RT list: CFP Workshop on Future at the 43rd annual Meeting of Societas Linguistica Europaea Vilnius University, Lithuania, 2-5 September 2010

Workshop ‘Future tense(s) / future time(s)’ The 43rd annual Meeting of Societas Linguistica Europaea Vilnius University, Lithuania, 2-5 September 2010 Convenors: Philippe De Brabanter (Université Paris 4-Sorbonne – Institut Jean Nicod) Mikhail Kissine (FNRS, Université Libre de Bruxelles) Saghie Sharifzadeh (Université Paris 4-Sorbonne) Contact: phdebrab@yahoo.co.uk Call for Papers Time Frame: We ask potential participants to send us their provisional titles and short descriptions no later than 12 November so as to allow us to submit our workshop proposal to the SLE Scientific Committee before 15 November 2009. In case of acceptance of our proposal, all abstracts will have to be submitted by the end of December via the ‘submit abstract’ form to be found on the SLE website. Description: Among tenses and linguistic expressions that anchor events and situations in time, those that refer to the future occupy a special place. The most obvious reason is the 'open' or 'indeterminate' character of the future: at least from our present point of view, the future course of events is not fixed while there is arguably only one past. This problem has exercised the minds of all those who have attempted to provide a semantic account of future temporal reference. Not surprisingly, this has led numerous linguists to argue that (at least certain) linguistic markers of futurity belong to the category of modality rather than to the tense system proper. And it is true, typically in Germanic languages, that the central markers of futurity have often developed diachronically from modal verbs. However, the semantic indeterminacy of future reference is just one among many fascinating questions. These include (the list is not exhaustive): - pastness in the future - futurity in the past - ‘distance’ in the future (near vs. remote future) - the use of future tense or other verbal forms marking future time in subordinate clauses - the use of verbal forms usually marking future time to mean other things than reference to future time. In this workshop, we would like to promote a fresh look at the future by bringing together semanticists, typologists, cognitive linguists and other linguists interested in all things future. We encourage scholars from various theoretical traditions to submit papers. We also wish to reach across traditional languages lines and welcome submissions that examine similarities and differences between Romance or Germanic languages on the one hand, and other language groups on the other. Important dates: Deadline for submissions: November 12, 2009 Conference: September 2-5, 2010
Received on Mon Nov 2 09:17:50 2009