Semantics etc.

“Indefinites and Weak Quantifiers”:http://bkl-www.uia.ac.be/bkl/en/coll2004.htm. Brussels, 6–8 January 2005.

The deadline for abstracts submission is April 30th, 2004. Authors will be notified before July 1st 2004.

bq. The aim of the conference is to make a contribution to the study of plural indefinites. This involves, on the one hand, the specific properties of plural indefinites which distinguish them from singular indefinites; on the other hand, the expression of indefiniteness by means of weak quantifiers, also known as indefinite, intersective, symmetric, existential or cardinal quantifiers (e.g. two, some, several, many, etc.). The recent literature on plural indefinites and weak quantifiers contains a number of hypotheses which deserve closer investigation. These include the following — among others:

1. The relationship between determination and quantification in the indefinite domain. Are weak quantifiers determiners? How does the distinction tie in with the hypothesis that Quantifier Phrases generate Determiner Phrases (QP –> Q [DET + NP]) (Matthewson 2001)?
2. Bare plurals and their relationship with other indefinites:
   1. Given that bare plurals in Germanic languages allow generic readings, do they really qualify as indefinites? Or should the Romance generic definites rather be considered to have an indefinite behaviour (Krifka 1995)?
   2. Arguments for or against (i) Carlsonian (Carlson 1977) and Neocarlsonian (Chierchia 1998) approaches to bare plurals in terms of names of kinds; (ii) approaches in terms of properties (Dobrovie-Sorin & Laca 2003) and incorporation (Van Geenhoven 1996, McNally 1998).
   3. phenomenon of “excorporation”, the scope of the indefinites and strong existential readings (reference to individuals) and weak existential readings (reference to properties). What is the influence of the modifiers (adjectives, relatives) on the reading of indefinites? Is there a relationship between on the one hand these two readings of indefinites, and on the other hand referential readings of weak quantifiers (reference to individuals) and quantificational readings (reference to quantities) (Fodor and Sag 1982, Szabolcsi 1997)?
3. Ambiguities of the weak quantifiers:
   1. Weak (indefinite) readings vs proportional (partitive, strong) readings. Is the indefinite meaning of weak quantifiers preserved when they have a proportional or partitive reading (Kleiber 2001)?
   2. Referential vs quantificational readings.
   3. Collective readings (quantification over individuals) vs distributive readings (quantification over events).
4. What is involved in the difference between adjectival quantifiers (many N) and adverbial quantifiers (beaucoup de N)? What is the function of Genitive case, be it prepositional or morphological, in weak quantification

The conference is open to the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic approaches. Perspectives that account for cross-linguistic variation are strongly encouraged.

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