Call for papers 'Workshop on Alternative-Based Semantics'

[Anamaria Falaus]

Workshop on
Alternative-Based Semantics

   

The Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes
(LLING EA 3827) is pleased to invite abstracts for submissions to a 
workshop on
alternative-based semantics, to be held at the University of Nantes, 
France,
October 29-30, 2010. 

 

Invited
speakers:

Gennaro 
Chierchia (Harvard University)

Emmanuel Chemla
 (Institut Jean Nicod)

Paula 
Menéndez-Benito (University of
Goettingen)

Maribel Romero 
(University of Konstanz) 

Daniel Büring 
(UCLA) (to be confirmed)

 

Important
dates: 

Deadline for 
submission: June 10, 2010

Notification of
 acceptance: July 31,
2010

Conference 
dates: October 29-30, 2010

   

Meeting
 description:  

Ever since Hamblin’s 
proposal for
the interpretation of questions (1973), a variety of linguistic 
phenomena have
been argued to have a semantics that makes reference to alternatives: 
not only
interrogative constructions (Karttunen 1977), but also focus (Rooth 
1985, 1992,
Krifka 1993, Beck 2006), scalar implicatures (e.g. Chierchia 2001, Fox 
2006,
Keshet 2006, Spector 2006, Katzir 2008), disjunction (Geurts 2003, 
Simons 2004,
Alonso-Ovalle 2006, 2008), topichood (Büring 1997), mood (Villalta 
2000),
comparatives (Morzycki 2009), quantifiers and 
indefinites,
in particular polarity-sensitive and free-choice indefinites (e.g. 
Krifka 1995,
Lahiri 1998, Giannakidou 2001, Kratzer & Shimoyama 2002, Jayez &
 Tovena
2005, Farkas 2006, Chierchia 2006, Aloni 2007, Alonso-Ovalle &
Menéndez-Benito 2009). 







The range of 
application of
alternative-based semantics has been constantly expanding. As a result, a
 wide
array of alternative-based systems have been proposed. These systems 
differ in
the way they conceive the source of alternatives, the status of 
alternatives,
or the precise way in which they are exploited in a given context. In 
Hamblin
semantics accounts, certain expressions (e.g. indefinites in Kratzer 
&
Shimoyama 2002) denote sets of alternatives, which then combine with 
other
constituents of the sentence in a compositional manner. In contrast to 
this
‘one dimensional system’, other alternative-based theories of 
interpretation
assume a ‘multidimensional’ semantics (Rooth 1985, Krifka 1995, 
Chierchia
2006): alongside standard meanings, speakers recursively build up 
alternative
sets that are accessed by alternative sensitive-operators.




Taken together, these 
studies
raise both theoretical and empirical issues such as the following:





- How are alternative 
sets
generated? What is the role of grammar and context in determining 
alternative sets?
Are they located at the lexical level, as often argued for polarity 
items or
scalar elements? Or rather are they generated on the basis of the 
structure in
which they occur (Katzir 2007)? Do we need both mechanisms, with 
different
kinds of alternatives playing a role in different phenomena? 





- What are the kinds 
of
alternatives that are relevant? At what point of the derivation do 
speakers
consider alternatives and decide whether to exploit them for meaning
enrichment? What are the principles that govern meaning enrichment that 
results
from consideration of alternatives? 





- Can alternatives and
alternative-sensitive operators be used to capture and predict 
cross-linguistic
variation, as argued for instance for polarity-sensitive items and 
indeterminate
pronouns in Kratzer & Shimoyama (2002), Chierchia (2006), 
Alonso-Ovalle
& Menéndez-Benito (2009)?





- The attempts in the 
recent
literature to provide a unified account of scalar implicature effects 
and focus
effects (e.g. Fox & Katzir 2009), by making use of 
alternative-sensitive
operators akin to only, raise the
issue of further possible extensions. Do the different phenomena that 
have been
treated in terms of alternatives deserve a unified analysis?





We 
welcome submissions addressing these issues, both from a
theoretical and an experimental perspective. Abstracts are invited for 
30
minute talks, followed by 15 minutes of discussion. Abstracts must be
anonymous, in .pdf format, and they should not exceed two pages in 12 
point
font, with margins of 2.5 cm/1 inch on all sides. 





Submission page:
  http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=alternative2010





Conference
 website: http://www.alternative-semantics.univ-nantes.fr/






Contact: anamariafalaus at gmail.com 



      
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