, multicausal
phenomenon that tracks a variety of properties from syntax, semantics
and pragmatics.
In an attempt to unify these factors and to connect at-issueness, as a
determinant of propositional anaphora, to research into individual
discourse anaphora, Gutzmann (2023) has recently proposed to reduce
at-issueness to prominence (von Heusinger & Schumacher 2019). In this
workshop, we ask whether reduction attempts like this can be
sufficient to explain the full range of at-issueness phenomena or
whether, to the contrary, at-issueness should be decomposed into
semi-independent categories (cf. Koev 2018). In pursuit of this goal,
we invite contributions that present new empirical observations about
(non-)at-issueness, novel analyses of phenomena discussed under this
label, or theoretical approaches to (non-)at-issueness, addressing,
among others, the following sub-questions:
- What is the relationship between at-issueness and discourse
prominence, and can prominence differences account for cases of
contextually-shifted at-issueness?
- How does at-issueness(/prominence) constrain the well-formedness of
answers to questions?
- Are the effects of at-issueness---projection, anaphoric potential,
answerhood---dissociable?
- What determines whether at-issueness is fixed conventionally or
contextually overridden?
- How can at-issueness be reliably diagnosed across different
empirical domains?
References:
- Gutzmann, Daniel. 2023. Gradient at-issueness, minimum relevance,
and propositional prominence. Theoretical Linguistics 49(3–4).
239–247.
- von Heusinger, Klaus & Petra B. Schumacher. 2019. Discourse
prominence: Definition and application. Journal of Pragmatics 154.
117–127.
- Koev, Todor. 2018. Notions of at-issueness. Language and Linguistics
Compass 12(12).
Workshop Format:
The workshop will feature 30 minute sessions (20 min. talks + 10 min.
for discussion) in English. It is part of the 49th annual meeting of
the German linguistic society (DGfS 2027) in Jena, Germany. All
presenters will have to register for the conference. As per the DGfS
requirements, presenters are only allowed to present in one of the
workshops, though they may be listed as co-authors on talks presented
in other workshops.
Workshop homepage:
https://www.sprachsystem.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/veranstaltungen/DGfS-2027-Workshop-At-issueness.html.en
Submission Details:
The main text of the abstract should not exceed 1 page (Times New
Roman, 12pt, 2.5cm margin). References, figures, tables, and glossed
examples may be added on an additional page. Please include the names
and affiliations of all authors either in the abstract or in the body
of the submission email. Please submit your abstract in PDF format to
dgfs27-atissueness at ruhr-uni-bochum.de.
Important Dates:
- Deadline for abstract submission: August 23, 2026
- Notification of acceptance: August 30, 2026
- Date of workshop and the DGfS meeting in Jena, Germany: March 3--5,
2027
More information about the DGfS 2027 can be found here:
https://www.gw.uni-jena.de/en/101200/dgfs-2027



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