Clefts

Call for Papers

Call Deadline: 01-Apr-2008
Workshop on Clefts

Call for Papers

Call Deadline: 01-Apr-2008

Date: 28 - 29 November 2008
Location: Centre for General Linguistics, Berlin, Germany

Invited Speakers:
David Adger
Marcel den Dikken
Nancy Hedberg

Cleft sentences have generally been described as sentence patterns that overtly embody their discourse function. As the terminology suggests, cleft constructions are formed by dividing a more elementary clause into two parts, namely an initial focus constituent and a backgrounded proposition, which is subordinated by being placed in a relative construction. Although the biclausal format of the English it-cleft seems to be clear enough, languages show a considerable amount of variation in the way they encode the equivalent of such clefts. Parameters of typological variation include: (i) the type of copula device that is employed (verbal vs. pronominal copulas); (ii) the form of the predicative relative clause; (iii) the constituents that can undergo clefting.

In this workshop, we are interested in recent theoretical and empirical developments in the analysis of cleft constructions. The submissions should therefore address some of the following issues:

- The sentential status of clefts: arguments for a biclausal or a monoclausal analysis
- The syntactic analysis of clefts: arguments for a derivation analysis or a base-generation analysis of clefts
- The syntactic structure of the copula clause: location of the copula, connection of the relative clause
- The information-structural function of a cleft: is clefting always a focusing strategy, or could it also establish a topic comment structure?
- The similarities and differences between cleft semantics and focus semantics
- The question whether clefts are always exhaustively interpreted
- Presuppositions of clefts: Do clefts always have a presupposition?
- Universality of clefts: Do all languages have cleft constructions?
- The status of the copula: evidence for a grammaticalization path from copular elements to focus markers, or vice versa

This workshop aims to provide a space to discuss and compare different theoretical approaches and empirical studies to the syntax and semantics of clefts.

Abstracts are invited for a 30-minute presentation followed by a 15-minute question period. Accepted authors will be asked to submit a preliminary version of their papers (up to 15 pages). Selected papers from the workshop will be considered for peer-reviewed book publication.

An author may submit at most one single and one joint abstract. Abstracts should be at most 2 pages in 12-point font with 1'' margins, including data and references. Authors are requested to submit two copies of their abstract, one with their name and one anonymous. Abstracts must be submitted as a pdf attachment to: cleft08@zas.gwz-berlin.de. The names of the files should be surname-named.pdf and surname-anon.pdf.

The body of the e-mail should contain the following information:
Name(s) of author(s)
Title of talk
Affiliation(s)
E-mail address(es)

Important Dates:
Submission deadline for abstracts: 1 April 2008
Notification of acceptance: end April 2008
Deadline for draft version: 30 October 2008
Workshop: 28 - 29 November 2008

Organising Committee:
Andreas Haida
Katharina Hartmann
Tonjes Veenstra

cleft08@zas.gwz-berlin.de