Workshop on Recent Approaches to （Non-） Agentivity in Natural Language

　　Date：   May 3-4 2019

　　Abstract Submission Deadline： March 15

　　Venue： National University of Singapore

　　Conference site：

　　http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/chs/eng/newsandevents/conference.html

　　Background

　　The notion of agentivity in linguistic research straddles the intersection between syntax， semantics， and conceptual structure. Agentivity is at heart a conceptual notion， intertwined as it is with properties of volitionality， force exertion， and internal control. Traditionally， semantic considerations appealing to differing degrees and facets of agentivity and related notions such as causation， force initiation， instrument status， etc. often play a part in morphosyntactic phenomena， including argument realization， grammatical alternations， case marking （see e.g. Fillmore 1968， Croft 1991， Dowty 1991， Van Valin and Wilkins 1996）， among other phenomena. Recent work has studied agentivity-related effects in further depth and from different perspectives. The role of agentivity and intentionality has been studied in regard to sentence interpretation， pertaining in particular to the non-attainment of results （Copley and Harley 2013， Demirdache and Martin 2015， Martin 2015）. Agentivity-related notions have also been considered in studies of finer-grained properties of types of events and participants in the encoding of events of caused change of state （Levin 2018）. More fundamentally， Evers et al. （2017） examined cultural factors in attributing responsibility to a participant in different kinds of caused events. Given the various new takes on agentivity and its related notions of causation and intentionality in recent work， it seems timely to bring scholars working on these topics to re-examine the relationships between these sub-areas， and their potential implications for one another.

　　As the workshop will be organized by a Chinese department， a discussion of the grammatical effects of agentivity in Mandarin Chinese will constitute an important part of the workshop. The effects of agentivity are potentially pervasive in Mandarin. For instance， Zhang （2004） has argued that a transitive sentence in Mandarin is prototypically interpreted as encoding an agent-patient relationship. Support for this could come from ostensibly non-agentive sentences：“experiencer object” sentences in Mandarin involving verbs such as ji1nu4 ‘to anger’， which need not involve an agent， have been argued to behave just like prototypical agent-patient transitive sentences （Verhoeven 2010）. More recently， agentivity has been proposed to be one factor underlying asymmetries in the encoding of different types of events of caused change in Mandarin （Tham 2018）. Through exploring agentivity-related notions from a cross-linguistic perspective， we hope to reach a broader and deeper understanding of relevant phenomena， and further allow research on the Chinese languages to both draw upon， and contribute to， phenomena and views provided by other languages.

　　Invited speakers （in alphabetical order）：

　　Juergen Bohnemeyer （University at Buffalo）

　　Beth Levin （Stanford University）

　　Fabienne Martin （Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin）

　　Elisabeth Verhoeven （Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin）

　　Phillip Wolff （Emory University）

　　Submission guidelines：

　　-- As the workshop will be conducted in English， only abstracts in English will be considered.

　　-- Abstracts should be no longer than 2 A-4pages （at least 12 point size font， 1 inch margins； including examples and references）.  

　　-- Please submit no more than one single-author and one co-authored abstract （whether for a talk or a poster）. 

　　Submission information：

　　-- Please email a pdf file of your anonymous abstract（s） to fasaslhl@）nus.edu.sg

　　by March 15 2019. 

　　-- Include ‘‘Agentivity Workshop’’in the subject heading of your email. 

　　-- In the body of your email， please include（i） author name（s），（ii）affiliation，（iii）the title of your paper，and（iv）indicate your preference for talk or poster （For a joint paper， please also specify the corresponding author.）

　　-- Notification of acceptance：late March

　　Fees：

　　Registration is free. Attendees are responsible for their own accommodation and transport.

　　Enquiries：

　　For any enquiries，please contact Huang Tingting at e0008660@u.nus.edu or Hu Ya at huyahy15@u.nus.edu.