Grammatical features: A key to understanding language
Workshop on Features
Workshop on Features took place on 1-2 September 2007 King's College London as part of the LAGB 2007 conference. The workshop brought together linguists who had grappled with features as a component of theoretical models together with others who had considered their range and variability in the world's languages. The programme organisers of the workshop were Greville Corbett and Anna Kibort, Surrey Morphology Group. The workshop was supported by the ESRC, within a project on Grammatical Features (grant number RES-051-27-0122), and the LAGB. The local arrangements were provided by Devyani Sharma, Eleni Gregoromichelaki, and Suzanne LaBelle of King's College London.
Background
In attempting to understand language, a central notion is features. Examples are person (1st, 2nd, 3rd), number (singular, plural, dual...), tense (present, past...), and inflectional class (I, II, III, IV...). Features have proven invaluable for analysis and description, and have a major role in contemporary linguistics, right across the range of the discipline. Yet little is firmly established about features: we have no readily available inventory of which features are found in the world's languages, no generally agreed account of how they operate across different components of language and no certainty on how they interact. Features are widely used, but are little discussed. The workshop therefore brought together linguists who had grappled with features as a component of theoretical models together with others who had considered their range and variability in the world's languages.
There were six guest speakers who agreed to talk on the following topics:
- David Adger 'Features and functional categories' [PDF]
- Ann Copestake 'Features and computational semantics' [PDF]
- Ron Kaplan 'Formal aspects of underspecified features' [PDF]
- Maria Polinsky 'Looking into familiar features, or why women are not dangerous things' [PDF]
- Geoffrey K. Pullum 'Complex-valued features and expressive power of description languages' [PDF]
- Ivan Sag 'Feature geometry and predictions of locality' [PDF]
Material from keynote presentations must not be cited without permission of the author.
Photos taken during the Workshop on Features can be viewed by visiting the SMG Google+ Photo Album.
Programme
1 September 2007
| 09.40 - 10.20 | Greville G. Corbett (University of Surrey) 'Features: some key concepts' |
| 10.20 -11.00 | Jelena Mirković (University of York), Maryellen C. MacDonald & Mark S. Seidenberg (University of Wisconsin-Madison) 'Acquisition and representation of grammatical gender: a PDP approach' |
| 11.00 -11.30 | Break |
| 11.30 - 12.50 | Linguistics Association Lecture 2007: B. Elan Dresher (University of Toronto) 'The contrastive hierarchy in phonology' |
| 13.00 - 14.00 | Lunch |
| 14.00 - 14.40 | Gabi Danon (Bar-Ilan University) 'Definiteness features at the syntax-semantics interface' |
| 14.40 - 15.20 | Gergana Popova (Middlesex University) 'Features in periphrastic constructions' |
| 15.20 - 16.00 | Iker Zulaica (Ohio State University) 'A feature-based approach to abstract anaphora resolution' |
| 16.00 - 16.30 | Break |
| 16.30 - 17.30 | Keynote talk: Maria Polinsky (Harvard University) 'Looking into familiar features, or why women are not dangerous things' |
| 17.30 - 18.10 | Anna Kibort (University of Surrey) 'Towards a typology of grammatical features' |
2 September 2007
| 09.00 - 10.00 | Keynote talk: David Adger (Queen Mary, University of London) 'Features and functional categories' |
| 10.00 -11.00 | Keynote talk: Ann Copestake (University of Cambridge) 'Features and computational semantics' |
| 11.00 -11.30 | Break |
| 11.30 - 12.10 | Peter Svenonius (University of Tromsø) 'Features and modularity' |
| 12.10 - 12.50 | Maria Flouraki (University of Essex) 'Features and aspectual composition' |
| 12.50 - 14.00 | Lunch |
| 14.00 - 15.00 | Keynote talk: Ron Kaplan (Powerset and Stanford University) 'Formal aspects of underspecified features' |
| 15.00 - 16.00 | Keynote talk: Ivan Sag (Stanford University) 'Feature geometry and predictions of locality' |
| 16.00 - 16.20 | Break |
| 16.20 - 17.00 | Nigel Vincent & Kersti Börjars (University of Manchester) 'From semantic to morphological features via syntax (but not back again)' |
| 17.00 - 18.00 | Keynote talk: Geoffrey K. Pullum (University of Edinburgh) 'Complex-valued features and expressive power of description languages' |
Project members
Prof Greville G. Corbett
Dr Anna Kibort
Period of award:
November 2004 - October 2007
Funder
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
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