Conference: The Acquisition and Processing of Reference and Anaphora Resolution

Sáb, 24/04/2021 - 17:53
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24/04/2021
The Acquisition and Processing of Reference and Anaphora Resolution
Salón de actos vacío de la Escuela Técnica Superior en Ingeniería de la Edificación

The theme of the conference ties in with the research topic of the ANACOR research project (ANACOR: A corpus-based approach to anaphora resolution in second language acquisition: beyond the interfaces; PI Cristóbal Lozano), an international research project based at the Universidad de Granada.

Referring to entities is a fundamental aspect of languages since it allows to refer to things and people in the world. Speakers can opt for different referential expressions (e.g. overt and null pronouns, noun phrases, proper names, etc.) to indicate a particular entity in discourse and listeners have to be able to select the correct referent according to the speaker’s intention. This is often known as anaphora resolution. The theme of the conference is to address the acquisition and the processing of reference and anaphora resolution. When acquiring, processing and resolving reference, several factors are involved, such as information status (topic/focus), the syntactic position of the antecedent, the accessibility of the referent, the number of potential or competing antecedents, the distance between the referential expression and its antecedent, etc. So, the aim of the conference is to gain insight into the different mechanisms that shape anaphora resolution across languages.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

  • Antonella Sorace (University of Edinburgh): L1 attrition and L2 acquisition: two sides of the same coin
  • Jacopo Torregrossa (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main): Bilingual reference use as a window into input effects in bilingual language acquisition
  • Ianthi Tsimpli (University of Cambridge): Deviance in anaphora resolution: the same symptom in different populations

CONFERENCE DATES

19th - 20th May 2021