Grammatical indeterminacy in empirical research

• date: September 29-30
• location: Osnabrück University, Building 41 (Neuer Graben 40, 49074 Osnabrück)

Workshop description

Indeterminacy, a notion that encompasses ambiguity, vagueness, polysemy and underspecification, is a frequently employed phenomenon across all linguistic levels that represents a central mechanism in grammatical change (cf. Ágel 2009, Espinal & Villalba 2015). Research into grammaticalization theory (e.g., Diewald 2002, Heine 2002, Traugott 2010) assigns a central role to ambiguity in the development of grammatical structures. The concept of underdetermination is also described in grammaticalization theory (e.g., Ferraresi 2005). The multifunctionality of parts of speech and their subdifferentiation also play a central role in research that addresses the classification of parts of speech (e.g., Vogel 2005, Wasow 2015, Zifonun 2017).

Grammatical indeterminacy is characterized as involving morphosyntactic and lexical elements that allow for (at least) two possible readings, i.e., two distinct grammatical classifications (cf. Pinkal 1985, Ellsäßer 2024), as illustrated for German in (1).

 (1) Sie hat am Wochenende viel Staub gewischt.

       (‘She did a lot of dusting over the weekend.’/ ‘She dusted a lot over the weekend.’)

In this example, the expression viel (‘a lot’) in German can either function as a determiner of the noun Staub (‘dust’) [viel Staub]NP (‘lots of dust’) or as an adverb modifying the action of dusting [vielADV[Staub]NP (‘a lot of dusting’). This structural ambiguity leads to different grammatical analyses depending on whether viel is classified as a determiner or adverb. The preferred reading of the sentence is typically, though not necessarily, clarified by context.

Further examples of indeterminacy include quantifiers, ellipsis, anaphora, irony, and scare quotes, as illustrated in (2a-e) below.

(2) a. Few students read every book.

      b. James invited Sarah to the concert, but I don’t know who else.

      c. Sarah told Julia that she would win the award.

      d. What a great evening!

      e. John is a real 'genius' when it comes to fixing cars.

These phenomena can serve as a testing ground for grammar-based approaches to indeterminacy. While philosophical approaches (see e.g., Frege 1884, Chomsky 2002) have laid the groundwork for understanding indeterminacy phenomena, with a substantial amount of research on ambiguity resolution, key terminology in empirical studies of indeterminacy is often inconsistently defined and empirical research lacks a unified theoretical framework. Further, limited attention has been on integrating grammatical theorizing in empirical studies and there is no widely accepted empirical operationalization within grammatical frameworks.

In our workshop, we aim to bridge the gap between grammatical theories and empirical research, addressing the need for exploring how theoretical grammar can be used to systematically classify and investigate indeterminacy (cf. Winkler 2015). The following research questions will be discussed in our workshop:

• Which phenomena of indeterminacy (ambiguity, vagueness and polysemy) can be found in grammar? On which linguistic levels (word types, sentence structure, morphological structures) are they located?
• To what extent is grammatical indeterminacy disambiguated (e.g., by context)?
• How can phenomena of indeterminacy and their disambiguation be investigated empirically?

References

Ágel, Vilmos. 2009. Strukturelle Offenheit mit Verstehenspräferenzen. Plädoyer für eine Neuorientierung in der Erforschung globaler Ambiguitäten. In: Linke, Angelika & Helmuth Feilke (eds.): Oberfläche und Performanz. Untersuchungen zur Sprache als dynamischer Gestalt. Tübingen: Niemeyer (RGL 283), 137–159.

Chomsky, Noam. 2002. On Nature and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diewald, Gabriele. 2002. A model for relevant types of context in grammaticalization. In:

Wischer, Ilse & Gabriele Diewald (eds.): New Reflections on Grammaticalization, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 103–120.

Ellsäßer, Sophie. 2024. Fritz Thyssen Project ‘Grammatical indeterminacy. Empirical differentiation of ambiguity, vagueness and polysemy’ – Project description, URL:  https://www.uni-osnabrueck.de/fb7/en/grammatical-indeterminacy/project-description (last accessed 10 October 2024).

Espinal, M. Teresa & Xavier Villalba. 2015. Ambiguity resolution and information structure.

The Linguistic Review 32(1), 61–85.

Ferraresi, Gisella. 2005. Unterdeterminiertheit in der Schnittstelle Syntax/ Semantik bei Grammatikalisierungsphänomenen am Beispiel schon, Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 32(2), 245–261.

Frege, Gottlob. 1884. The Foundations of Arithmetic, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Heine, Bernd. 2002. On the role of context in grammaticalization. In: Wischer, Ilse & Diewald, Gabriele (eds.): New Reflections on Grammaticalization, Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 83–101.

Pinkal, Manfred. 1985. Logik und Lexikon. Die Semantik des Unbestimmten. Berlin, Boston: de GruyterTraugott, Elizabeth C. 2010. 4. Grammaticalization. In: Jucker, Andreas H. & Taavitsainen, Irma (eds.): Historical Pragmatics, Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 97–126.

Vogel, Petra M. 2005. Conversion and derivation in different part-of-speech systems. In: Knobloch, Clemens & Schaeder, Burkhard (eds.): Wortarten und Grammatikalisierung: Perspektiven in System und Erwerb. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 67–78.

Wasow, Thomas. 2015. Ambiguity Avoidance is Overrated. In Winkler, Susanne (ed.), Ambiguity: Language and Communication. Berlin, München, Boston: De Gruyter, 29–48.

Winkler, Susanne. 2015. Exploring ambiguity and the ambiguity model from a transdisciplinary perspective. In: Winkler, Susanne (ed.): Ambiguity: Language and Communication. Berlin, München, Boston: De Gruyter, 1–25.

Zifonun, Gisela. 2017. Pronomina. In: Gunkel, Lutz, Murelli, Adriano, Schlotthauer, Susan, Wiese, Bern & Gisela Zifonun (eds.): Grammatik des Deutschen im europäischen Vergleich. Das Nominal, Berlin: de Gruyter, 519–799.

Programme

Day 1: September 29, 2025

Day 2: September 30, 2025