The Centre for Comparative and Cognitive Linguistics organizes the international congress
From Words to Complex Sentences: Beyond Conventional Meaning
A Romance Perspective
University of Bucharest, 28th – 29th of April, 2023
First call for papers
The existence of phenomena whereby ‘what a speaker means is not fully determined by what the sentence means’ (Bach, 1997) is the topic of ardent debates with respect to the division between semantics and pragmatics. In other words, the conventional meaning of words only constrains the truth conditional content, without exhausting the meaning of the sentence. Under a truth-based approach of the utterance, these phenomena illustrate non-truth conditional aspects of meaning. The expressions of non-truth conditional meaning are many and varied: presuppositional elements, modal verbs, connectives, focus particles etc. There are several standard diagnostics proposed to test their contribution to truth conditions: embedding a conditional within the antecedent, embedding within a that-clause under indirect quotation or under a factive verb etc. (Bach, 1999, Papafragou, 2006, inter alia).
We invite submissions that take these phenomena in Romance Languages as a starting point in order to discuss the separation between semantics and pragmatics. Some phenomena pertain to semantic underdetermination conceived as a property of sentences that fail to express a complete proposition, as truth-evaluable linguistic entity. We follow Bach (1994) in presenting some guidelines for the analysis:
- Referential underdetermination : indexicals and demonstratives; anaphor: : Jean a dit à Paul de cirer ses chaussures. (de Jean/de Paul), descriptive anaphor (‘sloppy identity’) : Jeanne aime son mari et Claire aussi.
- Phrasal underdetermination : Georges a presque tué l’oie. (il s’en abstenu/il l’a manquée/elle y a survécu)
- Scope underdetermination : neg-raising : Je ne crois pas qu’il ait dit cela. Je crois qu’il n’a pas dit cela.) (Ramat 1988, Tovena 2000)
- Argumental underdetermination : Marie a mangé/*dévoré (quoi ?). Les hommes préfèrent les blondes. (à qui ?)
Sentence non-literality refers to sentences that are semantically or conceptually incomplete and that require some elaboration achieved through a pragmatic process of expansion. The border dispute between semantics and pragmatics is usually settled by recognizing that semantic information is linguistically encoded while pragmatic information emerges in relation to the utterance, factoring in intentions, actions and speaker’s inferences.
Without restricting the theoretical approach, we welcome submissions that spell out their methodology calling into question the dividing line between semantics and pragmatics. Several conceptual distinctions contribute to the ongoing debate towards a reassessment of the dichotomy between truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional meaning:
– The opposition between conceptual and procedural meaning, put forth by the cognitive approach. What is the relation between procedural meaning and non-truth-conditional meaning?
– The opposition between ‘saying’ and ‘showing’ that Ducrot borrows from Wittgenstein is coextensive to what may be accounted for vs. not be accounted for in truth-conditional terms. The hypothesis that pragmatics is integrated within semantics establishes a French tradition and one can explore the argumentative, illocutionary etc. underpinnings of meaning.
– What other meaning dimensions can one appeal to besides non-truth conditional aspects? More generally, what is the contribution of context?
– A diachronic path along a cline from conceptual to procedural meaning is amply documented. The modeling of this process has not reached a consensus, opposing the supporters of grammaticalization and pragmaticalization, depending on one’s take on grammar, whether a morphosyntactic or communicative device.
References:
Bach K. (1994), “Semantic slack: what is said and more”, Foundations of Speech Act Theory, Routledge.
Bach K, (1997), “The Semantics-Pragmatics distinction: what it is and why it matters” in Eckard R. (hrsg.), Pragmatik. Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 8.
Bach K. (1999), “The Myth of Conventional Implicatures”, Linguistics and Philosophy 22, No. 4, 327-366.
Blakemore D. (1997), “On Non-Truth Conditional Meaning” in Eckard R. (hrsg.), Pragmatik. Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 8.
Depraetere I. (2019), “Meaning in Context and Contextual Meaning: A Perspective on the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface Applied to Modal Verbs”, Anglophonia 28.
Ducrot, O. (1984), Le dire et le dit, Paris, Minuit.
Kronning H. (2013), “Ducrot et Wittgenstein: le “dit”, le “montré” et le logos apophantikos” in Sullet-Nylander, F., Engel H. et Engwall G. (eds), La linguistique dans tous les sens. Kungl. Vitterhetsakademien.
Iten C. (1997), Linguistic Meaning, Truth Conditions and Relevance. The Case of Concessives. Palgrave Macmillan.
Papafragou A. (2006), “Epistemic Modality and Truth Conditions, Lingua 116, 1688-1702.
Tovena L. (2000), “Neg-Raising: negation as finite failure?” In Hoeksema J., Rullman H., Sanchez-Valencia V., Vand der Wouden T. (eds), Perspectives on negation and polarity items, John Benjamins, 331-356
Tovena L. (2005), “Discourse and addition”, Proceedings ESSLI, Workshop Discourse Domains and Information Structure.
Languages
Participants may deliver their presentation in any of the following languages: English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
Submission of proposals
The proposals, which should not exceed 500 words (without references), should be submitted via the registration form by November 15th, 2022 and should include the following information:
– Name and surname
– E-mail address
– University and department of affiliation
– Title of the paper
– Abstract (500 words maximum)
– Keywords: 3-5 keywords
– Bibliography (5 titles maximum)
– Biographical note (1000 characters maximum)
The scientific committee will announce the possible acceptance of the proposal before December 20th, 2022.
Registration fees
• 100 euros before the 10th of February, 2023;
• 120 euros after the 10th of February, 2023.
The registration fee guarantees:
– the colloquium folder;
– coffee breaks;
– meals.
A selection of contributions will be published in a volume after evaluation by the scientific committee.
Invited speakers
Lucia Tovena, Université Paris Cité
Maria Helena Araújo Carreira, Université Paris 8
Stefano Ondelli, Università degli Studi di Trieste
Scientific committee
Maria Helena Araújo Carreira, Université Paris 8
Anne le Draoulec, Université de Toulouse 2 – Jean Jaurès
Sybille Große, Universität Heidelberg
Isabel Margarida Duarte, Universidade do Porto
Giada Mattarucco, Università per Stranieri di Siena
Stefano Ondelli, Università degli Studi di Trieste
José Francisco Medina Montero, Università degli Studi di Trieste
Daniela Pietrini, Universität Martin Luther Halle Wittenberg
Cecilia Mihaela Popescu, Universitatea din Craiova
Alina Tigău, Universitatea din București
Daciana Vlad, Universitatea din Oradea
Luminița Vleja, Universitatea de Vest din Timișoara
Organizing committee
Mioara Adelina Angheluță (mioara.angheluta@lls.unibuc.ro, Spanish)
Oana-Dana Balaș (oanadana.balas@lls.unibuc.ro, Spanish)
Adriana Ciama (adriana.ciama@lls.unibuc.ro, Portuguese)
Anamaria Gebăilă (anamaria.gebaila@lls.unibuc.ro, Italian)
Roxana Voicu (Roxana.voicu@lls.unibuc.ro, French)
The French version of this CFP is available here.