CONFERENCE ON FINITENESS

Though routinely employed in the morphological and syntactic analysis of many languages, if not all, the descriptive content and theoretical import of the category of finiteness is so unclear as to render it arbitrary and meaningless. The aim of the conference is to shed light on this category by focusing on questions such as these:
 

• Is FINITENESS an elementary notion or is it defined in terms of more basic notions (such as marking for tense, mood, person/number/other agreement, being in construction with a non-oblique subject)?
• Assuming FINITENESS is not elementary, what are the patterns of more basic functional categories that render such a derived category  meaningful? (For example, are there systematic correlations between being  marked for tense, mood, person/number/other agreement and being in  construction with a non-oblique subject?)Are such patterns language- particular or are they universally predictable?
• What kinds of units can be said to be FINITE or NON-FINITE? words or word forms? constructions/clauses/sentences? If both, how is the FINITENESS of words related to that of constructions?
• As a word category, how does FINITENESS bear on word classes? (Is FINITE what verbs are, and NON-FINITE what not-so-verby verbs are, with basic nouns and adjectives unrelated to verbs being outside the scope  of this category altogether?)
• As a construction category, how does FINITENESS bear on construction classes?(Is FINITE what sentences and perhaps clauses are, and NON- FINITE what phrases and perhaps clauses are, if desentential? Further, how  do FINITE and NON-FINITE distribute over main and subordinate clauses?)
• How do FINITE and NON-FINITE constructions differ as domains for syntactic rules (e.g., binding, anaphora, case marking)? That is, what is  the relationship between finiteness and syntactic opacity?
• What about FINITENESS is subject to change?(For example, can finite forms  or constructions become non-finite, and vice versa? If so, what are the mechanisms of change?

Elena Kalinina, Moscow State University
Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm, University of Stockholm
Jaklin Kornfilt, Syracuse University
David Perlmutter, University of California, San Diego

Abstract of one page should be submitted by March 30th, 2001. If you are submitting by regular mail, abstracts should be mailed to: Irina Nikolaeva, University of Konstanz, Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft, Fach 175, Konstanz, D-78457. If submitting electronically, please include the abstract in the body of the message (do not send attachments!) and send it to: irina.nikolaeva@uni-konstanz.de. Abstracts should include the author information (author's name and affiliation, title of the paper, mailing address, and e-mail address).

IMPORTANT DEADLINES:

Submission deadline: March 30th, 2001
Notification of acceptance: April 10th, 2001

Irina Nikolaeva
irina.nikolaeva@uni-konstanz.de
Frans Plank
frans.plank@uni-konstanz.de

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