Call for papers: Workshop on Aspect across Languages

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 20-Sep-2012


WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION:

The level of complexity and importance of aspectual systems in languages, compounded by the diversity of approaches to representing aspect, make aspect an extremely interesting topic for discussion. In this workshop, we would like to engage in this discussion from a cross-linguistic perspective. Although many authors have thoroughly addressed and investigated issues surrounding aspect, there still remains a lack of uniformity in regard to the theoretical notion of aspect (Beavers, 2008, in press; Borer, 2005; Comrie, 1976; de Swart, 1998; Dowty, 1979; Filip, 2008; Klein, 1994; Krifka, 1998; Vendler, 1967, amongst others). Aspect can roughly be delimited as describing the speaker's perspective on the internal organisation of an action, event or state, which not only covers temporal perspectives, but might also include characteristics such as progressive, habitual, repetition, momentary, bounded, perfective etc. (Bybee, Perkins, & Pagliuca, 1994; Dahl, 1985; Smith, 1997; Talmy, 2000; Verkuyl, 1993).

Topics of interest in this workshop include but are not limited to:

- definitions and classifications of aspectual notions;
- diachronic perspectives on aspect;
- aspectual coding in specific languages, i.e. single-language treatments of aspect;
- comparisons of aspect across different languages.

The workshop is held as part of the Annual Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society (https://sites.google.com/site/als2012uwa/home).


CALL FOR PAPERS:

We invite abstracts of up to 500 words. Please submit your abstract at

<https://bookings.arts.uwa.edu.au/ocs/index.php/linguistics/linguistics2012/schedConf/cfp>

Papers will be of 30 minutes duration, consisting of a 20 minute lecture-style presentation followed by 10 minutes for questions/responses.

Abstracts should be submitted online and will be reviewed by at least two reviewers drawn from the Program Committee. Please ensure that your abstract meets the specific guidelines (cf. website).

Note that only ALS members are eligible to present at an ALS conference. Non-members presenting papers must take up membership by the beginning of the conference.

We particularly invite contributions that focus on the premise that aspectual categories reflect conceptual structures and which make these structures explicit. In addition, we welcome analytical and comparative studies of aspect across languages as well as discussions and presentations that help to clarify the current knowledge base of aspect terminology. Authors with problematic and non-standard examples as well as with work in progress are encouraged to contribute.