Each day of the conference we will have a workshop. These will involve much discussion, and will not simply be paper presentations. The first is on "correspondences" (for which the convenors (Kertis Borjars and Nigel Vincent) solicit expressions of interest). The second two bring together LFG theory with descriptions of languages of the Pacific region, Western Austronesian (Peter Austin and Simon Musgrave) and Chinese (Patrizia Pacioni).
Descriptions follow.
A discussion paper for this workshop isn now available.
CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST: One of the attractions of an LFG type of architecture is the way f-structure is separated from its expression via c-structure and/or morphology. Yet, while there is a clear set of formal constraints on possible f-structures, on c-structures and on morphological representations, there is no available theory of correspondences. Nonetheless there are clearly tendencies in this area. i) Thus, Bresnan's paper "Category Mismatches" is about circumstances in which expected f-c correlations don't go through or go through in unexpected ways, and the very title of the paper seems to presuppose some prior notion of 'matches'. ii) In the general literature much has been written about the notion of iconicity in (morpho)syntax, where once again many have claimed that there are 'natural' correspondences between certain types of grammatical content and their formal expression. Within LFG much needed clarity can be given to the issue of iconicity by construing it as a constraint on f-structure to c-structure mappings. iii) At LFG97 we raised the possibility that different types of morphological expression (fusional vs agglutinative) might constrain different possible realizations of f-structures in the area of double or attracted case. The intention behind our workshop therefore is to explore in more detail the problem of if and how to constrain correspondences between parallel representations. INTERESTED IN THE TOPIC? Rather than have a prior list of speakers who will prepare papers on this topic, our idea is to invite anyone interested in this area to contact one of us with suggestions as to examples or classes of examples that might extend the list above. We would collect these together and prepare a checklist of examples and questions that would constitute the basis for discussion in the workshop. From those replying we would also try to select a panel of individuals who might speak for 5-10 minutes each simply to launch the discussion of a given item on the list. The remainder of the time would then be available for (hopefully wideranging, stimulating and productive) debate. We hope in this way to produce a genuine workshop rather than a mini-conference within a conference. IF YOU'D LIKE TO PARTICIPATE, PLEASE CONTACT THE CONVENORS: nigel.vincent@man.ac.uk or kersti.borjars@man.ac.uk
This is now described in detail on its own web pages.
Contacts: Simon Musgrave <s.musgrave@linguistics.unimelb.edu.au> Prof Peter K. Austin <p.austin@linguistics.unimelb.edu.au> Mail for both to: Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Babel Building The University of Melbourne Parkville, Victoria 3052 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 3 9349 4326
This workshop will present and discuss the analysis of various topics in Chinese syntax related to verbal syntax and semantics within the framework of LFG. The talks to be presented are: Her, One-Soon: Lexical Mapping in Chinese Inversion Constructions Huang, Chu-Ren: Classifying Event Structure Attributes: A Verbal Semantic Perspective from Chinese. Pan, Haihua: An LFG Account of Chinese Passive Construction. IF YOU'D LIKE TO PARTICIPATE, PLEASE CONTACT THE CONVENOR: Expressions of interest in participation as disscussant are welcome. Discussants should preferably have a theoretical knowledge of the LFG architecture and some knowledge of Chinese. Contact person: Patrizia Pacioni <p.pacioni@asian.unimelb.edu.au> Japanese and Chinese Department The University of Melbourne Parkville, VIC 3052 Australia