Université d'Orléans

6th Encounters of Semantics and Pragmatics (RSP6)
Orleans 1, 2 and 3rd of July 2013

The sixth “Rencontres de Sémantique et Pragmatique” (RSP6) will be organized, like the previous ones (Paris, 1996; Orleans, 1999; Sousse 2002; Orleans, 2006; Gabes, 2009), around a double call for papers.
It is organized by the Laboratoire Ligérien de Linguistique (UMR 7270, Université d’Orléans) and the Revue de Sémantique et Pragmatique (www.univ-orleans.fr/RSP).
Along with a general session open to papers devoted to semantics, pragmatics or the semantics/pragmatics interface, RSP6 will dedicate a thematic session to communications and discussions about the semantics/morphology interface (or the pragmatics/morphology interface).

Call for Papers

General Session: Semantics and pragmatics
The purpose of the general session will be to permit the presentation of contributions to empirical and/or theoretical questions relating to semantics and/or pragmatics and their interface.

 Thematic Session: " The Semantic/Morphology Interface"
As an issue on its own, the Semantic/Morphology Interface has emerged explicitly some twenty years ago (e.g., Anscombre, 1990), even though every linguist trying to account for the generation of the lexicon, the construction of words or the semantics of inflectional signs (tense, aspect, mode, number, gender, etc.) was confronted with this issue well before that.
The aim of the thematic session will be to present and discuss how dichotomies from the 1970s, according to which, for example, semantics would have to account for polysemy meanwhile morphology would have to account for word formation (and not their meaning, cf. Aronoff, 1976), have been outdated by approaches whose goals, tools and/or methodologies were similar to those developed in linguistic semantics, and according to which:

• The question of the generation of the lexicon or the description of morphological constructions could not be separated with the account of the diversity of lexical meaning (for example, Lieber, 2004), and of the categorial diversity of uses of a sign (polycategoriality);

• Inflectional morphemes are to be recognized as objects whose description requires and helps redefine the interface between semantics, morphology and syntax (and sometimes pragmatics);

• Morphology is an ideal field to study rigorously the mechanisms of semantic integration (i.e. the way combined linguistics signs are interpreted), and specifically to study non-compositionality;

• the undisputable instability of the relationship between form and meaning could become an object of research on its own, far from the conventional approach which assumes in the first place a stable relation between form/meaning, then observes that this assumed stability is massively falsified by morphological data, and finally transforms the lexicon into a "morphological wastebasket" (to paraphrase Bar-Hillel) which the linguist can and should ignore.

 Among other issues, more questions have emerged, such as:

• the question of knowing how the tools developed within Linguistic semantics in the 70s and 80s, and especially the notion of “semantic instruction”, could be used to account for types of signs such as affixes or bound bases;

• The issue of the polycategoriality or transcategoriality of the use of morphemes, a question of common interest to both disciplines that has arisen both at a global level (typology of word classes), and at a local level (should categorically distinct uses of a single morpheme receive a single explanation or not);

• The semantics of constructions in construction grammar or constructional morphology;

• The question of the possibility to account for the semantics of the "listemes" of generative morphology, i.e. to the (huge) part of the lexicon which remains inexplicable within a combinatorial approach to grammar (and semantics).

As a consequence, all general and local issues concerning the interface between semantics and morphology are open to debate, among which:The relationship between morphemes and morphological constructions;

• The semantics of inflectional morphemes;

• The semantics of constructed words;

• The debate on the existence of a non-categorial lexicon and the semantic debate on the co-existence of morphemes and lexemes;

• The relationship between semantic constructions and semantic instructions;
• The diversity of uses of sub-lexical units (polysemy and polycategoriality);
• The semantic and linguistic status of bound radicals (with no free allomorph);
• The semantic status of morphological units (full signs versus procedural meaning);
• The questioning of traditional notions such as the notion of derivation.

To allow for a real debate on all these (and other) issues, a plenary session will be organized which will include, in addition to various general communications, a roundtable where very different approaches to the semantics/morphology interface will be confronted.

 Format of communications
 20 minutes of communication, followed by 10 minutes of discussion.

 To submit
Proposals for papers should be sent before January 28th  2013, directly by email attachment to: rsp6@univ-orleans.fr

 Abstract Format
 A proposal may be submitted either under the thematic session or the general (non-thematic) session. It will consist of a summary (abstract) of 2500 characters (including spaces) minimum and 5000 characters maximum, including references.
 Abstracts will be submitted in word format (.docx or .rtf) as an attachment to the email address of the conference: rsp6@univ-orleans.fr
Summaries are anonymous, the name and affiliation of the author(s) is to be included in the message body (e-mail).

Languages of submission: French, English, Spanish

Important Dates
 - The extended deadline for sending the abstracts is 28th of January 2013.
- The decisions of the Scientific Committee will be communicated between the 25th of February and the 15th of March 2013.
- Confirmation of participation before the end of March 2013.
- Payment of the conference at preferential rates: between the 15th of April and the 31st of May 2013. From the 1st of June, a normal price will apply.
- Closing date: 15th of June 2013.
- The final program will be published on the 15th of June 2013.

 Registration fees

• preferential rate (from the 15th of April to the 31st of May 2013) : 90 € (this amount include i) participation fees; ii) the cost of lunch for the three days of the conference; iii) a double issue of RSP (i.e. a selection of papers from the conference sessions).

• The rate for Students is 60€ (with the same benefits).

• normal rate (from the 1st of June 2013) : 120€. (With the same benefits)

Organizing committee
 Lotfi Abouda, Olivier Baude, Gabriel Bergounioux, Caroline Cance, Camille Letang, François Nemo, Sylvester Osu, Yann Portuguès, Pierre-Yves Raccah, Nina Rendulic, Marie Skrovec.

Scientific committee
Lotfi ABOUDA (University of Orleans), Dany AMIOT (Lille 3), Jean-Claude ANSCOMBRE (LDI-Paris 13 & Cergy-Pontoise), Antoine AUCHLIN (University of Geneva), Gabriel BERGOUNIOUX (University of Orleans), Olivier BONAMI (Paris-Sorbonne), Pierre CADIOT (University of Orleans), Georgette DAL (Lille 3), Patrick DENDALE (University of Antwerp), Pierre JALENQUES (University of Rouen), Christine JACQUET-PFAU (Collège de France & LDI (Paris 13 & Cergy-Pontoise)), Franck LEBAS (University of Clermont-Ferrand), Salah MEJRI (LDI-Paris 13 & Cergy-Pontoise), François NEMO (University of Orleans), Henning NOLKE (Aarhus University), Bert Peeters (Macquarie University, Sydney), Pierre-Yves RACCAH (LLL-CNRS), Corinne ROSSARI (Fribourg University), Louis DE SAUSSURE (University of Neuchâtel), Liliane TASMOWSKI (University of Antwerp), Yves-Marie VISETTI (CNRS).