The goal of this workshop is to reflect on and re-consider the notion of “acceptability” and related concepts, and the ways in which they can inform linguistic theorizing. Judgments of “well-formedness” and “deviance” are standardly employed in generative linguistics since Chomsky’s (1955/1975, 1957, 1965) foundational works, despite the fact that these notions have never been clearly defined and their relevance for natural language prominently denied (cf. Chomsky 1986, Chomsky & Lasnik 1993, and Ott 2017 for a survey, amon many others). Is our theory of grammar primarily a model of acceptability (and if so, what exactly is acceptability/deviance?), or of something else, e.g. the constrained ways in which sound and meaning can be paired in natural language, including in “deviant” expressions (Chomsky 1993)? What kinds of speaker intuitions do we want our theory to account for, and which should we exclude as extraneous “noise”? Can naive speakers provide relevant intuitions, or should we rely on linguistically trained informants? How does acceptability relate to grammaticality--if at all? And what can related notions such as speaker preferences, negative data, intra-speaker variation, and substandard/non-frequent data tell us about the language faculty, and the ways in which we can elucidate its nature?

INVITED SPEAKERS
Gisbert Fanselow (University of Potsdam)
Wolfram Hinzen (ICREA & UPF)
Antonella Sorace (University of Edinburgh)

ORGANIZERS
Ángel J. Gallego (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Jaume Mateu (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Please find all relevant information at https://sites.google.com/view/acceptability/home

WAASAP is an international Workshop series celebrated biannually that focuses on the aspect and argument structure of adjectives and participles and adverbs and prepositions. In the time of its existence, it has developed into a referential forum of discussion of the theory of predicative non-verbal categories. Past editions have taken place at the University of Greenwich (2012), The Artic University of Norway at Tromsoe (2014) and The University of Lille 3 (2016).

The different topics that we want to discuss include but are not restricted to the following:
- Aspect: paths, scales and part/whole structures
- The syntax and semantics of possession and its relationship with auxiliary selection in perfective forms
- Prepositions, applicatives and voice: argument introducer heads.

Invited Speakers
Artemis Alexiadou (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
Elena Anagnostopoulou (University of Crete)
Hana Filip (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf)
Berit Gehrke (Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7)

Important dates
Extended Deadline for abstract submission: January 29, 2018.
Notification of acceptance: March 16, 2018.
Date of the workshop: June 7-8, 2018.

Organizers
María J. Arche
Josep Ausensi
Antonio Fábregas
Josep Maria Fontana
Rafael Marín
Anna Pineda
Cristina Real-Puigdollers

Please find all relevant information at https://sites.google.com/view/waasap4/

The workshop “Morphosyntactic Variation in Adpositions” will take place at Queens’ College, University of Cambridge, on 8–9 May 2017, aiming at furthering our understanding of cross- and intra-linguistic morphosyntactic variation, either synchronic or diachronic, in adpositional elements —including prepositions, postpositions, adpositional prefixes and particles.

INVITED SPEAKERS
Peter Svenonius (Universitet i Tromsø)
Cristina Real Puigdollers (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Víctor Acedo-Matellán (Queens’ College, University of Cambridge)
Anna Pineda (IKER - UMR 5478 (CNRS, UBM, UPPA))
Jaume Mateu (Centre de Lingüística Teòrica - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Theresa Biberauer (University of Cambridge)
Ioanna Sitaridou (University of Cambridge, Queens’ College)

IMPORTANT DATES
Deadline for abstract submission: 15 February 2017
Notification of acceptance: 1 March 2017
Workshop dates: 8–9 May 2017

Please find all relevant information at http://blogs.uab.cat/adpositions/

The Romance Turn brings together researchers from across Europe and overseas with the aim of sharing results and developing further research on the acquisition of Romance languages. Language acquisition studies both in children and adult learners are central to building our understanding of human language and how it develops in the brain. The field has witnessed a continuous growth during the past three decades. Over this period, empirical evidence provided by research conducted on the acquisition of Romance languages such as French, Italian, Catalan, Spanish, Romanian and Portuguese has become increasingly productive.
Following the success of previous Romance Turn conferences (Madrid (2004), Utrecht (2006), Southampton (2008), Tours (2010), Lisbon (2012), Mallorca (2014), and Venezia (2015) the Romance Turn VIII will be held in Bellaterra, hosted by the Centre de Lingüística Teòrica.

Extended abstract submission deadline: April 15, 2016
Acceptance notification: April 29, 2016
Registration opening: May 2, 2016
Early bird registration deadline: July 29, 2016

WEB CONGRÉS: filcat.uab.cat/theromanceturn