Call for Papers: Workshop "Outside the clause: form and function of extra-clausal constituent"

[Evelien Keizer]

Outside the clause:

form and function of Extra-clausal constituents

Workshop: Vienna, 4-5 July 2014

 

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

 

Keynote speakers

·         Karin Aijmer (University of Gothenburg)

·         Laurel J Brinton (University of British Columbia, Vancouver)

·         Bernd Heine (University of Cologne)

 

Dates of workshop      Fr 4 July – Sat 5 July 2014

Location                       Department of English, University of Vienna,
Austria

Organisers                    Evelien Keizer, Gunther Kaltenböck, Arne
Lohmann

Conference website     <https://otc-workshop.univie.ac.at/>
https://otc-workshop.univie.ac.at/

Conference email         <mailto:otc-workshop at univie.ac.at>
otc-workshop at univie.ac.at

 

General topic

In recent years there has been increased interest in linguistic elements
which are outside ordinary sentence grammar. These elements are subsumed by
Dik (1997) under the term Extra-clausal constituents (ECCs), but have also
been referred to as supplements (Huddleston & Pullum 2002) or theticals
(Kaltenböck, Heine & Kuteva 2011). They are taken to include a variety of
different units ranging from single words to phrases and whole clauses, such
as the following: parentheticals, discourse markers, appositions,
non-restrictive relative clauses, tails and afterthoughts, insubordinate
clauses, vocatives, interjections, left-dislocands, formulae of social
exchange, etc.

What unites these elements is their syntactic independence from the
linguistic environment. This is reflected in their positional mobility with
regard to the host construction or their ability to occur as stand-alone
items. Prosodically, they tend to be set off from the rest of the utterance.
Semantically, ECCs are non-restrictive, that is their meaning is not
determined by the structure of the host clause or its constituents. Instead,
their meaning is shaped by the immediate situation of discourse, where they
play an important role in interaction management, the expression of speaker
attitude, discourse organization, etc.

As shown by numerous corpus studies, ECCs are by no means a marginal
linguistic phenomenon, but are highly frequent in occurrence, especially in
spoken language. They have also been shown to fulfil essential communicative
functions. At the same time, however, ECCs are a challenge for syntactic
modelling. Being only loosely associated with a host construction, they
cannot easily be accounted for in terms of clause-internal rules of sentence
grammar. 

Aim

The aim of the workshop is twofold: To bring together descriptions of
specific constructions used as ECCs and theoretical perspectives on how ECCs
can be accounted for in a linguistic model. The assumption is that both
theoretical and descriptive approaches will benefit from each other and are
necessary for deepening our understanding of ECCs. While trying to keep a
broad perspective, we particularly invite contributions within a
cognitive-functional framework and qualitative as well as quantitative
analyses of naturally occurring language data. The focus is on English, but
contributions comparing English with other languages are also welcome.

 

Specific topics

More specific topics to be addressed may include the following:

·         Formal properties of (specific) ECCs: their external and internal
syntax, position in the host construction, prosodic realisation

·         Functional properties and use of (specific) ECCs in language
corpora

·         The link of ECCs to their host construction and their interaction
with the level of sentence grammar

·         Criteria for determining whether a linguistic unit can be
identified as extra-clausal

·         Distinction of different subtypes

·         Historical genesis and possible developmental pathways of ECCs

·         Analysis and representation in linguistic models

 

Presentation format            

20 minute papers + 10 minutes for discussion

 

Submission of abstracts

>>From 1 October 2013 to 1 January 2014.

·         Abstracts should not exceed 400 words (exclusive of references)
and should clearly state research questions, approach, method, data and
(expected) results. 

·         Please submit as a .doc or .docx to
<mailto:otc-workshop at univie.ac.at> otc-workshop at univie.ac.at 

·         Notification of acceptance of all abstracts will be sent out by 15
February. 

 

 

Prof. Dr. M.E. Keizer

Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik /

Department of English

Universität Wien

Campus d. Universität Wien

Spitalgasse 2-4/Hof 8.3

1090 Wien

Austria

 

Homepage:  <http://anglistik.univie.ac.at/staff/keizer/>
http://anglistik.univie.ac.at/staff/keizer/