Over the last several years, a significant amount of linguistic research has been directed towards understanding the interface conditions between the computational ("narrow syntax") system and other systems involved in language knowledge and use. Some of linguistic phenomena that were previously viewed as purely syntactic appear now to have a better explanation in terms of conditions on interfaces. An important question, then, is what syntax interfaces with. While the syntax-semantics interface and the syntax — phonology interface have received a substantial amount of attention, the interface between syntax and discourse is less well understood. At the same time, the relevance of various discourse-related phenomena for acceptability of certain linguistic structures has often been noted (e.g. the relationship between D-linking and extraction from islands, tense dependency, distribution of pronominals, right — and left — dislocation, among others).
From the psycholinguistic side, researchers have proposed that integration of syntactic and discourse information may require additional processing resources, and that it may be especially problematic for young children and brain damaged (aphasic) patients. A precise theoretical model of the interface between the two systems, thus, is needed for a better understanding of the process of language acquisition and language impairment.
?The goal of the proposed workshop, therefore, is to bring together researchers whose work focuses on theoretical and experimental issues concerning the syntax — discourse interface. The main questions will include, among others, the following:
- Is there such thing as a ‘linguistic level of discourse representation’ as opposed to general principles of information storage?
- If so, what is the relationship between units of syntactic and discourse representations?
- Can discourse factors have impact on syntactic computation?
- In what way can syntactic factors (e.g. the structural position, or case property) determine a particular discourse function?
- What are possible interface conditions between syntactic and discourse systems?
- How do children acquire the knowledge of the interface conditions between the two systems?
- Are there instances of selective impairment of the interface conditions either in the course of abnormal linguistic development (SLI), or brain damage (aphasia)?
- What kind of other psycholinguistic evidence can be brought about to answer the above questions?
Papers focusing on both linguistic and psycholinguistic issues will receive equal consideration and will be selected on the basis of scientific merit only.