CFP: Linguistics Society of America Annual Meeting

This is a call for posters for a special session of the LSA Annual Meeting on perspectival expressions, organized by Craige Roberts, Jefferson Barlew, and Eric Snyder (Ohio State University). 

Call for Posters
Special Session of the LSA Annual Meeting
January 7-10, 2016, Washington, DC

Title:                  Perspectival expressions and the de se cross-linguistically
Keywords:       semantics, pragmatics, indexicals, deixis, perspective, point of view, logophoricity, locatives, Free Indirect Discourse, Conventional
                        Implicature, predicates of personal taste, empathy

Dates:          Abstracts due:                  August 20
                       Acceptance notification: September 15
                       Workshop:                        during the LSA annual meeting, January 7-10

Abstracts:              Submit abstracts to [email protected]
                         Follow the General Requirements and Abstract Format Guidelines for LSA abstracts at
                                    http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/2016-annual-meeting-abstract-guidelines.
                         ***Note: send the abstracts to the email address above, not to the LSA.

Something exciting is going on in the linguistic study of expressions that are sensitive to point of view.  Recent work on indexicals by Wechsler (2010), Bittner (2012), and Roberts (2014,2015), on logophoricity by Pearson (2013), and on deictic motion verbs by Barlew (2015a) argues that all these expressions are anchored to the doxastic [belief-related] point of view of a salient agent in discourse—often but not always an interlocutor—and moreover that they are de se (in the sense of Lewis 1979).  This characterization has potential application to an even broader class of linguistic phenomena generally assumed to be perspectival in nature, including deixis, locatives (Levinson 2003; Sundaresan & Pearson 2014), verbs of motion (Fillmore 1975; Oshima 2006a,b), shifted indexicals (Rice 1986, Schlenker 2003,2014; Anand & Nevins 2004, Zucchi 2004; Quer 2005,2011; Sundaresan 2011, 2012; Sudo 2012; Deal 2013), logophoricity (Sells 1987, Speas 2004, Pearson 2013) and empathic reflexivization (Kuno 1973,1973; Kuroda 1973; Tenny 2006; Nishigauchi 2014), egophoricity (Hargreaves 2005, Floyd et al. to appear), and Free Indirect Discourse (Eckardt 2014), with syntactic and semantic reflexes across a wide range of languages (e.g., Sells 1987, Speas & Tenny 2003).  By suggesting a unified approach to this range of phenomena, recent developments promise the realization of an integrative vision expressed informally by Lyons (1977) and earlier localists (see Fortis 2012), and in the seminal work of Fillmore (1975) and Mitchell (1986).  And they demonstrate that a proper understanding of perspective-sensitivity has broader implications for work in both semantics (e.g. perspectival content associated with Conventional Implicatures—Potts 2005, Amaral, Roberts & Smith 2007, Harris & Potts 2009; Koev 2015; and the perspectival character of evidentials and epistemic modals—Kierstead 2015, Roberts 2015) and philosophy of language (where Relativism has relied heavily on phenomena involving predicates of personal taste and other perspectival expressions—Kölbel 2002; Lasersohn  2005; Egan, Hawthorne, & Weatherson 2005;  MacFarlane 2007, 2014).

This special session on perspective and the de se across languages will provide a forum for discussion among researchers already working in this area and introduce the topic to a wider audience and stimulate cross-linguistic research on perspectival expressions.  The special session will include talks by
•       Jefferson Barlew, Craige Roberts & Eric Snyder (The Ohio State University)
        Tools for the cross-linguistic de se semantic analysis of perspectival expressions
•       Regine Eckardt (Universität Konstanz)
         Salient thinkers for free indirect thoughts
•       Steve Wechsler (University of Texas at Austin) & Elizabeth Coppock (University of Gothenburg, Sweden and the Swedish Collegium for
        Advanced Study, Uppsala)
        Egophoricity: The case of Kathmandu Newari
•       Amy Rose Deal (University of California Berkeley)
        Person/locative asymmetries in Nez Perce indexical shift
•       Hazel Pearson (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin) & Tom Roeper (University of Massachusetts at Amherst)
        A methodology for testing for de se/de re ambiguities

The poster session will occur immediately following the talks.  The poster session is designed broaden the empirical and theoretical scope of the discussion and provide an opportunity for extended dialog among researchers working on this important topic and others interested in learning more.

Organizers:             Craige Roberts, The Ohio State University
                                Jefferson Barlew, The Ohio State University
                                Eric Snyder, The Ohio State University