Ambigo: Workshop on Ambiguity – Theory, Development, and Processing

Ambigo: Workshop on Ambiguity – Theory, Development, and Processing will take place at the University of Göttingen on 4–6 July 2018.

Ambiguity, defined as the property enjoyed by words and utterances that bear multiple interpretations, is pervasive in natural languages. The way in which human cognitive and linguistic systems deal with ambiguity has been an object of study for centuries by philosophers, linguists, psychologists and cognitive scientists.

The aim of the current workshop is to discuss this topic at three different levels:

• Theory: how theoretical accounts speak of the issue of how to relate different meanings of words/utterances to multiple underlying representations of that word/utterance.
• Development: how language learners cope with ambiguity, how they are able to acquire the meaning and the use of words and utterances that are represented by more than one structure or representation, or that perform several linguistic functions
• Processing: how ambiguous words and utterances are processed by the cognitive system and in the brain, and how ambiguity resolution takes place in real time

We therefore invite the submission of abstracts that investigate ambiguity phenomena in natural language, with specific focus on – but not limited to – lexical ambiguity, structural/syntactic ambiguity, semantic/pragmatic ambiguity, temporary ambiguity and resolution.



Keynote Speakers:

• Boban Arsenijević, University of Graz, Austria
• Gennaro Chierchia, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA
• Stephen Crain, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
• Loes Koring, Utrecht University, Netherlands
• Clemens Mayr, ZAS Berlin, Germany
• Jacopo Romoli, Ulster University, Belfast, Northern Ireland
• Rosalind Thornton, Macquarie Univesity, Sydney, Australia



Organizing Committee:
Dr. Daniele Panizza
Prof. Nivedita Mani
Prof. Markus Steinbach
Prof. Hedde Zeijlstra