Fwd: Workshop on Epistemicity, Evidentiality and Attitude in Asian Languages: Discourse, Diachronic and Typological Perspectives

[Randy LaPolla]

> From: 黃得森 WONG Tak-sum <egwts at polyu.edu.hk>
> Subject: Workshop on Epistemicity, Evidentiality and Attitude in Asian Languages: Discourse, Diachronic and Typological Perspectives
> Date: July 1, 2012 1:08:19 AM GMT+08:00
> To: <randy.lapolla at gmail.com>
> Cc: 黃得森 <egwts at polyu.edu.hk>
> Workshop on Epistemicity, Evidentiality and Attitude in Asian Languages: Discourse, Diachronic and Typological Perspectives
>  
> September 3-5, 2012 
> The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
>  
> Languages all over the world have strategies to convey different shades of speaker stance, which includes the encoding of how speakers convey their value judgments, personal feelings and degree of commitment to the truth value of a given proposition (Englebretson 2007; Dubois 2007). This workshop will focus on these various strategies, with special emphasis on epistemic, evidential and attitudinal marking strategies in Asian languages. Among the questions to be addressed are the following:
>  
> (a)    What do stance markers do (and in particular, add) to our utterances?
> (b)   How do these markers evolve?
> (c)    Do they interact with each other; if so, to what extent, and with what effect?
> (d)   Are there observable differences in the selections of stance-marking strategies
>  across different language families?
> (e)    Where differences are observed, in what manner and to what extent do these linguistic variations contribute to distinctive cultural affiliations and cultural identities?
>  
> Recent studies reveal a wide range of stance-marking strategies. Many Asian languages make frequent use of sentence final particles (see Wu 2004 for Chinese, Davis 2011 for Japanese, and Sohn 1995 for Korean). Asian languages also have recourse to non-sentence-final stance      markers, among them utterance-initial discourse markers (see Wang, Tsai & Ling 2007 for Chinese, and Onodera 2004 for Japanese). Other strategies include the use or non-use of larger units, involving constructions at the clausal level; among the strategies that have been extensively discussed in recent years are ‘stand-alone’ nominalizations (Noonan 1997; Shinzato 2011; Watters 2008), and insubordination or main clause ellipsis (also referred to as ‘the grammaticalization and pragmaticization of silence’) (see Evans 2007; Rhee in press; Shibasaki in press).
>  
> Whereas previous studies have often used the terms ‘mood’ and ‘modality’ to cover a wide range of stance marking functions, recent works have attempted to more clearly distinguish and define the various different (sub)types of stance functions. In other words, while we recognize that a given stance construction may often have multiple (and sometimes overlapping) stance functions, we are now better able to distinguish, for example, a primarily epistemic use from an evidential, or a mirative, or attitudinal use. In this workshop, we seek to further investigate the relationship between these different stance functions, in the hope of arriving at a more coherent account of their interaction patterns and evolutionary links. Given that we will be investigating languages from many different language families, we hope to identify not only robust similarities but also fascinating variations.
>  
> Papers are encouraged that draw upon different approaches including descriptive fieldwork, diachronic reconstruction, discourse analysis, and cross-linguistic comparisons. An important goal of this workshop is to uncover robust common tendencies in the use of stance-marking strategies across a number of Asian language families, and to also identify subtle language-specific differences and their equally subtle pragmatic differences.
>  
> Potential contributors are encouraged to submit abstracts (both Word document and PDF file) on the above or closely related topics to Mr Tak-sum Wong at egwts at polyu.edu.hk. The style sheet can be downloaded by following this link: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B0gnaAuvYzncRVI1aVFEVVVqWG8 and press Ctrl+S to save the file.
>  
> Deadline for abstract submission: July 6, 2012.
> Notification of acceptance: July 16, 2012.
>  
> Contact person:       Mr Tak-sum Wong
> Email address:         egwts at polyu.edu.hk
> Office phone no.:      (+852) 3400 3600
>  
> Additional contact person:         Dr Abhishek Kumar
> Email address:                          egakumar at inet.polyu.edu.hk

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