Session 10: Syntax

July 21-26, 2008

Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

A parallel session on syntax will be held at 18^th International Congress of Linguists (CIL 18). For more information, visit the website (http://cil18.org ) or contact the organizer at [email protected].

Organizer: Farrell Ackerman (University of California at San Diego)

Description

The Syntax parallel sessions at CIL 18 (The 18^th International Congress of Linguists) will be organized around a general session intended to accommodate any topic in syntax and three specific themes.  We encourage submissions from all theoretical perspectives and especially on (morpho)syntactic phenomena from lesser studied languages.  While the general session will be devoted to current research on any topic, the subsessions are intended to provide forums for the comparison of different perspectives on three specific pivotal themes of current interest in syntactic theory.   There will also be a poster session, if there are a sufficient number of quality submissions to warrant it. 

Theme 1:   Quantitative methods and the goals of linguistic theory.  Over the past few years there has been increasing attention to new statistical and experimental methods in the analysis of syntactic phenomena.   A basic question that arises from this research is how results obtained using these methodologies may affect the goals and shape of linguistic theory.  Presentations in this subsession will contribute to furthering this research trend and contributing to understanding its consequences for linguistic theory.

Theme 2:  Morphosyntax:  The relation between morphology and syntax.  There are several perspectives on the role of morphology in grammatical theory.  For some, morphology is a sort of  syntax, with words amenable to analyses using familiar constructs from tree-theoretic syntactic theories.  For others, morphology resembles syntax in that both can be viewed as instantiations in different domains of construction-theoretic assumptions.  For others still, morphology represents an utterly distinct domain from syntax, with each domain in correspondence with one another.  Presentations in this subsession will address the nature of the relations between words and phrases.

Theme 3:  Argument-linking.  There have been numerous efforts over the years to identify principled relations between the semantic properties of predicators and the surface realization of their arguments with respect to their morphological realization, i.e., case-marking as well as their syntactic status, i.e., subj, obj, etc.   Presentations in this subsession will focus on the relation between the lexical semantics of predicators and argument realization.

In submitting abstracts, please indicate whether it the submission is (1) for a poster or a presentation, (2) to be reviewed for inclusion in the general session or for one of the three thematic subsessions, and (3) if for inclusion in a thematic subsession, specify which theme. 

Important Dates:

· Deadline for Abstract Submission: May 31, 2007

· Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: August 31, 2007

Submission of Abstracts:

A three-page abstract including everything should be sent electronically to both [email protected] and [email protected]. An MS Word and/or .pdf file is strongly prefered.