Information, discourse structure and levels of meaning

Now you can download most of the presentations from the programme page. Enjoy!

We are grateful to all the people making the Information, discourse structure and levels of meaning workshop such a success! First of all, thanks to the speakers, who presented state-of-the-art research with an open mind to close research areas, yielding a lively debate. (Be aware to the programme page, where we will upload the presentations!)

Second, to our supporting team, Cristina Real, Andrea Bellavia, Lidia Bogatyreva, Elena Ciutescu, and the staff from the Departament de Filologia Catalana of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Contxi Saumell and Maria Corredera, for their great job after and during the workshop.

And last but not least, thanks to the members of the funded research project “Compositionality of meaning and semantic operations at the syntax-semantics and grammar-cognition interface (COMPOSING)” (FFI2011-23356), particularly to M. Teresa Espinal, Jaume Mateu, Olga Borik, and Jordi Fortuny.

The workshop dinner will take place on Thursday 25th at 20.30h at restaurant Carmelitas. It will cost 20 euros (to be paid at the restaurant).

We have the title of Daniel Büring’s talk: Light Negation and Conventional Implicatures.

See the page of the programme for updates and abstracts.

At the page Restaurants around the conference site, you can check a selection of budget restaurants from a wide variety of food styles.

The programme has undergone a minor change: the talks by Bart Geurts and Daniel Büring have switched the day. Hence, Daniel Búring will speak Thursday morning at 9.45h, and Bart Geurts, Friday morning at 9.45h.

You can download the final programme as a PDF.

The workshop “Information, discourse structure and levels of meaning (IDL)” is an initiative of the funded research project “Compositionality of meaning and semantic operations at the syntax-semantics and grammar-cognition interface (COMPOSING)” (FFI2011-23356).

We are Laia Mayol (Universitat Pompeu Fabra; Laia.Mayol@upf.edu) and Xavier Villalba (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Xavier.Villalba@uab.cat).

Feel free to contact us for any question.

We are very happy to announce the forthcoming workshop on Information, discourse structure and levels of meaning “IDL12″, to be held in Barcelona on October 25-26th 2012.

Meeting description:

Information and discourse structure, and the analysis of different levels of meaning (conventional and conversational implicatures, presuppositions, etc.) have been two of the most fruitful areas of research in the semantics-pragmatics interface in the last decade. This workshop aims to study the interactions between these two areas. Thus, the questions that this workshop will address go in two directions.

1. How does information and discourse structure affect the different levels of meaning? Can we obtain a better understanding of, for instance, conversational implicatures or presuppositions, once the topic-focus structure is taken into account?
2. How do the dimensions of meaning affect the information structure of discourse? Can we obtain a better understanding of concepts such as topic, focus, contrastive topic, background or QUD, once the properties of the different levels of meaning are taken into account?

We invite contributions on these aspects for 30′ oral presentations. Abstracts should conform to the following guidelines:

• Abstracts must be submitted electronically via Easychair.
• Abstracts should be anonymous.
• Abstracts should not exceed two pages, including examples and references.
• Submissions are restricted to one single-authored or one co-authored abstract at most.
• The conference language is English: abstracts and talks will be in English.
• Page format: A4, 2.5 cm margins on all sides, at least 12 pt Times New Roman font, single line spacing.
• File format: .pdf
• File name: surname.pdf

Important dates:

• workshop: October 25-26th, 2012.
• deadline for abstracts submission: April 16th
• notication of acceptance: June 15th

Invited speakers:

• Daniel Büring (Universität Wien)
• Bart Geurts (Radboud University Nijmegen)
• Craige Roberts (Ohio State University)
• Gregory Ward (Northwestern University)