WAASAP 4: Workshop on Aspect and Argument Structure of Adverbs and Preposition Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona, Spain, June 7-8, 2018 |
Conference website | https://sites.google.com/view/waasap4 |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=waasap4 |
Submission deadline | January 29, 2018 |
Description
WAASAP is an international Workshop series celebrated biannually that focuses on the aspect and argument structure of adjectives and participles and adverbs and prepositions. In the time of its existence, it has developed into a referential forum of discussion of the theory of predicative non-verbal categories. Past editions have taken place at the University of Greenwich (2012), The Artic University of Norway at Tromsoe (2014) and The University of Lille 3 (2016).
The different topics that we want to discuss include but are not restricted to the following:
- Aspect: paths, scales and part/whole structures
According to the Localist hypothesis (Gruber 1965, Jackendoff 1990, among others), aspect is derived from more basic notions defined by spatial relations. Prepositions, prefixes and adjectives are similar in that they can combine with an atelic verbal predicate to form a telic one. Some works analyse these three categories uniformly (Acedo-Matellán 2016) to derive this property. Gawron (2009) applies locative concepts like axial parts to verbs and adjectives. Thus, this author provides an account of event/extent ambiguities for verbs and the semantics of degree achievements by proposing that verbs and adjectives can be modeled as paths. The proposals that deal with the similarities of the aspectual properties of prefixes, prepositions and adjectives pose relevant questions like the following:
- How are the concepts of aspect, part-whole relations, and location related? Is aspect a primitive concept or is it derived from more basic cognitive notions such as location or part-whole relations? Are aspectual distinctions primitive or do they derive from locative relations
- Can concepts like quantization and homogeneity be applied to paths and locations (Zwarts 2005)? How does the denotation of paths and locations affect the aspectual interpretation of the event that they modify?
- How should we explain the relationship between prefixes, prepositions and adverbials? Why are prefixes that affect the event structure of the predicate associated with a directional meaning (Filip 2003)?
- What is the relation between goals and end-points and what is the basis for the source/goal asymmetry (Filip 2003, Gehrke 2008)? Is this asymmetry related to the aspectual interpretation of degree achievements depending on the type of scale, open or closed?
- What is the relation between telicity, boundedness, gradability, scalarity and end-points? How can we provide a better understanding of these concepts and their cross-categorial instantiations?
- The syntax and semantics of possession and its relationship with auxiliary selection in perfective forms
As Myler (2016) points out predicative possession poses two major puzzles for linguistic theory: the first one is the "too many meanings puzzle" (why possessive constructions convey so many different types of meaning, inalienable/alienable possession, kinship, abstract properties), and second the "too many structures puzzle", or why possession is expressed through a variety of different structures (some containing have, some containing be with different markings in the possessor and the possessee). Several questions arise from the analysis of possession:
- Is the predicative possession derived from the attributive one (Szabolcsi1981,1994, Kayne 1993)? Is the possessive relation derived from a locative relation (Freeze 1992, den Dikken 1997) or are there different and unrelated types of possessives as shown by the different morphological and syntactic shapes that possessives exhibit (Francez and Koontz Garboden 2015, 2016, Koontz Garboden and Francez 2010, Myler 2016)?
- Is the possessive verb have a verbalized preposition (Kayne 1993)?
- How can adjectives, PPs and NPs appear in possessive structures from a semantic and a syntactic perspective (Koontz Garboden and Francez 2010, Myler 2014)? What does this tell us about the nature of the possessive relation and the nature of these categories?
- Auxiliary selection in perfective forms that take a participle can be of two types: auxiliary have and auxiliary be, the two verbs that are also involved in possessive constructions. The nature of participles (Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 2008; Gehrke 2011, 2012, 2015; Alexiadou, Gehrke and Schäffer 2014) and the fact that have and be usually combine with predicates denoting properties set the basis for an account of auxiliary selection that is related with predicative possession and predication. How can we derive the perfective meaning in these cases?
- Why is auxiliary selection sensitive to argument structure patterns such as the unaccusative/unergative distinction in some languages, but not in others? Why in some other languages is it sensitive to aspectual properties such as telicity?
- Prepositions, applicatives and voice: argument introducer heads
In a recent paper, Marantz and Wood (to appear) propose a unified view of argument introducing heads, namely, Voice, Prepositions and Applicatives. Voice introduces the external arguments of vPs. Low applicatives introduce an argument related to a DP. Little p and high applicatives introduce new participants in the event or non-core arguments. They propose that all of these heads can be reduced to a single one that they label i*. The difference among them will emerge from the syntactic context in which i* is merged. This work opens a series of questions like the following:
- What is the status of core arguments, non-core arguments and adjuncts?
- What is the relation between applicatives and prepositions?
- Would it be appropriate to analyse adjectives as also involving i*?
- What is the relation between Voice heads and event-related modifiers (Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou and Schäfer 2015);
- Finally, if internal arguments are also severed from the verbal lexical root as proposed in different works like Borer (2005), Alexiadou (2014) and Acedo-Matellán (2016), among many others, are internal arguments also introduced by i*? If so the difference between core arguments and non-core arguments introduced by applicatives is not a fundamental one. What are the consequences of such an approach for differences between internal arguments and arguments of applicative heads?
References
Acedo-Matellán, V. (2016). The morphosyntax of transitions: a case study in latin and other languages (Vol. 62). Oxford University Press.
Alexiadou, A., Anagnostopoulou, E., & Schäfer, F. (2015). External arguments in transitivity alternations: A layering approach (Vol. 55). Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistic
Alexiadou, A. (2014). Roots don't take complements. Theoretical Linguistics 40 (3/4): 287-297.
Alexiadou, A., Gehrke, B., & Schäfer, F. (2014). The argument structure of adjectival participles revisited. Lingua, 149, 118-138.
Alexiadou, A., and E. Anagnostopoulou (2008). Structuring participles. In Proceedings of the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, eds. Charles B. Chang and Hannah J. Haynie, 33-41. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Filip, H. (2003). Prefixes and the delimitation of events. Journal of Slavic linguistics, 11(1), 55-101.
Filip, H. (2005). Measures and indefinites. Reference and quantification: the Partee effect, 229-289.
Francez, I., & Koontz-Garboden, A. (2015). Semantic variation and the grammar of property concepts. Language, 91(3), 533-563.
Francez, I., & Koontz-Garboden, A. (2016). A note on possession and mereology in Ulwa property concept constructions. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 34(1), 93-106.
Gawron, J. (2005). Generalized paths. In: E. Gerogala and J. Howell (eds.) Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT)XV. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.
Gehrke, B. (2015). Adjectival participles, event kind modification and pseudoincorporation. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 33.3:897-938.
Gehrke, B. (2012). Passive states. Telicity, change, and state: A cross-categorial view of event structure, 185-211.
Gehrke, B., (2011). Stative passives and event kinds. In: Reich, I., Horch, E., Pauly, D. (Eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung, vol. 15. Universaar -- Saarland University Press, Saarbrücken, pp. 241--257.
Koontz-Garboden, A., & Francez, I. (2010). Possessed properties in Ulwa. Natural Language Semantics, 18(2), 197-240.
Myler, N. (2016). Building and interpreting possession sentences. MIT Press.
Wood, J., & Marantz, A. (to appear). The interpretation of external arguments. Yale and NYU.
Zwarts, J. (2005). Prepositional aspect and the algebra of paths. Linguistics and Philosophy, 28(6), 739-779.
Invited Speakers
Artemis Alexiadou (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
Elena Anagnostopoulou (University of Crete)
Hana Filip (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf)
Berit Gehrke (Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7)
Submission guidelines
Please submit your abstracts via the following Easychair link:
We invite abstract submissions from all theoretical frameworks discussing these and related issues.
Presentations will be 30 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion.
Submissions are limited to two per author, with at most one paper being single-authored. A poster session might be added in the program depending on the number of submissions. Please indicate whether you would be willing to present your work as a poster.
Abstracts, including references and data, must not exceed two A4 pages in length with 2.5 cm (1 inch) margins on all sides, set in Times New Roman with a font size no smaller than 12pt. Examples, tables, graphs, etc. must be interspersed into the text of the abstract, rather than collected at the end.
Important dates
Deadline for abstract submission: January 29, 2018.
Notification of acceptance: February 28, 2018.
Date of the workshop: June 7-8, 2018.