Comparing Diachronies (call for papers)

[jfleischer at access.unizh.ch]

Workshop as part of the 29th Annual Meeting of the German Society for
Linguistics (DGfS) at the University of Bamberg, Germany (27th-29th 
February, 2008)

Organizers:
Jürg Fleischer (Humboldt-University Berlin)
Horst Simon (King’s College London)

Keynote speakers:
Bernd Heine (University of Cologne)
Giuseppe Longobardi (University of Trieste)


Assessing the relative importance of internal and external factors is of 
paramount importance for any theory of language change. While it is the aim 
of the study of internal factors to identify correlations between diachronic 
developments belonging to different subsystems (e.g., loss of case 
morphology entails fixation of word order), in studying external factors one 
tries to establish the influence of language contact, normative settings, 
etc. However, explanations of actual language change phenomena often stick 
to their particular problems. Only rarely do researchers attempt at 
generalizations that go beyond individual cases. Thus, in our view one 
central question for any theory of language change is:
Couldn’t things have developed in an entirely different way?
Our workshop “Comparing Diachronies” tries to fill a gap: By comparing 
various diachronic developments we hope to identify differences and 
divergences that allow for generalizable insights with respect to the 
functioning and implementation of linguistic change.
In this perspective, research topics such as the following become 
interesting:
– In the history of English (similar in French), older tendencies to use 
verb-second were given up, whereas in German the original tendency 
eventually led to the generalization of verb-second in main clauses.
– In High German the tense system was reduced, whereas Low German reduced 
its mood system.
– Only in High German do we find affricates, a class of phonemes foreign to 
other West Germanic languages.
– In some Romance languages (e.g. Spanish), animate direct objects are 
marked with the preposition normally used with indirect objects, a 
development which is completely unknown in other Romance languages (e.g. 
French).
– Punjabi and Marathi have reduced the original Indo-Aryan ergative marking 
on some personal pronouns (Bengali and Sinhala have done so completely), 
while in other languages (e.g. Hindi/Urdu and Nepali) these pronouns have 
retained their ergative morphology.
– Some Nakh-Dagestan languages have a phoneme system with only three vowels 
(e.g. Avar dialects), whereas others display as many as 33 vowels (e.g. 
Chechen).

We invite contributions discussing language change phenomena of all 
linguistic subsystems in a comparative perspective. Papers relating to 
different dialects of a single language or to different languages of a 
larger genetic entity are as welcome as work comparing developments in 
unrelated languages. Contributions focusing on theoretical accounts or on 
modeling language change are especially encouraged.

There will be talks in 30 and 60 minute slots, including discussion time. 
Note that contributors can present only one paper at the DGfS Annual Meeting 
as a whole. Conference languages are English and German. Please send an 
anonymous abstract of max. 500 words, as a Word- or pdf- file, to

germlingconf at kcl.ac.uk

by Aug 20th, 2007.

Notification of acceptance or rejection will be sent by email in September.

For further information please contact:
Jürg Fleischer <jfleischer at staff.hu-berlin.de> or
Horst Simon <horst.simon at kcl.ac.uk>
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