Logic List Mailing Archive

Specificity, definiteness & article systems across languages

7-9 Mar 2018
Stuttgart, Germany

"Specificity, definiteness and article systems across languages"

Workshop at the 40th Annual Meeting of the DGfS (Deutsche Gesellschaft für 
Sprachwissenschaft) 7-9 March 2018, University of Stuttgart


== WORKSHOP WEBSITE ==

Website: https://artsysworkshop.wordpress.com/


== IMPORTANT DATES ==

Submission deadline:  20 August, 2017
Notification deadline: 15 September, 2017
Workshop: 7-9 March, 2018


== ORGANIZERS ==

Kata Balogh, Anja Latrouite and Robert Van Valin
(SFB991, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf)


== MISSION STATEMENT ==

It has been observed that a multitude of the world?s languages can do 
without formal marking of the concepts of definiteness and specificity 
through articles (see e.g. Dryer 2013a-b, Dayal 2017, Czardybon 2017, 
?imík 2014).  At the same time languages like some North American Indian 
languages have been described as having up to 12 different articles (e.g. 
Lakota, Ullrich 2016), making fine-grained distinctions not only with 
respect to animacy and countability, but also with respect to different 
types of givenness in discourse. One of the main questions that inspires 
this workshop is how languages with and without an article system go about 
referent coding and helping the hearer to recognize whether a given NP 
should be interpreted as definite, specific or non-specific.

Hawkins (2004) regards the use of articles as pragmatically redundant, 
assuming that the discourse context should suffice to determine whether a 
noun phrase is definite or not. Tanaka (2011) suggests that a language 
without an article system like Japanese employs deictic strategies through 
all levels of grammar, while a language like English is said to use more 
anaphoric than deictic strategies in discourse and grammar. In order to 
explain the development of article systems, certain grammatical features, 
e.g. the loss or lack of certain nominal categories, have been argued to 
be influential. For example, Hewson & Bubenik (2006) find a correlation 
between the loss of case marking and the rise of an article system. Hence 
a second central question of the workshop concerns the grammatical 
consequences of having or lacking an article system.

Different typologies have been suggested with respect to articles systems. 
Jenks (to appear) assumes three types of languages: (i) bipartite 
languages with two separate articles for anaphoric and unique definites 
(e.g. Germanic languages and Lakhota), (ii) marked anaphoric languages 
with a definite article restricted to anaphoric definite environments 
(e.g. Fante Akan and some Wu Chinese dialects) and (iii) generally marked 
definite languages with a single definite form used in both contexts (e.g. 
English). Schaeffer and Matthewson (2005) propose that languages differ in 
that article distinctions rely on the state of the common ground between 
speaker and hearer in some, while others rely on speaker beliefs. So a 
third question concerns the specific semantic-pragmatic parameters along 
which article systems may vary.


== CALL FOR PAPERS ==

The workshop will bring together researchers from theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics,
typology, semantics and pragmatics, and seeks to stimulate an interdisciplinary discussion.

** Topics of interest **

We invite submissions in the topics including (but not limited to):
 	(1) grammatical implications of having an article system vs. not having any articles at all;
 	(2) the (dis-)similarity with respect to reference coding in languages with and without article systems;
 	(3) the contextual restrictions on the omission of articles in languages with an article system;
 	(4) the psycholinguistic implications of the different ways of coding definiteness and specificity across languages.

** Formatting requirements **

We invite anonymous abstracts of max. 2 pages long (A4 format, font size 
min. 12pt and margins of 2cm). Every author can submit at most one 
single-authored and one co-authored abstract.

** Submission **

Please submit your abstract(s) via EasyChair following the link: 
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=artsys18 Abstracts must be 
submitted no later than August 20, 2017.


== SELECTED RELEVANT LITERATURE ==

Abbott, B. 2003. Definiteness and indefiniteness. In: Horn L. and G. Ward 
(eds). Handbook of Pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell. 122-49.

Brocher, A., S. Lindemann and K. von Heusinger. 2016. Effects of 
Information Status and Uniqueness Status on Referent Management in 
Discourse Comprehension and Planning. Discourse Processes. December 2016. 
pp. 1-25.

Czardybon, A. 2017. Definiteness in a Language without Articles - A Study 
on Polish. PhD Dissertation. Dissertations in Language and Cognition, 
SFB991. Vol. 3. Düsseldorf University Press.

Dayal, V. 2017. Determining (In)definiteness in the Absence of Articles. 
In Hohaus, V. and W. Rothe (ads). Proceedings of TripleA 3: Fieldwork 
Perspectives on the Semantics of African, Asian and Austronesian 
Languages. University of Tübingen.

Dryer, M. S. 2013a. Definite Articles. In Dryer, M. S. & Haspelmath, M. 
(eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck 
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.  (Available online at 
http://wals.info)

Dryer, M. S. 2013b. Indefinite Articles. In Dryer, M. S. & Haspelmath, M. 
(eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck 
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.  (Available online at 
http://wals.info)

Hawkins J. 1978. Definiteness and indefiniteness. London: Croom Helm

Hawkins J. 1991. On (in)definite articles: Implicatures and 
(un)grammaticality prediction. Journal of Linguistics 27: 405?42.

Hawkins J. 2004. Efficiency and complexity in grammars. Oxford: Oxford 
University Pres

Heim, I. 2011. Definiteness and indefiniteness. In von Heusinger, K., C. 
Maienborn and P. Portner (eds). Semantics. An International Handbook of 
Natural Language Meaning. Vol. 2. Berlin: de Gruyter, 996-1025.

Hewson, J. and V. Bubenik. 2006. From Case to Adposition. The development 
of configurational syntax in Indo-European languages. John Benjamins.

Jenks, P. (to appear). Articulated definiteness without articles. 
Linguistic Inquiry.

Lyons, Ch. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Ullrich, J. 2016. Lakhota Grammar Handbook. Lakhota Language Consortium.

Schaeffer, J. and L. Matthewson. 2005. Grammar and Pragmatics in the 
Acquisition of Article Systems. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 
23(53).

Schroeder, Ch. 2006. Articles and article systems in some areas of Europe. 
In Bernini, G. and M. L. Schwarz (eds). Pragmatic organization of 
discourse in the languages of Europe. Mouton de Gryuter.

Sharma D. (2005). Language transfer and discourse universals in Indian 
article use. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 27. 535-566.

?imík , R. 2014. Definiteness and articleless languages. Manuscript. 
University of Potsdam/SFB632.

?imík, R. & M. Wierzba (to appear). Expression of information structure in 
West Slavic: Modeling the impact of prosodic and word order factors. 
Language.

Tanaka, S. 2011. Deixis und Anaphorik. De Gruyter.
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