Discourse Structure and Levels of Meaning (IDL12)

Information and discourse structure, and the analysis of dif ferent levels of meaning (conventional and conversational implicatures, presuppositions, etc.) have been two of the most fruitful areas of research in the semantics-pragmatics interface in the last decade. This workshop aims to study the interactions between these two areas. Thus, the questions that this workshop will address go in two directions.1. How does information and discourse structure aff ect the diff erent levels of meaning? Can we obtain a better understanding of, for instance, conversational implicatures or presuppositions, once the topic-focus structure is taken into account?2. How do the dimensions of meaning a ffect the information structure of discourse? Can we obtain a better understanding of concepts such as topic, focus, contrastive topic, background or QUD, once the properties of the different levels of meaning are taken into account?