Date: 26-Aug-2020 – 29-Aug-2020
Location: Bucharest, Romania
Contact Person: Daniela Casartelli
Meeting Email: < click here to access email >
Web Site: https://silviocruschina.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/sle2020-reported-speech-and-reported-thoughts-4.pdf

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Semantics; Text/Corpus Linguistics; Typology

Call Deadline: 10-Nov-2019

Meeting Description:

Speakers may resort to a variety of linguistic strategies to report communicative acts (‘reported speech’ = RS) or mental states (‘reported thought’ = RT). While RS has received relatively much attention, RT is not often explicitly discussed. Authors either group RT together with RS as a type of ‘inner speech’ (Vygotsky 1987; Vološinov 1973), or treat it as a completely separate phenomenon. On the one hand, structures involving RS and RT are roughly equivalent (Palmer 1986: 135; Spronck & Nikitina 2019). Both RS predicates (e.g. say, tell) and RT predicates (e.g. think) behave as bridge verbs allowing for a number of syntactic phenomena, including extraction across wh-questions, embedded V2 in Germanic languages, and complementizer deletion (Erteschik-Shir 1973; Vikner 1995; Salvesen & Walkden 2017). The structural resemblance is even greater in languages that do not make a lexical distinction between ‘say’ and ‘think’ at all (Güldemann 2008; Larson 1978; Reesink 1993; Rumsey 1990; Saxena 1988; Spronck 2015).

On the other hand, predicates of RS and RT may select different complementizers or verbal moods in the embedded clause, and behave differently with respect to other phenomena such as negation raising Functional, corpus-based analyses of RS/RT have revealed differences in preferred syntactic patterns, e.g. with respect to word order, expression and omission of arguments and complementizers (e.g., Posio & Pešková to appear). Formalist accounts highlight differences in the syntactic structure of RS/RT complement clauses, in that only RS predicates select for clauses with a full structure licensing root phenomena (Heycock 2006; Hooper & Thompson 1973). Differences also emerge in the grammaticalization or pragmaticalization processes out of predicates of RS/RT that yield different types of evidential and epistemic structures and markers such semi-grammaticalized constructions, parenthetical expressions, evidential or epistemic adverb(ial)s (cf. English methinks, Spanish dizque, Greek lei), discourse markers and modal particles, and grammatical elements (e.g. complementizers) (Cruschina 2015; Cruschina & Remberger 2008; Thompson & Mulac 1991; Posio 2014; Wiemer 2018, and references therein).

The aims of the proposed workshop are to bring together linguists working on the relationship between RS and RT and on their different linguistic manifestations, and to foster debate across theoretical divides and approaches. The questions addressed in the workshop include (but are not limited to):

– Which morphosyntactic properties characterize RS and RT in individual languages or in a crosslinguistic sample? Which tests and criteria can be used to distinguish between the two domains both syntactically and semantically?
– Does complementation under RS/RT predicates involve different semantic and syntactic units and objects? Do the differences that have been observed in complement clauses align with RT/RS or rather with the distinction between assertive and non-assertive predicates?
– What differences and similarities in the expression of RS and RT can be found in corpus-based studies?
– Semantically, how does RT relate to quotation on the one hand and propositional attitudes on the other? Can RT be interpreted as ‘inner speech’?

Call for Papers:

We invite submissions that contribute to the description, discussion, and analysis of these and other issues concerning RS and RT in any language or in a typological/comparative perspective. We welcome contributions from all frameworks and approaches, including synchronic, diachronic, data-driven, corpora, discourse, typological, and theoretical analyses. Preliminary abstracts (300 words, as DOC and/or PDF file) should be sent to the workshop organizers (email address: daniela.casartelli(at)helsinki.fi) by 10 November 2019.

Important Dates:

10 November 2019: Deadline for submission of 300-word abstracts to organizers
20 November 2019: Submission of the workshop proposals to SLE
15 December 2019: Notification of acceptance of workshop proposals from SLE
15 January 2020: Deadline for submission of all abstracts to SLE for review
26–29 August 2020: SLE conference, University of Bucharest