Workshop on Formal Approaches to the Relation of Tense, Aspect and Modality

 

July 21-26, 2008

Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

 

A Workshop on Formal Approaches to the Relation of Tense, Aspect and Modality will be held in conjunction with the 18th International Congress of Linguists (CIL 18).

                          

Organizers:

Yukinori Takubo

Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University

606-8501

E-mail: ytakubo@bun,kyoto-u.ac.jp  

Fax: +81-75-753-2817

 

Stefan Kaufmann

Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University, 2016 Sheridan Rd., Evanston, IL 60208-4090, U.S.A.

E-mail: [email protected]

 

 

Workshop description

 

Tense, aspect and modality have generally been considered to belong to distinct categories. It is, however, well known that they are not always marked separately in a language. Modal distinctions such as Realis/Irrealis can be coded in what can primarily be described as tense forms, aspectual forms or modals depending on a language. Epistemic modality and evidentiality have also been observed to be relevant to the semantic characterization of tense and aspect. Tense and aspect can be, in some cases, not so easily separable in languages like Korean or Japanese, where aspectual meanings are associated with tense forms, or vice versa. Tense, aspect and modality are three of the

grammatical categories that have received most detailed linguistic descriptions but the question of how the three categories interact with one another has only very recently begun to receive due treatment in formal linguistic theories. This workshop calls for papers that aim to address tense, aspect and modality of individual languages or in general linguistic terms from the following perspectives or approaches:

 

1) Comparative perspective: they have to address issues in tense, aspect and/or modality in at least two languages from a comparative perspective.

2) Inter-category interaction: they have to deal with the interrelationship between tense, aspect and/or modality, e.g. tense and aspect, aspect and modality, tense and modality.

3) Formal approaches: they have to take formal approaches to the problems. Papers in formal semantics, syntax, pragmatics, and discourse can be accepted, if they meet the requirements in (1) and (2).

 

Important Dates:

 

¡Ü August  31, 2007: Deadline for submitting the abstract.

¡Ü November 30, 2007: Notification of acceptance.

 

Form and submission of abstracts:

 

An abstract(.pdf or .doc file) should be up to 3 pages long, including data and references.

The abstract should start with the title of the paper, followed by the text of the abstract.

Please do not include the author's name in the abstract. On a separate page, please give

the author's name, affiliation, e-mail address, telephone number, mailing address, the paper title and the session number(title).

 

Please send the abstract and the author's information to both [email protected] and ytakubo@bun,kyoto-u.ac.jp.