CALL: Workshop on Quotative markers (SLE 42, Lisbon, 9-12 Sep 2009)

Idiatov Dmitry dmitry.idiatov at ua.ac.be
Tue Jan 6 15:56:58 UTC 2009


Location: Lisbon, Portugal

 

Start Date: 09-Sep-2009 - 12-Sep-2009

 

Contact: Dmitry Idiatov

 

Meeting Email: dmitry.idiatov at ua.ac.be

 

 

Meeting Description:

 

A workshop at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, University of Lisbon, 9-12 September, 2009.

"Quotative markers: origins and use"

 

Linguistic Subfield: General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Typology; Descriptive Linguistics

 

 

CALL FOR PAPERS:

 

 

"Quotative markers: origins and use"

 

 

Convenors:
Dmitry Idiatov (University of Antwerp)
Hubert Cuyckens (University of Leuven)

 

Keynote speaker:

Tom Gu?ldemann (University of Zu?rich / Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig)

 

 

Quotative markers are linguistic signs conventionally signaling the presence of an adjacent representation of reported discourse, i.e. the quote. Semantically, they are largely similar to generic speech verbs, such as say and tell in English, with which they share the feature of reference to an utterance. Functionally, however, they differ from the latter in being conventionalized in relation to reported discourse. That is, either they are not used in other contexts at all or they lack (fully or partially) the feature of reference to an utterance when no representation of reported discourse is adjacent. Consider, for instance, _be like_ in English in _And he's like: "That's great!"_. Following Güldemann (2008), the quote frame based on a quotative marker or/and a speech verb is called a quotative index. Güldemann (2008) also provides a detailed classification of quotative markers. Thus, syntactically, quotative markers can be either predicative or nonpredicative elements. Morphosyntactically, predicative quotative markers may behave as regular verbs and are then classified as quotative verbs. Those predicative quotative markers that do not fully qualify for the status of verb in a given language are referred to as quotative predicators. Nonpredicative quotative markers are often referred to as quotative complementizers, especially when they are also used for purposes of clause combining.

 

Historically, quotative markers may derive from a large number of sources, such as generic speech verbs, generic verbs of equation, inchoativity, action, and motion, markers of similarity and manner, markers of focus, presentation and identification. Somewhat surprisingly, according to Güldemann (2008:295), at least in African languages, generic speech verbs appear to be "far less important" as sources of quotative markers than is usually assumed in the literature. At the same time, it is remarkable that quotative markers of various nonpredicative origins often tend to gradually acquire verbal features up to becoming full-fledged verbal lexemes through their conventionalized use as core elements of quotative indexes. In many African languages, quotative markers are also regularly employed for purposes of clause combining and extended to constructions expressing intention and various kinds of modal meanings.

 

The proposed workshop is intended to bring together scholars interested in the origins and use of quotative markers in individual languages, language families or linguistic areas from any part of the world. Particularly welcome are papers based on data from spontaneous and spoken language use and data from less documented languages. Authors are also encouraged to situate their findings in a broader cross-linguistic perspective, both as regards the known sources of quotative markers as well as their typical secondary extensions to contexts not involving instances of reported discourse in the strict sense.

References:
Güldemann, Tom. 2008. Quotative indexes in African languages: A synchronic and diachronic survey. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 34)

 

 

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE:

 

Abstracts in English are invited for 30 minute (20+10) presentations. Abstracts should not exceed 500 words (exclusive of references) and should state research questions, approach, method, data and (expected) results. The abstract should not mention the presenter(s) nor their affiliations or addresses. Abstracts are preferably in DOC or RTF format; if your abstract contains special symbols, please include a PDF version as well.

 

The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2009. Please submit your abstract to dmitry.idiatov at ua.ac.be <mailto:dmitry.idiatov at ua.ac.be>  AND the organizers of the SLE conference. As to the latter part of the submission procedure, please follow the instructions on the conference website at http://www.societaslinguistica.eu/meetings/conference%20lisboa/call%20for%20papers.htm. When submitting the title of your abstract on the conference website, please indicate between brackets (Workshop on quotative markers) after the title of your abstract.

 

 

IMPORTANT DATES:

 

31 January 2009: Deadline for submission of abstracts

 

31 March 2009: Notification of acceptance

 

1 April 2009: Early registration starts

 

1 June 2009: Registration (full fee)

 

9-12 September 2009: Conference

 



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