One-day workshop
Speaker and hearer perspectives on word order

Friday, 22 February 2008
Harmoniegebouw, Oude Kijk in 't Jatstraat 26
Groningen
Rooms: H1312.0024 (until lunch) H1312.0030 (after lunch)

Description

Many researchers of word order and word order variation have approached the subject matter by taking what can be described as a speaker's stance. Constraints on, or patterns and preferences in, word order are studied by observing how varying aspects of a meaning that is to be expressed, like grammatical function assignment or information structure, influences word order. In computational linguistics, natural language generation involves taking this perspective.

Conversely, one may also emphasize the effect word order variation has on the interpretation of a sentence. For instance, one may study how word order restricts the available readings of a sentence in terms of grammatical function assignment, information structure, referentiality of arguments, or quantifier scoping. The computational linguistics task of natural language parsing is a concrete example of this approach, which we may call taking the hearer's perspective.

More recently, researchers have proposed that a more complete understanding of word order is gained by combining these perspectives. For instance, it has been argued that canonical word order is preferred in contexts in which grammatical function assignment cannot be reliably determined using word order independent information, such as case, agreement, or animacy. In a model that combines perspectives, this can be formalized as a restriction of the speaker's freedom in choosing a word order variant, that is determined by hearer's ability to recover the correct grammatical function assignment.

The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers of word order that assume different perspectives (focusing on the interpretation of form, the expression of meaning, or on the interaction of the two) from a variety of methodological backgrounds (computational, experimental or theoretic, quantitative or discrete).

Registration

Participation is free of charge. Those who wish to attend are kindly requested to register before 20 February, by sending an email to Gerlof Bouma <gerlof &at; ling.uni-potsdam.de>

Organisation

Gerlof Bouma (contact person, <gerlof &at; ling.uni-potsdam.de>)
Petra Hendriks
Jack Hoeksema

Programme

Room H1312.0024

10:45 Coffee & Opening

11:00 Jack Hoeksema (Groningen)
Scrambled or sunny side up?

11:45 David Beaver (Austin, Texas)
tba

12:30 Lunch

Room H1312.0030

13:30 Gerlof Bouma (Potsdam)
A corpus study of Dutch word order freezing.

14:15 Peter de Swart and Geertje van Bergen (Nijmegen)
Stuck in the middle of a Dutch sentence: a corpus study of object placement in the Mittelfeld

15:00 Tea

15:30 Elisabet Engdahl (Göteborg)
On disappearing expletive subjects - is Swedish becoming more like German?

16:15 Ton van der Wouden (Leiden)
Particles in the Vorfeld

17:00 Closing

	Room H1312.0024
10:45	Coffee & Opening
11:00	Jack Hoeksema (Groningen) Scrambled or sunny side up?
11:45	David Beaver (Austin, Texas) tba
12:30	Lunch
	Room H1312.0030
13:30	Gerlof Bouma (Potsdam) A corpus study of Dutch word order freezing.
14:15	Peter de Swart and Geertje van Bergen (Nijmegen) Stuck in the middle of a Dutch sentence: a corpus study of object placement in the Mittelfeld
15:00	Tea
15:30	Elisabet Engdahl (Göteborg) On disappearing expletive subjects - is Swedish becoming more like German?
16:15	Ton van der Wouden (Leiden) Particles in the Vorfeld
17:00	Closing

Unfortunately, Roelien Bastiaanse (Groningen) has been forced to cancel her talk.

Acknowledgements

The organisers gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Center for Language and Cognition (CLCG), the leerstoelgroep Semantiek and Cognitie, the Department of Alfa-informatica, and the School of Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience (BCN), all at the University of Groningen.