LYON INSTITUTE FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCES

The Lyon Institute for Cognitive Science is pleased to announce its first international conference in linguistics to be held at the institute on the following topic:
 

 Notions of 'least effort' and 'economy' in a pretheoritical sense have always played a part in explanations concerning language use, evolution and design; they became an important formal construct with the rise of  Generative Grammar in the mid fifties and their role is now again at the center of  much contemporary research in phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics.

  This is particularly true of recent work prompted by what is known as the "Minimalist Program" of Generative Grammar. At the core of this research program are two distinct but related notions of ecomony; the first one investigates how parcimonious the Faculty of Language "FL" is in availing the speakers' Internal Language "IL" with devices providing access to other components of the mind/brain: should one countenance more than the structures and features that enter into the Logical Form (meaning) and the Phonetic Form (sound) of utterances? The second one attempts to find out how considerations of economy enter into the way linguistic expres-sions are generated; do computations that are more eco-nomical along well-defined dimensions --e.g. number of steps, "distance", "weight", "structural complexity" etc.-- block less economical ones? Can economy in this latter sense always be construed "locally" or should the theory of FL also allow for a more "global" notion.

 In a related, though clearly distinct sense, post Gricean pragmatics, in particular Sperber's and Wilson's theory of Relevance, devotes a great deal of attention to considerations of economy. It has by now been convincingly shown that the pragmatic interpretation of utterances is under-de-termined by the strictly linguistic information. If so, the question of how and on what (formal) basis speakers and hearers select contextual information is evidently crucial. Relevance theory suggests that the mecanisms that make that selection possible rest on a general economy principle that require that a balance be found between processing costs and interpretive gains.
 Notions of economy also play a role in various areas of formal semantics. Sample issues investigated in this perspective concern the role of economy in favoring certain quantifier scope interpretations, in resolv-ing anaphoric processes in their broadest sense --including focus determination, VP elipsis etc.-- or in limiting the availability of recourse to operations such as type shifting etc.

 As for Phonology and Morphology, one need hardly stress that much contemporary debate centers on the best way to encode considerations of simplicity economy and optimality into a suitable formalism.
 It is the organisers' hope that this symposium will help refine the various notions of economy sketched above and promote fruitful interdisciplinary research on this topic by providing a suitable format for comparison, confrontation and debate. The conference will have 4 sessions; each session will have six one hour presentations (45 minutes talks + 15 minutes discussions); each session will have a number of guest lecturers whose work has played a major part in shaping and/or reintroducing issues of economy in contemporary linguistic research.
 

Morning :
Chairperson : Nicholas Asher

9h- 9h45
Registration

9H45-10h
Conference opening by Marc Jeannerod

10h-11h

Chierchia, Genaro  University of Milan

Scalar implicature as a Polarity Phenomenon

11h-11h30
Coffee-break

11h30-12h30

Dayal, Veneeta. Rutgers University

The Definite Determiner and its Covert Counterparts

Afternoon :
Chairperson : Viviane Déprez

14h15-15h15

Sauerland, Uli Kanda Gaigo University, Japon

Superiority and Quantifier Raising: Evidence from Inverse Linking

15h15-16h15

Asher, Nicolas University of Austin

Principles of Economy and Discourse Interprétation

16h15-16h45
Coffee-break

16h45-17h45

Schlenker , Philippe  MIT

Semantic Uniformity

18h00
Drinks (wine and cheese) on conference site
 

MORPHOLOGY/ PHONOLOGY Wednesday October 13 1999

Morning :
Chairperson : Jean-Marie Hombert

9h-10h

Halle, Morris  MIT

On economy considerations in phonology.

10h-10h30
Coffee-break

10h30-11h30

Bonet, Eulalia Universitat Autonoma Barcelona

The Phonology of Catalan Clitics: derivational vs non-derivational approaches.

11h30-12h30

Marantz, Alec  MIT

The Pieces of Derivation.

Afternoon :
Chairperson : Tatjana Nazir

14h15-15h15

Vergnaud, Jean Roger ISC/USC

The Board Across : Strings, Chains and Constituents : Minimalist Connexion

15h15-16h15

Peter F. Dominey ISC

A Minimal Model of Thematic Role Assignment in Syntactic Analysis.

16h15-16h45
Coffee-break

16h45-17h45

Jean-Luc Schwartz, Christian Abry, Louis-Jean Boe, Nathalie Vallée, Marie-Agnès Cathiard, ICP

Economy and Phonology in the perceptual Dispersion-Focalization Theory and the Theory of Perception for Action-Control.

20h
CONFERENCE DINNER
 

PRAGMATICS Thursday October 14 1999

Morning :
Chairperson : Robert Jarvella

9h-10h

Sperber, Dan  CREA, CNRS Paris

Economy and pragmatics

10h-10h30
Pause-café/Coffee-break

10h30-11h30

Maillat, Didier Lincoln College Oxford

Minimalist Pragmatics for Directional Prepositions.

11h30-12h30

Moeschler, Jacques Université de Genève

Economy and Pragmatic Optimality: the Case of Directional inferences.

Afternoon :
Chairperson : Anne Reboul

14h15-15h15

Noveck, A.Ira ISC

How to account for conversational implicature

15h15-16h15

Blakemore, Diane University of Salford

The Interpretation of Conjoined utterances

16h15-16h45
Coffee-break

16h45-17h45

Matsui, Tomoko Christian University, Japan

Two Views on Economy in Reference assignment: Centering and International Relevance..

17h45-18h30

Saussure, Louis de Université de Genève

A procedural approach to verbal tense: past tenses in French.

 

SYNTAX Friday October 15 1999

Morning :
Chairperson : Jean-Yves Pollock

9h-10h

Rizzi, Luigi  Université de Sienne

Some Issues in the Theory of Locality

10h-10h30
Coffee-break

10h30-11h30

Newmeyer, Frederic University of Washington

Grammatical Economy Versus Processing Economy: Capturing Typological Generalizations

11h30-12h30

Williams, Edwin  Princeton University

Economy as Shape Conservation

Afternoon :
Chairperson : Jacqueline Lecharme

14h15-15h15

Kitagawa, Yoshihisa Indiana University

Economy of Lexical Selection

15h15-16h15

Rezac, Milan University of Toronto

The Economy of Target-Goal Relations: Constructing Equidistant Objects

16h15-16h45
Coffee-break

16h45-17h45

Collins, Christopher Cornell University

Eliminating Labels

17h45-18h30

Moro, Andrea University San Raffaele, Milano

Weak-antisymmetry: a parsimonious application of LCA

 

 
A registration form can be downloaded at the following web address:
http://www.isc.cnrs.fr/ciliscins.htm
It can also be obtained through Email from the following address :
reboul@isc.cnrs.fr or, by snailmail:

Viviane Deprez
Institut des Sciences Cognitives
67 bd Pinel
69675 Bron cedex
France

The completed registration form can be sent back either by email or by
snailmail at the same addresses. Modalities for payment of registration
fees are indicated on the registration form.
before september 15th  after september 15th
Faculty and staff 300 FF (= 50 $)  350 FF (=55 $)
Students  250 FF (= 42 $)  350 FF (=55 $)

Registration fees include lunches, coffee-breaks and an abstract booklet