Workshop on Animacy in Language and Cognition
9 November 2015
University of Leeds
Extended Deadline for Abstracts: Tuesday 22 September 2015
Full details on the website at https://animacyleeds.wordpress.com/
The aim of this workshop is to increase our understanding of animacy and its role in human language(s) and cognition. We welcome papers which take a broader theoretical and interdisciplinary approach to animacy effects on language in order to explore questions such as the following:
- How did the cognitive underpinnings of animacy evolve in our primate ancestors, and how did this interact with the emergence and evolution of language?
- How does the cognitive development of distinctions based on animacy shape and support language acquisition?
- To what extent should animacy be seen as a linguistic feature independent of contrasts related to personhood or prominence, including definiteness, individuation vs collectivity, specificity, etc.?
- Animacy effects related to the human vs non-human contrast are well-attested in human grammars, but what sorts of linguistic contrasts do we find based on distinctions at the lower end of the animacy hierarchy?
- Can generative linguists increase the descriptive adequacy of their models by invoking gradience or other non-binary feature specification in analysing animacy effects?
- How does folkbiological classification of biological animacy in the natural world map onto linguistic animacy hierarchies?
ABSTRACT SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Abstracts should not exceed one A4 or US Letter page with 2.5 cm or 1 inch margins in a 12pt font. All examples and references in the abstract should be included on the one single page, but it is enough, when referring to previous work, to cite 'Author (Date)' in the body of the abstract; you do not need to give the full reference.
Please submit abstracts by email to d.c.nelson@leeds.ac.uk by the end of Tuesday 22 September 2015.
Organisers:
Diane Nelson, Linguistics and Phonetics, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds
Virve Vihman, School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester
