call for papers

[Claire Beyssade]

Conference Announcement

(IN) DEFINITES AND WEAK REFERENCE

We are pleased to announce the conference (In)Definites and Weak  
Reference, which will be held at Universidade Federal de Santa  
Catarina – UFSC - in Florianopolis (Brazil), on August 20-21, 2012.
  The conference is part of the activities of the CAPES-COFECUB  
Cooperation Project.

Invited Speakers:
Greg Carlson (University of Rochester)
Claire Beyssade (CNRS – IJN Paris)
Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin (CNRS – Paris 7)

Important Dates:
Abstract Submission: May 15
Notification of acceptance/rejection: June 15
Program: June 20

Information about the conference: http://www.barenominals.ufsc.br/


Committees
Scientific Committee:
Claire Beyssade (CNRS – IJN Paris)
Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin (Université Paris 7, CNRS)
Greg Carlson (Rochester)
Roberta Pires de Oliveira (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina/CNPq)
Ana Müller (Universidade de São Paulo/CNPq)
Isidora Stojanovic (CNRS – IJN Paris)
Ernesto Perini (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais/ CNPq)
Maria Luíza Cunha Lima (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais/CNPq)
Mailce Borges Mota (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina/CNPq)
Luiz Henrique Dutra (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina/CNPq)

Conference Organizers:
Renato Basso (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina)
Roberta Pires de Oliveira (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina/CNPq)

Call for Papers
We invite submission of abstracts for 20 minutes for presentation and  
10 minutes for discussion, or posters. Abstracts must not exceed two  
pages in letter-size or A4 paper, including examples and references,  
with 1 inch margins on all sides and 12 point font size.
Abstracts should have a clear title but should not identify the author 
(s). They must be submitted anonymously in PDF format.

Submissions are limited to 1 individual and 1 joint abstract per  
author, or 2 joint abstracts per author.

Abstracts should be in English

They should be sent to ropiolive at gmail.com until May 15. The message  
should include the title of the abstract, the author(s) name(s) and  
affiliation(s), and address for contact, including the email address.

When you submit your abstract, please indicate whether you would like  
it to be considered for a talk, a poster or both.

The conference aims to encourage discussions between linguists,  
philosophers, and cognitive scientists on the notion of weak  
reference, definite and indefinite.

Milsark (1977) introduced the distinction between weak and strong  
determiners: a determiner is weak if it can occur in existential  
sentences and it is strong if it can’t. He observed that indefinites  
may be weak or strong in the subject position of stage level  
predicates while they always get a strong reading in subject  
positions of individual predicates. Then, because of the number of  
data which seem to be sensible to this distinction, various  
refinements in the definition of weakness and strength have been  
proposed: the distinction has been treated in terms of properties of  
determiners (e.g.  Barwise and Cooper (1981)), of discourse semantic  
properties such as presupposition or specificity (e.g. Diesing  
(1992)) or of semantic type (Ladusaw (1994), McNally and van Geenhoven 
(1998)). Weak NPs have been analyzed as property-denoting expressions  
and lots of works on the various mechanisms of semantic incorporation  
appeared to account for the semantic composition of such NPs with verbs.

The weak-strong distinction has played an important role in studies  
about indefinites and, at first sight, it seemed that definite were  
strong, since they trigger a double presupposition: existence and  
uniqueness. Nevertheless, Poesio (1994) showed that some definite  
descriptions seem to have lost their presupposition status and may  
appropriately occur in contexts where their referent wasn’t unique.  
It is the case of the definite description « the living room wall »  
in the sentence « The boy scribbled on the living room wall ».  
Although rooms have four walls, the definite NPs is appropriate and  
interpretable.  Poesio called this type of definite descriptions weak  
definites. Further, Baker (2005) and Carlson & Sussman (2005) exhibit  
other examples of definite descriptions which they qualified as weak.  
Barker focused on possessives (like « It wrapped itself around the  
finger of the surgeon ») and Carlson & Sussman (2005) are interested  
in a subset of definite descriptions that shares a semantics with  
bare count singulars. They suggested comparing the definite  
description in « Mary went to the store » with the bare nouns in «  
Mary was in town / at home ». Thus the idea that only indefinites  
could be weak was jeopardized. Moreover, the concept of weak  
definitess used by these different authors has also evolved, and the  
unity of the class of weak uses of definite was also put at issue  
(cf. Cieschinger (2011)).

 From a very different perspective, and without any reference to the  
opposition between definites and indefinites, the notion of weak  
reference has been used by philosophers of language, such as Perry  
(1970), Dummett (1973) and more recently Moltmann (2007). They  
suggest that certain expressions of natural language only weakly  
refer. In a study about absolute and relative identity, Dummett  
wrote, for example, that once relative identity statements are  
understood properly, they will not require a notion of relative  
identity, but rather a notion of weak reference. Weak reference  
corresponds to reference without identity conditions. He proposes to  
analyze the demonstrative pronouns this and that as referring to mere  
portions of reality, pre-individuated parts of reality. Weakly  
referential terms involve a more fundamental level of reference,  
reference without identity.

The aim of this conference is to bring together data and works on  
different languages on the distinction between strong and weak  
reference. Because lots of works have been done on weak indefinites,  
we would like to encourage discussions on weak reference of definites  
and bare nouns. One issue is to identify the conditions under which  
these NPs give rise to weak interpretation. The following questions  
could be adressed :

(i) What distinguishes weak reference from strong reference? On which  
criterion to anchor the distinction between strong and weak reference?

(ii) Can we transpose the distinction between strong and weak  
readings from indefinites to definites? What weak definites and weak  
indefinites have in common, which properties do they share?

(iii) What is the relationship between weak reference and semantic  
incorporation, and between weak reference and number neutrality?

(iv) Do we have to analyze weak definites as functional terms?

(v)  Are weak definites kind-referring expressions? Could we say, as  
Aguilar-Guevara & Zwarts (2010), that weak definites are expressions  
that refer to the same sort of kind individuals that definite  
generics refers to?

(vi)  Since only certain nouns, when associated with certain verbs,  
can give rise to weak definite  readings, how articulate questions of  
lexical and compositional semantics? Is there a relation between weak  
reference and concepts? Why read the newspaper  give rise to a weak  
reading, while read the book doesn’t ?

References
Aguilar-Guevara, Ana & Joost Zwart. 2010. Weak definite and reference  
to kinds. Proceedings of SALT, vol. 20, 1-15.
Baker, Chris. 2005. Possessive weak definite. Possession and Beyond:  
Semantics and Syntax. 89-113.
Barwise, Jon and Robin Cooper. 1981. Generalized quantifiers and  
natural language. Linguistics and Philosophy 4: 159-219.
Carlson, Gregory & Rachel Sussman. 2005. Seemingly indefinite  
definite. Linguistic evidence: empirical, theoretical and  
computational perspectives. 26-30
Cieschinger, Maria. 2011. Definite Reference. Talk at the  
“Defniteness and Reference” seminar. University of Osnabrück.
Diesing, Molly.1992.Indefinites. MITPress, Cambridge.
Dummett, Michael. 1973.  Frege. Philosophy of Language. Duckworth,  
London.
Ladusaw, William.1994. Thetic and categorical, stage and individual,  
weak and strong. In: M. Harvey & L. Santelmann (eds.), From NP to DP.  
Vol.1 The Syntax and Semantics of Noun Phrases. Amsterdam: John  
Benjamins. 211-237.
McNally, L. and V van Geenhoven .1998. Redefining the weak/strong  
distinction. Ms. Barcelona/Nijmegen: Universitat Pompeu Fabra/Max  
Plank Institut.
Milsark, Gary .1977. Toward an explanation of certain peculiarities  
in the existential construction in English. Linguistic Analysis 3, 1-30
Moltmann, F. 2007. Weak Reference or the True Semantics of Relative  
Identity Statements. Manuscript. Oxford-Paris Philosophy of Language  
Workshop, IHPST, Paris, December 16-17, 2007 (also given at: MIT  
philosophy work-in-progress seminar; ENS MENS seminar November 16,  
CUNY, May 16, 2007; First Oxford-Paris Workshop, December 11, 2006;  
CUNY Graduate Center, New York, March 2007).
Perry , John. 1970 The Same F. The Philosophical Review 79.2, 181-200.
Poesio, Maximo. 1994. Weak definite. Proceedings of the fourth  
Conference of Semantics and Linguistic Theory. SALT.

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