CFP: Gradability, Scale Structure, and Vagueness: Experimental Perspectives

Submission deadline: January 15, 2015

Conference date(s):
May 28, 2015 - May 29, 2015

Go to the conference's page

Conference Venue:

Center for Social Sciences and Humanities of the Spanish National Research Council
Madrid, Spain

Topic areas

Details

As its title states, the workshop is concerned with the semantics of
gradability, scale structure and vagueness from an experimental
perspective. We invite papers that challenge or confirm current formal
analyses of these phenomena in view of experimentally collected data; that
discuss how semantic and pragmatic theory can benefit from experimental
methodologies; and that aim for an explicit and detailed account of the
use, mental representation, online processing, neural correlates or
acquisition of expressions of gradability, scalarity, and vagueness. Papers
may address — but are not limited to — the following questions:


   - The ontological status of degrees and their role in the analysis of
   vagueness, gradability and scalarity phenomena, if any (Kennedy 1999, 2007;
   Heim 2000; Nouwen 2005; van Rooij 2011a,b; Solt & Gotzner 2012).
   - Comparison constructions across categories and languages (Pancheva
   2006; Geurts & Nouwen 2007; Nouwen 2008; Beck et al. 2010; Ravid et al.
   2010; Wellwood et al. 2012; Bobalijk 2012).
   - Scale-based classifications of gradable predicates such as the
   absolute vs. relative distinction, the nature of the standards for the
   applicability of gradable expressions, and the ways in which standards are
   determined (Rotstein & Winter 2004; Kennedy & McNally 2005; Syrett 2007,
   Syrett et al. 2010; Sassoon 2012; McNally 2011; Burnett 2014a,b).
   - Evidence for specifications of implicit parameters, such as comparison
   class, judge, scalar dimension(s), or standards, in the derivation of vague
   and gradable expressions, and their role in processing (Solt & Gotzner
   2012; Schumacher 2012).
   - The usage of vague language in the context of borderline cases (e.g.,
   things which are ‘neither tall nor not tall’), apparent contradictions
   (such as ‘tall and short’), and the Sorites paradox (Serchuk et al. 2011;
   Ripley 2011; Kriz & Chemla 2014; Alxatib & Pelletier 2011).
   - The connections between vagueness and other types of context
   dependence such as ambiguity and polysemy (Schumacher 2012, 2014),
   imprecision or approximation (Lewis 1979; Lasersohn 1999; Krifka 2007;
   Hackl 2009; Syrett et al. 2010; Bambini et al. 2013; Solt 2014; Solt et al.
   2014), anaphora and presupposition (Kamp 1981; Burkhardt 2008), and
   multidimensionality and gradability (Kamp 1975; Kennedy 1999; van Rooij
   2011a,b; Sassoon 2013; Burnett 2014a,b).
   - The consequences of vagueness for the architecture of grammar, given
   the diverse aspects of grammar into which vagueness infiltrates (Chierchia
   2010)

8 talks will be selected among the submissions. They will be allotted 35
minutes plus 10 minutes for discussion. One person can submit at most one
single-authored abstract and an additional co-authored one. Abstracts must
be anonymous, at most 2 pages long including references and examples, 12 pt
Times New Roman font, and in .pdf format. They will be submitted
electronically via Easychair
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=expgrad2015>

. Please add 5
keywords.  

*Invited speakers*:

Rick Nouwen http://ricknouwen.org/rwfn/> (Universiteit Utrecht)

Roumyana Pancheva http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~pancheva/> (University of
Southern California)

Petra Schumacher
http://www.linguistik.fb05.uni-mainz.de/mitarbeiter/petra-schumacher/>
(University
of Cologne)

Stephanie Solt http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/608.html?&L=1> (Zentrum für
Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin)

*Important dates*:

Abstract submission: January 15th, 2015

Notification of acceptance: March 1st, 2015

Workshop dates: May 28th-29th, 2015

In conjunction with this workshop, the organizers are preparing a volume
with the same title for the new Springer series ‘Language, Cognition and
Mind’. Papers based on the accepted talks will be considered for this
publication.


*Registration* is free, but please let us know if you will be attending by
filling in the form you will find in the workshop’s web page:

http://sites.google.com/>
https://sites.google.com/site/gradexp2015/registration



*Organizers*: Elena Castroviejo (ILLA-CSIC), Louise McNally (Universitat
Pompeu Fabra), Galit W. Sassoon (Bar-Ilan University)



*Contact*: [email protected]


*Scientific committee*: TBA



*References*:

Alxatib, Sam and Francis Jeffry Pelletier (2011). The Psychology of
Vagueness: Borderline cases and Contradictions. Mind and Language 26 (3):
287-326.

Bambini, Valentina, Martha Ghio, Andrea Moro and Petra B. Schumacher
(2013). Differentiating among pragmatic uses of words through timed
sensicality judgments: Metaphor, metonymy and approximation. *Frontiers in
Psychology*, 4(938): 1-16.

Beck, Sigrid, Sveta Krasikova, Daniel Fleischer, Remus Gergel, Christiane
Savelsberg, John Vanderelst and Elisabeth Villalta (2010). Crosslinguistic
Variation in Comparison Constructions. In Jeroen Van Craenenbroeck (Ed.),
Linguistic Variation Yearbook 2009: 1–66. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Publishing Company.

Burkhardt, Petra (2008). Dependency Precedes Independence: Online Evidence
From Discourse Processing. In: Anton Benz and Peter Kühnlein (Eds.),
Constraints in discourse: 141-158. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Burnett, Heather (2014a). A Delineation Solution to the Puzzles of Absolute
Adjectives. *Linguistics & Philosophy*. 37 (1): 1-39.

Burnett, Heather (2014b). *Gradability in Natural Language: Logical and
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Semantics and Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.

Bobalijk, Jonathan David (2012). Universals in Comparative Morphology:
Suppletion, superlatives, and the structure of words. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Chierchia, Gennaro (2010). Mass nouns, vagueness and semantic variation.
*Synthese*, 174(1): 99-149.

Geurts, Bart and Rick Nouwen (2007). At least et al.: the semantics of
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Hackl, Martin (2009). On the grammar and processing of proportional
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