About

The study of pronouns has been an engine behind the development of many theories in syntax and semantics. Much has been learned about pronouns, and yet the topic continues to be an area of fruitful research. Lively debates on strong and weak pronouns, free and bound variable pronouns, de se and de re pronouns, indexical pronouns and fake indexicals, indefinites, simplex and complex anaphors abound in the current linguistic literature. Many of the questions that we would like to address at our conference are not new, but we believe that addressing them again, perhaps with new theoretical and experimental tools and with new data, could be quite helpful.

How exactly does syntax constrain the use of pronouns and why are the constraints the way they are? What is the meaning of the features of pronouns? What shapes pronominal systems in the world’s languages? How does the human brain process pronouns and anaphora? How much can we learn from studying pronouns about the laws of grammar and discourse?…

The discussion of these and related topics will benefit from the contribution of our guest speakers who will teach mini-courses on the syntax, semantics and processing of pronouns.

Conference

We invite submissions from all theoretical and experimental perspectives. Each talk selected for presentation will be allotted 20 minutes followed by 10 minutes of discussion. Submissions are limited to one individual and one joint abstract per author.

Abstracts should be submitted to psspconference@gmail.com. They should be in PDF format, with all non-standard fonts embedded. Abstracts should not exceed 2 pages, including data and references (11pt font minimum, single spacing, 1 inch/2.5cm margins on each side). Examples should be interspersed throughout the text. The submission must not reveal the identity of the author(s) in any way.

School

Information about the summer school can be found here. Lectures on syntax, semantics and processing of pronouns will be given by:

Barbara Partee, UMass Amherst
Colin Phillips, University of Maryland
Eric Reuland, UiL OTS

Important dates

School and conference dates: June 16–19 2015
Conference submission deadline: March 1 2015
Notification of acceptance: March 15 2015
School registration deadline: June 1 2015

Organizing Committee
Natalia Slioussar
Anna Volkova
Alexander Podobryaev
Svetlana Toldova
Olga Eremina