ZAS Workshop on Dislocated Elements in Discourse

Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Perspectives

28 - 30 November 2003
Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) Berlin

Organizers: Werner Frey, Claudia Maienborn, Benjamin Shaer (P9 project)
   
Invited speakers: Betty Birner (Northern Illinois University)
Gisbert Fanselow (Universität Potsdam)
Günther Grewendorf (Universität Frankfurt am Main)
Liliane Haegeman (Université de Lille III)
Hans Kamp (Universität Stuttgart)
Frederick Newmeyer (University of Washington)

Workshop Proposal

A great deal of attention has been devoted in recent linguistic research to the sentence's left periphery. This work has been broad in its scope, attracting the attention of those working in various research paradigms and encompassing a range of questions. These include questions about the syntactic, semantic, and discourse properties of this domain and how these differ from the properties of the sentence's right periphery. These also include questions about the differences between left-peripheral (LP) arguments and adjuncts and between various LP constructions, the interaction between LP elements and sentence type, and the extent of cross-linguistic variation that this domain displays.

The goal of this workshop is to bring together current research on LP arguments and adjuncts from syntactic, semantic, and discourse perspectives, and to examine current assumptions and claims about how these are structured, interpreted, and related to other constituents in a discourse. Crucial to this examination is a consideration of LP dislocation devices such as hanging topics, left-dislocation, topicalization, and focalization and their similarities and differences across languages.

Specific questions to be addressed include (but are not limited to):

The workshop is directed at both empirically- and theoretically-oriented researchers. Of especial interest to the workshop is the investigation of the syntax/semantics and grammar/discourse interfaces.

Workshop Program

Friday, 28 November 2003

9:30 - 9:35 opening remarks  
9:35 - 10:35 Günther Grewendorf (U Frankfurt) Moving remnants to the left
10:35 - 11:15 Nicola Munaro & Cecilia Poletto (U Venice / U Padova) Ways of clausal typing
11:15 - 11:30 break  
11:30 - 12:10 Nicholas Sobin (U Texas at El Paso) Echo Questions, Echo Negation, and Split CP
12:10 - 12:50 Konstantina Haidou (U London) On the syntax-pragmatics interface: Left, medial and right peripheral focus and topic in Greek
12:50 - 14:00 lunch  
14:00 - 14:40 Daniel Hole (LMU Munich) Why some LP constructions have strong interpretations, and others don't
14:40 - 15:20 Ariel Cohen (Ben-Gurion U) Fronted quantificational adverbs
15:20 - 15:40 break  
15:40 - 16:20 Beáta Gyuris (Hungarian Academy of Siences) A new approach to the scope of contrastive topics
16:20 - 17:00 Malte Zimmermann (HU Berlin) Discourse particles in the left periphery
17:00 - 17:10 break  
17:10 - 18:10 Hans Kamp (U Stuttgart) Last one in, first one out: Interactions between Focus, Contrastive Topic and Quantification

Saturday, 29 November 2003

9:30-10:30 Betty Birner (Northern Illinois U) Discourse functions at the periphery: Noncanonical word order in English
10:30-11:10 Augustin Speyer (U Pennsylvania) 'Vorfeldbesetzung' and Centering Theory in German
11:10-11:30 break  
11:30-12:10 Anke Holler (U Heidelberg) How the left-periphery of a wh-relative clause determines its syntactic and semantic relationships
12:10-12:50 Ruth Kempson, Ronnie Cann & Jieun Kiaer (U Edinburgh / King's College London) Topic and focus effects at the peripheries: The dynamics of tree growth
12:50-14:00 lunch  
14:00-15:00 Poster session  
15:00-15:40 Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie (U Toulouse), Jenny Doetjes (Utrecht U), Jean-Marie Marandin (Paris 7) & Petra Sleeman (U Amsterdam) Left dislocation and topicalization in French
15:40-16:20 Eric Mathieu (U College London) French Topics
16:20-16:40 break  
16:40-17:20 Cécile de Cat (U York) For a base-generation analysis of French dislocation
17:20-18:20 Liliane Haegeman (U Lille III) Adverbial clauses, topicalisation and the left periphery

 

Sunday, 30 November 2003

9:30-10:30 Frederick J. Newmeyer (U Washington) On Split-CPs, uninterpretable features, and the 'perfectness' of language
10:30-11:10 Olga Arnaudova (U Ottawa) Argument defocalization/saliency and clitic left dislocation in Bulgarian
11:10-11:25 break  
11:25-12:05 Judit Gervain (Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati,Trieste) The syntax and semantics of the resumptive dependency in Hungarian Focus-Raising
12:05-12:45 Javier Perez-Guerra & David Tizón-Couto (U Vigo) 'These hands, they are apt enough to dislocate and tear thy flesh': On left-dislocation in the recent history of the English language
12:45-12:55 break  
12:55-13:55 Gisbert Fanselow (U Potsdam) Phonological and syntactic aspects of filling initial positions in German (and other languages)
13:55-14:00 Closing remarks  

Poster Session

Maria Alm (Lund U) The functions and meanings of the German discourse particle 'also' in the pre-front field - discussed on the basis of spoken German
Werner Frey & Benjamin Shaer (ZAS) English and German left-peripheral elements
Anikó Lipták (Leiden U) How to deal with leftist relatives?
Yukiko Morimoto & Sam Mchombo (ZAS / UC Berkley) Configuring Topic in the left periphery: A case of Chichewa split NPs
Andreas Nolda (HU Berlin) 'Split topicalization' and 'left dislocation' in German
Thomas Weskott (U Potsdam) Topicalization and the dynamic interpretation of information structural markedness: Theoretical and empirical aspects