Sept. 16, 2024 - Sept. 20, 2024
https://sites.google.com/view/sub29sicily/workshop-2
The dominant approach of formal semantic research over the last decades has been to formulate models of meaning within the typed lambda calculus. Two observations cause us to ask the question whether formal semantics has a too-many-tools (TMT) problem. 1) The formalism allows the expression of many concepts that seem to have overlapping empirical coverage such as variables, alternatives, choice-functions, logical duals with negation, and strenthening by exhaustification and lexically strong meanings. 2) Several crosslinguistic constraints on how specific meanings can be expressed such as conservativity, the adicity of predicates, the structures expressing questions, or the inventory of connectives are not explained within such models, and the accounts require appeal to other systems such as syntax or general cognition.
We seek contributions that address the TMT-question, i.e. whether semantics indeed has a TMT-problem. Specifically we welcome:
1) work that shows for specific semantic tools that their uses can overlap and draws consequences for the TMT-question
2) work that discusses one or multiple general constraints on the cross-linguistic expression of meaning in relation to the TMT-question
3) work that argues for or against possible approaches that avoid some TMT-problems in semantics
Submission instructions:
Abstracts are invited for 20 minute talks, followed by 10 minutes of discussion. Abstracts must be explicit about their contribution to the question of the workshop and the same work should not be submitted for the main sessions. Workshop submission is not counted towards the restriction on the number of abstracts submitted to the main session. If we receive too many high-quality abstracts to accommodate in the workshop, some talks may be reassigned to the main sessions of SuB.
Abstracts must be anonymous, in pdf format, and they are not to exceed two pages in 12 point font, and with margins of 1 inch/2.5 cm on all sides on A4 paper. An additional third page used exclusively for the following elements: references (obligatory), large figures or tables, and as many lines of text as there are lines of glosses and translations in non-English glossed examples. Examples (glossed or not) should be interspersed in the text, rather than collected at the end.
Submissions open: March 1, 2024 - April 20, 2024
Abstract review period: April 22, 2024 - June 15, 2024