Download the call for papers (pdf)
1. Main colloquium
The main colloquium of GLOW 37 welcomes abstracts on any topic or subfield of generative linguistics, including (but not limited to) phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Presentations will be 45 minutes long plus 15 minutes of discussion. In addition, GLOW 37 will be hosting a poster session. Abstract submitters will be asked to indicate on the abstract submission website whether they wish to be considered only for an oral presentation, or also for a poster.
Abstract submission guidelines
All papers submitted for the GLOW 37 main colloquium should adhere strictly to the following guidelines:
- Abstracts must not exceed two A4 pages in length (including data and references), have one inch (2.5 cm) margins on all sides, be set in Times New Roman with a font size no smaller than 12pt and single line spacing.
- Examples must be integrated into the text of the abstract, rather than collected at the end.
- Nothing in the abstract, the title, or the name of the document should identify the author(s).
- At most two submissions per author, at most one of which can be single- authored. The same abstract may not be submitted to both the main colloquium and a workshop.
- Only submissions in pdf-format will be accepted.
- Abstracts are submitted via the GLOW 37 Easychair-page: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=glow37.
2. GLOW Phonology Workshop:
“Phonological Specification and Interface Interpretation”
Theme description
The primitives of phonological theory – whether we call them features, elements, gestures, or some other name – stand in some relation to phonetic reality. Although there is consensus about this, there does not seem to be much agreement about specifics, such as how many primitives there are, whether they are privative or binary, and whether all segments need to be specified for all of them. In this workshop we aim to bring together phonologists working in different traditions to discuss how some of the most pressing issues are to be resolved.
The first issue is the nature of the relationship between phonological primitives and phonetics. As far as we can see, there are roughly three options: one can either assume that the primitives represent elements of articulation (as in most feature theories or in Articulatory Phonology); or elements of acoustics (as in Element Theory). Or is the mainstream view incorrect, in that phonological primitives bear no direct relationship to phonetics at all (as in Substance-Free Phonology)?
The second issue is to what extent the primitives of phonological representation can also be manipulated by modules outside of ‘phonology proper’, such as ‘phonetic implementation’ or ‘sociolinguistics’. More specifically, does phonetic implementation only add gradient detail to the phonological output representation, or can it also add additional ‘phonological’ objects?
The third question, related to the previous one, is whether we have to distinguish between different ‘levels’ of phonological representation, each spelling out more or less detail – in other words, whether there is ‘underspecification’ at the lower levels of phonology (and perhaps also in the phonetics), how this is determined, and what evidence we have for such underspecification beyond theoretical elegance.
The final question is to what extent the ‘primitives’ of phonological theory are really atomic, or whether they have some internal structure. There are several types of substructure that come to mind; e.g. binary features crucially distinguish an attribute and a value; but one could also wonder whether the uniform behaviour of e.g. ‘Place’ features (or ‘Colour’ elements) in some phonological processes is not really an indication of their sharing some internal structure.
The questions outlined above are fundamental and in many cases quite old, and we would particularly invite abstracts which aim at a principled discussion of these debates in light of recent experimental, computational or theoretical work. Presentations will be 25 minutes long plus 10 minutes of discussion.
Invited speakers
- Paula Fikkert (Radboud University Nijmegen)
- John Harris (University College London)
- Bert Vaux (University of Cambridge)
Abstract submission guidelines
All papers submitted for the GLOW 37 Phonology Workshop should adhere strictly to the following guidelines:
- Abstracts must not exceed two A4 pages in length (including data and references), have one inch (2.5 cm) margins on all sides, be set in Times New Roman with a font size no smaller than 12pt and single line spacing.
- Examples must be integrated into the text of the abstract, rather than collected at the end.
- Nothing in the abstract, the title, or the name of the document should identify the author(s).
- At most two submissions per author, at most one of which can be single-authored. The same abstract may not be submitted to both the main colloquium and a workshop.
- Only submissions in pdf-format will be accepted.
- Abstracts are submitted via the GLOW 37 Easychair-page:
https://www. easychair.org/conferences/?conf=glow37.
3. GLOW Semantics Workshop: “Understanding Possession”
Introduction
Possessive relations are expressed in the world’s languages by a myriad of dedicated grammatical means. In recent years, possession has received notable attention from semanticists as well as (morpho)syntacticians (see Barker 2011 and Börjars & Denison 2013 for recent overviews). Despite these efforts, many important aspects of how possession is encoded in human language remain poorly understood.
The aim of the workshop is to bring semanticists and (morpho)syntacticians together to enhance our understanding of possession.
The expression of possession typically involves a possessee, a possessor and an element that marks the existence of a possessive relation. The semantic and syntactic properties of these three interact with pragmatics as well as with the morphosyntactic and semantic context. At each of these levels important questions arise.
Possessees
With respect to the possessee, Partee (1983/1997), Löbner (1985), De Bruin & Scha (1988), Barker (1995) and many others propose that a distinction must be made between relational and non- relational—or sortal—nouns. Relational nouns semantically function as two-place predicates, while non-relational nouns behave as one-place predicates. This distinction between relational and sortal nouns raises several important questions:
- What is the connection between semantic and syntactic arguments (see e.g. Von Prince 2012)?
- Is a two-place lexical entry the only way to arrive at relational interpretations (see e.g. Partee & Borschev 2003 and Le Bruyn, de Swart & Zwarts 2013)?
- Are some possessive constructions limited either to relational or sortal nouns, as proposed by Barker (1995)?
- Can the relational vs. sortal distinction derive the split between alienable and inalienable possession (see e.g. Vergnaud & Zubizeretta 2003, Chappell & McGregor 1996, Aikhenvald & Dixon 2013 for discussion) or is a further semantic decomposition of possessed nouns needed to do so?
Possessors
Some possessive constructions impose semantic and syntactic restrictions on the possessor. For example: (i) The Dutch possessive –s suffix can only occur on proper names, (ii) Possessors that co-occur with linking morphemes in the Austronesian language Daakaka must be animate (Von Prince 2012). Such restrictions raise the follow questions:
- In which module of the grammar do these restrictions arise? Semantics, the lexicon, morphology or syntax? Or are they the result of interplay between these modules?
- What is the range of cross-linguistic variation with respect to these restrictions and how can we account for (the restrictions on) this variation?
In some languages, non-pronominal possessors can be doubled by a possessive pronoun (e.g. Dutch Jan zijn boek (Jan his book)):
- What are the morphosyntactic properties of such possessor doubling (see e.g. Grohmann & Haegeman 2003, Corver & Van Koppen 2010, Salzmann & Georgi 2011, Schoorlemmer 2012)?
- How is possessor doubling interpreted by the semantics?
Possession markers
The world’s languages display an impressive array of variation with respect to the morphosyntactic means to signal possession (see e.g. Aikhenvald & Dixon 2013; Börjars & Denison 2013; Nichols & Bickel 2005; Dryer 2005). It can be signaled by genitive case, prepositions, dedicated possessive markers, construct state, etc. The relation between this morphosyntactic variation and the semantics of possession remains largely unexplored in the literature.
- Do different markers of possession invoke different semantics (see e.g. Partee & Borschev 2003 for discussion)?
- Does the marker itself introduce a relational semantics or does it merely reflect that another element does so?
- Is there a limit on the morphosyntactic variation in possession marking and how can we account for (the restrictions on) this variation?
Semantic composition, syntactic structure, context and pragmatics
Finally, the role of semantic composition, syntactic structure, context and pragmatics in possession is still poorly understood.
- Which semantic compositional processes play a role in possession?
- What is the syntactic structure of possessive constructions (see e.g. Szabolcsi 1983, Kayne 1994, Den Dikken 1998, Corver 2003, Coene & d’Hulst 2003)? How does this syntactic structure relate to semantic composition?
- Can the syntax and semantics of possession be reduced to that of locative constructions (see e.g. Freeze 1992, Kayne 1993, Belvin & Den Dikken 1997)?
- Is there any competition between possession markers, and if so, are there any meaning effects associated with this competition (see e.g. Le Bruyn & Alexandropoulou 2013 for a recent discussion on French inalienable possession).
- How much of relational interpretations can be derived from context or pragmatic reasoning (see e.g. Vikner & Jensen 2002 for discussion)?
We invite abstracts for 35 minute talks (25 talk, 10 discussion) that enhance our understanding of possession by either directly or indirectly addressing one or more of the above questions. Possible formats include but are not limited to:
- New theoretical insights in the semantics or (morpho)syntax of possession.
- Theoretical (semantic, (morpho)syntactic or pragmatic) explorations of possession that aim to derive (part of) the variation we find cross-linguistically.
- Studies—synchronic or diachronic—of (part of) a language specific possession paradigm, both from well-studied and lesser-studied languages, that show us what the relevant semantic or (morpho)syntactic building blocks of possession patterns are.
- Micro- or macro-comparative studies of (parts of) possession paradigms, that show us what the relevant semantic or (morpho)syntactic parameters underlying the variation in possession patterns are.
- Studies working out the semantics of previously explored syntactic/morphological analyses, investigating how syntax/morphology maps to semantics.
Invited speakers
- Chris Barker (New York University)
- Kilu von Prince (ZAS Berlin).
Abstract submission guidelines
All papers submitted for the GLOW 37 Semantics Workshop should adhere strictly to the following guidelines:
- Abstracts must not exceed two A4 pages in length (including data and references), have one inch (2.5 cm) margins on all sides, be set in Times New Roman with a font size no smaller than 12pt and single line spacing.
- Examples must be integrated into the text of the abstract, rather than collected at the end.
- Nothing in the abstract, the title, or the name of the document should identify the author(s).
- At most two submissions per author, at most one of which can be single- authored. The same abstract may not be submitted to both the main colloquium and a workshop.
- Only submissions in pdf-format will be accepted.
- Abstracts are submitted via the GLOW 37 Easychair-page:
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=glow37.
4. Practical information
| Dates main colloquium: | April 2-4, 2014 | |
| Date phonology workshop: | April 5, 2014 | |
| Date semantics workshop: | April 5, 2014 | |
| Dates GLOW Spring School: | April 7-11, 2014 | |
| Organizers main colloquium: |
Dany Jaspers (conference president, CRISSP, Brussels) |
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| Main Colloquium Reviewing Process: | ||
| Organizers phonology workshop: |
Bert Botma (Leiden University) |
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| Organizers semantics workshop: |
Bert Le Bruyn (Utrecht University) |
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| Coordinator GLOW Spring School: | Marijke De Belder (CRISSP, Brussels) | |
| Contact: | glowbrussels@gmail.com | |
| First call and opening of submissions: | June 15, 2013 | |
| Second call: | September 15, 2013 | |
| Third call: | November 15, 2013 | |
| Abstract submission deadline: | December 1, 2013, 23:59 CET | |
| Notification of acceptance: | January 31, 2014 | |
| Abstract submission website: | https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=glow37 | |
| GLOW 37 website: | http://www.glow37.org | |
| Website main colloquium: | http://www.glow37.org/colloquium | |
| Website phonology workshop: | http://www.glow37.org/phonology | |
| Website semantics workshop: | http://www.glow37.org/semantics | |
| Website GLOW Spring School: | http://www.glow37.org/spring-school |