Logic List Mailing Archive

Workshop CONTRAST IN DISCOURSE

PIONIER Workshop CONTRAST IN DISCOURSE
Call for participation
Dates: April 7 & 8 2003
Location: University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands
Organizers: Peter de Swart & Yang Ning

The rhetorical relation Contrast is defined in Mann and Thompson (1988) as
a multi-nuclear rhetorical relation with no more than two nuclei such that
the situations presented in these two nuclei are (a) comprehended as the
same in many respects (b) comprehended as differing in a few respects and
(c) compared with respect to one or more of these differences. According to
Mann and Thompson, the effect of Contrast is that the reader recognizes the
comparability and the difference(s) yielded by the comparison being made.
We may consider Contrast an instantiation (special case) of DOAP in the
rhetorical domain (cf. Hendriks & De Hoop 2001, De Hoop & De Swart 2000).
That is, satisfaction of Contrast would automatically involve satisfaction
of a rhetorical version of DOAP (hence, Contrast = Establish a rhetorical
relation of contrast between two descriptions of situations). In this
workshop two questions will be addressed: (1) how is Contrast marked (by a
speaker) and (2) how is it identified (by a hearer)? What types of
interaction among world knowledge, the use of lexical items, accentuation,
information structure and word order do we get? For example, Asher (1994)
investigates the interaction between discourse structure and stress. He
discusses some examples that suggest that stressing has the same effect as
using a contrastive particle (such as but), introducing the rhetorical
relation Contrast. How do we account for the similarities as well the
differences between different types of linguistic tools and what
cross-linguistic variation do we get?

Preliminary list of participants: Ad Foolen (Nijmegen), Petra Hendriks
(Groningen), Benjamin Lyngfelt (Gothenborg), Andrej Malchukov (Nijmegen),
Alice ter Meulen (Groningen), Kjell Johan Saeb? (Oslo), Jennifer Spenader
(Stockholm), Carla Umbach (Berlin), Frank Wijnen (Utrecht), Hirut
Woldemariam (Cologne), Henk Zeevat (Amsterdam).

The idea is to organize an informal two-day meeting on Contrast in
Discourse in the first half of April 2003. We would like to keep it a
low-budget workshop, so in principle, there will be no reimbursement of
travel or accommodation costs (exceptions are possible, however). If you
are interested in participating or if you know anybody who might be, please
send an e-mail to one of the organizers as soon as possible (but before
March 1):

Peter de Swart (P.deSwart@let.kun.nl) or
Yang Ning (N.Yang@let.kun.nl)

For more information on the PIONIER Project "Case cross-linguistically",
please take a look at our website
http://oase.uci.kun.nl/~hdehoop/pionier.html.
Future information on the workshop can be found at
http://oase.uci.kun.nl/~pdeswart/contrast.htm.