CIL Workshop "Negation and polarity: interfaces and cognition" - Geneva, July 21-27 2013

[Larrivee Pierre]

WORKSHOP "NEGATION AND POLARITY: INTERFACES AND COGNITION", CIL 19


July 22-27 2013, Geneva

As a feature of all human grammars, negation
and related phenomena such as focus and polarity have been the object of
considerable scrutiny in contemporary linguistics, and considerable
insights have been achieved since the first edition of Larry Horn's 'A
Natural History of Negation' in 1989. There is a good level of
understanding of the morphology and syntax of negation, its historical
development, and its pragmatics, in a wide variety of languages.
However, a number of issues remain unresolved, especially with regards
to the contribution of interfaces to the interpretation of negation. The
positional factors that intervene in the semantic licensing of polarity
items (English '*Anyone didn't come', compared to the felicitous Korean
'Amwu-to an-wassta') and the interference from pragmatic factors (noted
early on by Linebarger), are still awaiting proper characterisation.
Similar characterisation is needed for the interpretation of negation
itself in its exclamative ('Not him again!'), interrogative ('Isn't it
him already?') and expletive uses, and while multiple models exist of
negative concord and double negation, their relation to prosody and
information structure remains to be fully spelled out. Agreed definition
and diagnostics of metalinguistic, polemic and descriptive values are
still awaited. Debates are to be apportioned as to the precise triggers
of how negative value is acquired by indefinites and minimizers, and the
existence of cognitive constraints on historical pathways of change.

The workshop aims to bring together innovative and substantial
presentations on the role of interface in the interpretation of negation
and polarity, to illuminate the organisation of cognitive processes.
Contributions setting the debates are offered by Jon Gasjewski
(Connecticut), Michael Israel (Maryland), Eun-ju Noh (Inha), Roland Pfau
(Amsterdam) and Phillip Wallage (Northumbria), with discussion to be led
by Larry Horn (Yale). Relevant submissions are invited, spelling out the
research problem, the notions, criteria and diagnostics, the method and
data used, the key findings and their relevance in advancing the
understanding of cognitive processes and interfaces. The 500-word
anonymous abstract is to be sent in .doc format to the workshop
organisers (Pierre.Larrivee at Unicaen.fr [1], CLee at Snu.ac.kr [2]) by
September 1st 2012, along with a file providing the title of the paper,
the identity, affiliation and addresses of the author(s), and an
indication of whether a poster presentation could be considered. The
draft versions of papers will be requested before the workshop, for
distribution among participants, and we intend to publish a selection of
the papers. 

Pierre Larrivée (Caen) and Chungmin Lee (Seoul)


Links:
------
[1] mailto:Pierre.Larrivee at Unicaen.fr
[2]
mailto:CLee at Snu.ac.kr
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