Call for Papers for the Workshop on

 

Information Structure and the Architecture of Grammar:

A Typological Perspective

 

SFB 441, University of Tübingen, February 1st and 2nd 2004

 

 

The research groups SFB441-B13 at the University of Tübingen and ZAS-Berlin are organizing a workshop on Information Structure and the Architecture of Grammar (ISAG). The workshop will take place on the first two days in February 2004 at the University of Tübingen.

 

The ISAG-Workshop follows the International Tübinger Conference on "Linguistic Evidence: Empirical, Theoretical, Computational Perspectives" also to be held at the University of Tübingen.

 

 

Call for Papers:

 

Most linguists working in the generative framework today will agree that the information structure, focus and intonation of a particular construction or phenomenon can only be adequately discussed with reference to a specific theoretical framework, or model of grammar. However, they will disagree on exactly how this grammatical model must be conceptualized in order to derive the relevant syntactic form with the appropriate intonation and the intended semantic and pragmatic meaning.

 

The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers embracing different theories of information structure and focus with the aim of fruitfully discussing models of information structure. However, since models must be tested against linguistic evidence, the workshop is interested in drawing from crosslinguistic and typological studies of information structure and focus.

 

 

The workshop includes - but is not limited to - the following topics:

Ø     Syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and phonological approaches to information structure and the theory of grammar from a typological perspective;

Ø     Typological and crosslinguistic evidence for different notions of focus (contrastive vs. presentational), topic (contrastive vs. noncontrastive), presupposition, contrast, and dichotomies such as given vs. new, theme vs. rheme, topic vs. comment, background vs. focus;

Ø     Syntax, semantics and information structure of question-answer pairs, fragments and ellipsis;

Ø     Derivation and intonation of displaced and in situ constituents; i.e. topic and focus movement and their trigger in grammar;

Ø     Information Structure and the syntax-discourse interface;

Ø     Syntax and semantics of focus particles, negation and affirmation;

Interaction of focus and negation, affirmation, quantification, sentence mood and modality;

Ø     Sentence mood and focus;

Ø     The phonology of intonation and its interpretation in the theory of grammar;

Ø     Markers of focus/topic, deaccentuation, and ellipsis from a typological perspective.

 

The workshop will be of interest to all linguists who are working on the syntax-semantics-phonology interface and its modeling in the theory of grammar.

 

Deadline: September 1st 2003

Abstracts should be at most two pages long, 12 point font, one inch margins.

Abstracts must be sent in electronic form, PDF or MS Word only,

to: susanne.winkler@T-online.de

and:  Schwabe@zas.gwz-berlin.de.

(Subject: "ISAG")

SFB441:

Dr. Susanne Winkler

Universität Tübingen

Nauklerstraße 35

72074 Tübingen

Susanne.Winkler@t-online.de

 

 

ZAS:

Dr. Kerstin Schwabe

Zentrum für Allgmeine Sprachwissenschaften

Jägerstr. 10/11

D-10117 Berlin

Schwabe@zas.gwz-berlin.de