Oct. 8, 2024 - Oct. 9, 2024
https://gaps-and-imprecision.netlify.app/
Where: Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft in Berlin (with option for online attendance)
When: October 8th-October 9th 2024
This workshop aims to bring together semanticists and psycholinguists interested in: 1) distinguishing or unifying different gap phenomena in natural language semantics (homogeneity, presuppositions, gaps induced by exhaustification, truth-value gaps in vague predication) and 2) distinguishing or unifying different classes of imprecise expressions, i.e. expressions whose semantic “strength” co-varies with the QUD or discourse goal, and investigating the relation between imprecision and other forms of context-dependent interpretation.
The first two editions of our workshop series approached these questions through the lens of homogeneity and non-maximality in plural predication (and were advertised under the acronym HNM for this reason). This third edition of the workshop series asks the more general questions below:
- Which, if any, gap phenomena in natural language (homogeneity, presuppositions, implicatures, vagueness gaps, etc) ought to receive a unified account?
- How should non-maximality and superficially similar phenomena such as numeral imprecision be modeled; in particular, should there be a unified approach to imprecision phenomena in general, regardless of whether or not they involve gaps?
We welcome theoretical and experimental perspectives on semantic gaps and imprecision within and across languages (including work on processing and acquisition). Specifically, relevant research questions include, but are not limited to the following:
- Which gap phenomena ought to be unified, which ought to be distinguished? In particular, how does homogeneity relate to presuppositions and implicatures?
- How can we derive differences and parallels between the projection patterns of different gap phenomena?
- Should we aim for a unified account of different imprecision phenomena (e.g. plural predication and numeral imprecision), and if so, how can we account for any differences in their pragmatics and embedding patterns?
- Several phenomena outside plural semantics (e.g. summative predication, conditionals, neg-raising modals) have been analyzed by analogy with plural homogeneity. To what extent is this analogy justified?
- Which instances of imprecision – in the sense of QUD-dependent variation between stronger and weaker truth conditions – do we find beyond the standard examples of plurals and numerals, and which of them should receive a unified semantic analysis?
- How can the recent debates on homogeneity and the formal semantics of imprecision phenomena (including outside the plural domain, e.g. imprecise numerals) inform each other?
- Cross-linguistic research supporting or challenging generalizations about homogeneity and other gap phenomena
- Imprecise expressions and truth-value gap phenomena cross-linguistically, particularly in understudied languages
- Homogeneity, imprecision and other truth-value gap phenomena in acquisition
- Psycholinguistic research comparing the judgments and/or processing signature of the various gap phenomena
Submission instructions:
- We invite submissions for two talk categories: full talks (40 minutes) and squibs (20 minutes). If you want your abstract to only be considered for one format, you can indicate this in the submission form.
- The main text of the abstract should be at most 3 pages (Times New Roman, 12pt, 2.5cm margin).
- References, figures and glossed examples may be added on additional pages exceeding the 3-page limit.
- Abstracts must be anonymized and submitted in PDF format.
Submissions open: June 19, 2024 - Aug. 10, 2024