Call for Panel Abstracts: Elements at Right Periphery", IPRA 13, New Delhi

[Liesbeth Degand]

Abstracts are invited for a panel on**"The Pragmatic Role of Elements at 
Right Periphery" to be organized during IPra 13 in New Delhi, India, 
September 8-13, 2013.

*Conveners*:

Liesbeth Degand (University of Louvain at Louvain-la-Neuve)

Elizabeth Closs Traugott (Stanford University)

In recent years attention has begun to be paid to "right periphery" (RP) 
phenomena, as two threads of inquiry have developed: study of discourse 
structure, especially its pragmatics (starting with Schiffrin 1987), and 
syntactic cartography (starting with Cinque 1999). Compared to left 
periphery (LP) phenomena, right periphery phenomena have received little 
attention (but see Van der Wouden and Foolen 2011).

The aim of the panel is to build on and test proposals that LP and RP 
have different functions (Beeching and Detges In preparation), 
especially the proposal that the role of RP is to mark turn-yielding and 
that it is likely to be intersubjective and dialogic in the sense that 
the speaker positions their utterance against anticipated contributions 
of other speakers. This raises the question of what type of linguistic 
expressions and/or constructions may occur in right peripheral position.

The focus of the panel will be the following set of questions:

a) How can RP be defined? How should distinctions be made between 
elements within argument structure (e.g. question-markers at RP, right 
dislocations) and those "outside" it and often disjunct (e.g. pragmatic 
markers, comment clauses, tags)?

b) What sorts of functions are expressed at RP? Van der Wouden and 
Foolen (2011) find modal, focus, some connective particles, and repairs 
at RP in Dutch. Is this set language-specific or cross-linguistically 
robust for elements at RP?

c) Are any functions not expressable at LP (tags in English, Dutch 
/hoor/ 'hear' (warning or reassuring), French punctuating quoi 'what')? 
Are any LP functions not expressable at RP? What does this suggest about 
functions at LP and RP?

d) What generalizations can be made about how elements at RP arise 
historically? Does use of an expression at RP always entail 
subjectification (as defined in Traugott 2010)?

We welcome abstracts that address the questions posed for the panel from 
a range of theoretical perspectives, based on spoken and written data. 
We are particularly interested in receiving abstracts that provide 
evidence from languages of the Middle Eats and from the Indian and 
African contents, in addition to the east Asian and European languages 
that have been the focus of much recent research in pragmatics. 
Abstracts should be about 500 words long plus data examples and 
references. They should specify which of the questions a) -- d) will be 
addressed, what type of theoretical perspective will be adopted (e.g. 
discourse analytic, cartographical), and what kinds of data will be used 
(e.g., conversational (spoken), represented conversation (written), 
synchronic, diachronic).

Consistent with IPra requirements, abstracts should be sent to both 
panel organizers (Liesbeth.Degand at uclouvain.be, traugott at stanford.edu) 
*by October 15^th 2012.*

If accepted by the conveners, they will need to be submitted on-line 
individually by *November 1^st 2012*: "Though it is the panel 
organizer(s) who take(s) active responsibility for the quality of the 
contributions to their panel (i.e. they decide what is accepted), 
abstracts should, for all *_panel contributions_*, be submitted /by the 
individual contributors separately/ by the _1 November 2012_deadline 
that will be handled for individual submissions (see below)" 
(http://ipra.ua.ac.be/main.aspx?c=.CONFERENCE13&n=1443).Presenters of 
papers at IPra 13 must be members of IPra.

References

Beeching, Kate and Ulrich Detges, eds. In preparation. Papers from IPra 12,

Cinque, Giulielmo. 1999. /Adverbs and Functional Heads: A 
Cross-Linguistic Perspective./ Oxford: OUP.

Schiffrin, Deborah. 1987. /Discourse Markers/. Cambridge: CUP

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2010. Revisiting subjectification and 
intersubjectification. In Kristin Davidse, Lieven Vandelanotte & Hubert 
Cuyckens, eds., /Subjectification, Intersubjectification and 
Grammaticalization, /29-70. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Van der Wouden, Ton and Ad Foolen. 2011. Dutch particles in the right 
periphery. 
http://www.tonvanderwouden.nl/index_files/papers/fipa-2011-05b.pdf

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