From johanna.barddal at uib.no Mon Nov 8 13:03:21 2010 From: johanna.barddal at uib.no (johanna.barddal at uib.no) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 14:03:21 +0100 Subject: Last CfP: ICHL20 workshop on Reconstructing Syntax Message-ID: Last call for papers ICHL-20 in Osaka, Japan, 24-30 July 2011 Workshop title: Reconstructing Syntax URL: http://org.uib.no/iecastp/IECASTP/Workshop8.htm Organizers: Jóhanna Barðdal, University of Bergen & Spike Gildea, University of Oregon Description: Historical-comparative reconstruction has traditionally been focused on lexical, morphological and phonological comparisons, while syntactic reconstruction has either been systematically left unattended, regarded as fruitless or uninteresting, or even rebuked (cf. Watkins 1964, Jeffers 1976, Lightfoot 1979, 2006, Harrison 2003, Pires & Thomason 2008, Mengden 2008, inter alia). The reason for this is that syntactic structures have been regarded as fundamentally different from, for instance, morphological structures, in several respects. That is, syntactic structures are larger and more complex units than morphological units. Semantically they have not been regarded on par with morphological units either, in that their meaning is regarded as the sum of the meaning of the lexical parts that instantiate them, and because of this semantic compositionality they have not been regarded as being arbitrary form-meaning correspondences like words. It has also been argued in the literature that syntactic structures are not inherited in the same way as the vocabulary (Lightfoot 1979 and later work), that there is no cognate material to compare when comparing sentences across daughter languages (Jeffers 1976), there is no regularity of syntactic change, as opposed to the regularity of phonological change (Lightfoot 2002, Pirus & Thomason 2008), and that there is no arbitrariness found in syntax (Harrison 2003), all of which render syntactic reconstruction fundamentally different from phonological reconstruction. Recent work within historical-comparative syntax takes issue with this view of syntactic reconstruction (Kikusawa 2003, Harris 2008, Bauern 2008, Barðdal & Eythórsson 2009, Barðdal 2010), arguing that the concepts of "cognate status," "arbitrariness" and "regularity" are non-problematic for syntactic reconstruction. This is so, first, because cognates are also found in syntax (Kikusawa 2003, Barðdal & Eythórsson 2009, Barðdal 2010). Second, because the arbitrariness requirement is simply not needed in syntax, as it's role is first and foremost to aid in deciding on genetic relatedness, which is usually not an issue when doing syntactic reconstruction (Harrison 2003, Barðdal & Eythórsson 2009, Barðdal 2010). And, third, because a) the sound laws are only regular by definition (Hoenigswald 1978), and b) the sound laws are basically stand-ins for a similarity metric when deciding upon cognate status (Harrison 2003). It has also recently been claimed (cf. Barðdal & Eythórsson 2009, Barðdal 2010) that Construction Grammar is more easily extendible to syntactic reconstruction than other frameworks, due to the basic status of form-meaning/function pairings in that framework. This creates a natural leap from synchronic form-meaning pairings to historical reconstruction, based on form-meaning pairings. This ICHL workshop aims at accommodating contributions including, but not limited to, the following: - The fundamental issues of reconstruction in general and syntactic reconstruction in particular - Individual case studies of syntactic reconstruction from different languages and language families - A comparison of how different theoretical frameworks may contribute to syntactic reconstruction Please send your abstracts of 500 words or less to Jóhanna Barðdal (Johanna.Barddal at uib.no), no later than November 15th 2010, preferably in pdf-format. A response on abstracts will be sent out on December 15th 2010. References: Barðdal, Jóhanna. 2010. Construction-Based Historical-Comparative Reconstruction. To appear in Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar. Eds. Graeme Trousdale & Thomas Hoffmann. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barðdal, Jóhanna & Thórhallur Eythórsson. 2009. Reconstructing Syntax: Construction Grammar and the Comparative Method. To appear in Sign-Based Construction Grammar. Eds. Hans C. Boas & Ivan A. Sag. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Bowern, Claire. 2008. Syntactic Change and Syntactic Reconstruction in Generative Grammar. In Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction. Eds. Gisela Ferraresi & Maria Goldbach, 187-216. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ferraresi, Gisella & Maria Goldbach (eds.). 2008. Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Harris, Alice C. 2008. Reconstruction in Syntax: Reconstruction of Patterns. In Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction. Eds. Gisela Ferraresi & Maria Goldbach, 73-95. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Harrison, S. P. 2003. On the Limits of the Comparative Method. In The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, eds. B. D. Joseph & R. D. Janda, 343-368. Oxford: Blackwell. Hoenigswald, H. M. 1978. The Annus Mirabilis 1876 and Posterity. Transactions of the Philological Society 76(1): 17-35. Jeffers, Robert J. 1976. Syntactic Change and Syntactic Reconstruction. In Current Progress in Historical Linguistics: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Historical Linguistics, ed. William M. Christie, Jr., 1-15, Amsterdam. Kikusawa, Ritsuko. 2003. The Development of Some Indonesian Pronominal Systems. Historical Linguistics 2001: Selected Papers from the 15th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Melbourne, 13-17 August 2001, eds. Barry J. Blake, Kate Burridge & Jo Taylor, 237-268. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lightfoot, David. 1979. Principles of Diachronic Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lightfoot, David W. 2002. Myths and the Prehistory of Grammars. Journal of Linguistics 38(1): 113-136. Lightfoot, David. 2006. How New Languages Emerge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mengden, Ferdinand von. 2008. Reconstructing Complex Structures: A Typological Perspective. In Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction. Eds. Gisela Ferraresi & Maria Goldbach, 97-119. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pires, Acrisio & Sarah G. Thomason. 2008. How Much Syntactic Reconstruction is Possible? In Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction. Eds. Gisela Ferraresi & Maria Goldbach, 27-72. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Watkins, Calvert. 1964. Preliminaries to the reconstruction of Indo-European sentence structure. In Proceedings of the IX International Congress of Linguists, ed. H.G. Lunt, 1035-1045. The Hague: Mouton. -- =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ Jóhanna Barðdal Research Associate Professor Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies University of Bergen P.O. box 7805 NO-5020 Bergen Norway johanna.barddal at uib.no Phone +47-55582438 (work) Phone +47-55201117 (home) Fax +47-55589660 (work) http://org.uib.no/iecastp/barddal _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From caterina.mauri at unipv.it Mon Nov 15 21:33:25 2010 From: caterina.mauri at unipv.it (Caterina Mauri) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2010 22:33:25 +0100 Subject: International Spring School - "Europe beyond Europe: new horizons on pidgins and creoles" Message-ID: ** WE APOLOGIZE FOR CROSS-POSTING ** ------------------------- INTERNATIONAL SPRING SCHOOL 2011 "Europe beyond Europe: new horizons on pidgins and creoles" LETiSS - Center for Postgraduate Education and Research Pavia, 18-22 April 2011 DEADLINE EXTENDED !!! ------------------------- Dear list members, the Center for Postgraduate Education and Research on “Languages of Europe: Typology, History and Sociolinguistics” (LETiSS) ANNOUNCES its 2nd International Spring School on "Europe beyond Europe: new horizons on pidgins and creoles", to be held in Pavia (Italy), 18-22 April 2011. The LETISS Center has been the first center in Italy (and in Europe) specifically dedicated to the linguistic situation of Europe, approached from a variety of perspectives. More information on the aims, the research topics and the activities of the Center can be found on the website (link provided below). When and Where The Spring School will last one week, from Monday, 18 until Friday, 22 April 2011, at the IUSS Institute in Pavia (viale Lungo Ticino Sforza 56, 27100 Pavia, Italy – www.iusspavia.it). Who and What - Teachers and courses The everyday schedule, from Monday to Friday, will be as follows: 9-10.45: 1st course 11.15-13.00: 2nd course 15-16.45: 3rd course 17.15-19.15: 4th course 1st course– Margot van den Berg (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen): "Creoles at birth? The role of nativization" 2nd course– Barbara Turchetta (Università della Tuscia): "The contribution of Pidgin and Creole studies to the general theory of language change" 3rd course– Susanne Michaelis (University of Gießen/Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig): "Grammatical structures in creole language. First results from APiCS" 4th course – Bettina Migge (University College Dublin): "The Sociolinguistics and Pragmatics of Creole languages" The students 20 advanced students in linguistics and related fields will be selected by the Scientific Committee of the School. The main criterion will be the degree of relatedness/pertinence of their research interests with the topics of the School. A certificate of participation will be given to all participants. Applications *applicants must have achieved at least the B.A. + M.A. level (= a five years cycle); therefore students may be Ph.D. students, Post- docs, and young researchers; *in the CV applicants should indicate any research activities and publications that may be relevant for the admission; *applicants should also attach a short description of their past, ongoing and future research projects (up to three pages). No tuition fee is required!! LETiSS will even cover attendants’ accommodation expenses! Important dates - 10th December: application deadline. At this stage, the CV + short description of the research projects must be attached (please write an e-mail to: letiss at iusspavia.it or emanuele.miola at unipv.it). - 15th December: applicants who have been accepted will receive a communication with all relevant information Contacts Organizers: Caterina Mauri, Emanuele Miola, Paolo Ramat, Andrea Sansò. Please send your application and any questions to: letiss at iusspavia.it or emanuele.miola at unipv.it LETiSS website: www.iusspavia.it/eng/LETiSS LETiSS Spring School 2011 website: http://www.iusspavia.it/eng/LETiSS.springschool -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From Robert.Mailhammer at asu.edu Tue Nov 16 03:32:53 2010 From: Robert.Mailhammer at asu.edu (Robert Mailhammer) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2010 20:32:53 -0700 Subject: Call for papers, session at ICHL 20 Message-ID: Dear HISTLING, would you be able to post the attached call for papers for a session at ICHL 20? Please let us know if you've any questions. Thank you very much Best, Rob Robert Mailhammer Assistant Professor Department of English Arizona State University P.O. Box 870302 Tempe, AZ 85287-0302 Phone: +1 480 727-9131 Fax: +1 480-965-3451 E-Mail: Robert.Mailhammer at asu.edu https://webapp4.asu.edu/directory/person/1638174 http://lrz-muenchen.de/~mailhammer -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Call for papers_ICHL 20_session.doc Type: application/msword Size: 31744 bytes Desc: Call for papers_ICHL 20_session.doc URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From werner_abraham at t-online.de Tue Nov 16 07:00:21 2010 From: werner_abraham at t-online.de (Werner Abraham) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:00:21 +0100 Subject: call for papers Message-ID: Dear Histling: Please make this call available to your listees. Thanks! Werner Abraham -- **************************** Prof.Dr. Werner Abraham Universität Wien 1090, Sensengasse 3a Allg. Sprachwissenschaft Studies in Language/LA/SLCS/SDG http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_series_list.cgi?t=b www.stauffenburg.de http://www.let.rug.nl/abraham/ home: Lindwurmstrasse 120c, D-80337 München werner.abraham at lmu.de -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Workshop proposal SLE 2011.doc Type: application/octet-stream Size: 62976 bytes Desc: URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From silvia.luraghi at unipv.it Tue Nov 16 09:46:35 2010 From: silvia.luraghi at unipv.it (Silvia Luraghi) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 10:46:35 +0100 Subject: WORKSHOP AT ICHL 20 - The Diachrony of Referential Null Arguments - Final Call In-Reply-To: Message-ID: We are glad to announce that our workshop proposal for a workshop on: The diachrony of referential null arguments has been accepted! The workshop will take place at: 20 International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Osaka 25-30 July 2011 (see http://www.ichl2011.com ) We received about ten abstracts and have some space for a couple of other talks. We would like to call attention especially on the diachrony of referential null objects in non-IE languages, so we encourage submission by colleagues who work on this or related topics. The deadline for final submission is 15 January 2011 abstract must be submitted directly to the ICHL: http://www.ichl2011.com/call_for_papers.html Workshop description Definite referential null arguments are apparently one of the distinctive features of non-configurational languages, see Baker (2001). Even though descriptions are available for various genetically unrelated languages, there are little if any accounts of their diachrony. Our workshop aims to bring together scholars working on different language families and on typologically different languages who are interested in diachronic changes concerning the creation or disappearance of null arguments, with a focus on null objects or other types of null arguments not coreferenced on the verb. The rise of null objects deserves further investigation. Null objects can be the result of incorporation, wherebt object clitics become verb affixes (Baker 2001). Related to incorporation is the Hungarian objective conjugation, whose rise is also a possible topic of discussion. The occurrence of definite referential null objects has been observed in many ancient Indo-European languages. In spite of this, and in spite of the long documented history of these languages, even in their case historical accounts are limited, as are detailed studies of the conditions licensing null objects (Schäufele 1990 on Sanskrit; several studies have been devoted to null objects in Old Icelandic, Sigurðsson 1993). At least in Latin and possibly in Greek, null objects seem to be obligatory in coordinated sentences, unless emphasis or disambiguation are involved (this is possibly a common phenomenon connected to coordination reduction and frequent in non-Indo-European languages as well, Luraghi 2004), as well as in answers to yes/no questions (van der Wurff 1997). Descriptions of increasing use of over objects in Latin and Germanic point to increasing transitivity or emerging configurationality. Papers presented at the workshop should aim to assess: a) the relation between null objects and other parameters of configurationality; b) the relation of null objects to other null argument, in particular to null subjects; c) the relation between null objects and the parameter of head/dependent marking (Baker 2001); d) null objects and the grammaticalization of valency; e) incorporation and the rise of null objects. Papers should have a diachronic orientation; research based on extensive corpora and quantitative approaches to language change are especially encouraged. References Baker, Mark (2001), ‘Configurationality and polysynthesis’, in M. Haspelmath, E. König, W. Oesterreicher, W. Raible (eds.), Language Typology and Language Universals . An International Handbook. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, vol. 2, pp. 1433-41. Luraghi, Silvia 2004, ‘Null Objects in Latin and Greek and the Relevance of Linguistic Typology for Language Reconstruction’, in Proceedings of the 15th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, JIES Monograph 49, pp.234-256. Schäufele, Steven (1990), Free Word-Order Syntax: the Challenge from Vedic Sanskrit to Contemporary Formal Syntactic Theory. Ph. D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sigurðsson, Halldór A. (1993), ‘Argument-drop in Old Islandic’. Lingua 89, 247-280. Wurff, Wim van der, 1994. “Null objects and learnability: The case of Latin”, Working Papers of Holland Institute for Generative Linguistics 1/4. >We look forward to seeing you in Osaka! Silvia Luraghi and Dag Haug Silvia Luraghi Dipartimento di Linguistica Teorica e Applicata Università di Pavia Strada Nuova 65 I-27100 Pavia telef.: +39-0382-984685 fax: +39-0382-984487 silvia.luraghi at unipv.it http://lettere.unipv.it/diplinguistica/docenti.php?&id=68 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From crm5 at rice.edu Tue Nov 16 15:44:25 2010 From: crm5 at rice.edu (crm5 at rice.edu) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 09:44:25 -0600 Subject: FINAL CALL: Rice Working Papers in Linguistics Vol 3. **New deadline: Nov. 30, 2010** Message-ID: Rice Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 3 EXTENDED DEADLINE: **November 30th, 2010** The Rice Linguistics Society (RLS) solicits submissions from all subfields of linguistics (with the exception of ESL/TESOL and related areas of applied linguistics) for publication in the Rice Working Papers in Linguistics. Students and post-docs are strongly encouraged to submit. We especially welcome submissions in line with our department's focus on functional, usage-based approaches to language study using empirical data, including but not limited to the following: -cognitive/functional linguistics -typology and language universals -field studies in less commonly researched languages -sociolinguistics, including sociophonetics -phonetics and speech processing -laboratory phonology -forensic linguistics -corpus linguistics -discourse -neurolinguistics -psycholinguistics and language processing -language change and grammaticalization Submitted papers must meet the following minimum style requirements: -recommended length 15-25 pages (normally 5000-8000 words); significantly longer or shorter papers will be considered on a case-by-base basis (contact the editorial board) -For comprehensive details on format (such as font, margins, examples, references, etc.) please refer to the RWPL template available on the Style sheet link at http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~rls/files/Style_Sheet.dot -submit an abstract (maximum 500 words), including 3-5 keywords, as a separate Word file -submit two copies (in addition to your abstract): (1) one copy in Word (2003 or 2007) (2) in addition to the Word submission, you must send a PDF version to ensure fonts are preserved RLS accepts only electronic submissions for the working papers. These must be sent to rwpl at rice.edu, and the body of the e-mail should include: -title of paper -name of author(s) -affiliation -address -phone number -contact e-mail address The EXTENDED DEADLINE for receipt of submissions is **November 30th, 2010**. Questions regarding the submissions process or style requirements may be addressed to the editorial board at rwpl at rice.edu. Carlos Molina-Vital RWPL-EIC _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From nlavidas at enl.auth.gr Tue Nov 16 16:05:39 2010 From: nlavidas at enl.auth.gr (Nikolaos Lavidas) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 18:05:39 +0200 Subject: PIE Syntax - Call for Papers Message-ID: Dear Histling, please make this call available to your listees. Thanks a lot! Nikolaos Lavidas -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: PIE Syntax.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 37147 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From claire.bowern at yale.edu Tue Nov 16 21:10:49 2010 From: claire.bowern at yale.edu (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:10:49 -0500 Subject: note regarding attachments Message-ID: Hi everyone, just a quick note with my moderator's hat on about list attachments. They are currently enabled, but I would like to discourage their use, since they are a good way to spread viruses. More importantly, they are also not searchable in the list archives. Pasting the text of announcements into the body of an email is a better way to go. Thanks! Claire ----- Claire Bowern Associate Professor Department of Linguistics Yale University 370 Temple St New Haven, CT 06511 North American Dialects survey: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~clb3/NorthAmericanDialects/ _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From honohiiri at yandex.ru Fri Nov 19 17:20:58 2010 From: honohiiri at yandex.ru (Idiatov Dmitry) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2010 20:20:58 +0300 Subject: Call for Papers (ICHL20): Stability & borrowability of interrogative pronominals Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS FOR A WORKSHOP AT ICHL 20 Workshop title: Stability and borrowability of interrogative pronominals Conference: 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Osaka, Japan, July 25-30, 2011 (http://www.ichl2011.com) Organizer: Dmitry Idiatov (LLACAN-CNRS, Paris) Contact: idiatov at vjf.cnrs.fr Invited speaker: Yaron Matras (University of Manchester) Deadline for abstract submission: January 15, 2011 Abstracts of no more than 300 words, including literature references, should be submitted through the conference website (http://www.ichl2011.com/call_for_papers.html). Please remember to indicate the workshop title in the appropriate place on the abstract submission form. Description: Interrogative pronominals, such as English who? and what?, are usually considered to be among the most change-proof elements in any language. They are believed to be highly resistant to both replacement through borrowing (Haspelmath & Tadmor 2009, Matras 2009:199) and language-internal renewal (Haspelmath 1997:176). In this respect, they strongly resemble personal pronominals. The two kinds of pronominals are also often perceived as good indicators of (long-range) genetic relationships and are regularly included in basic vocabulary lists. However, the view of personal pronominals as highly resistant to borrowing is not uncontroversial (cf. Wallace 1983, Thomason & Everett 2005, Matras 2009:203-208, Law 2009). It has also long been observed that reconstruction of personal pronominals tends to be fraught with difficulties due to their typically short forms and their tendency to undergo irregular changes, such as sound changes specific to them, various kinds of analogical changes and amalgamation with other elements. The workshop aims at assessing the claims on the universality of the extremely slow rate of change and high resistance to borrowing with respect to interrogative pronominals. Particularly welcome are papers on examples of fast changes of interrogative pronominals in families and subgroups, on examples of their borrowing and on the kinds of irregular changes affecting interrogative pronominals. Haspelmath, Martin. 1997. Indefinite pronouns. Oxford: Clarendon. Haspelmath, Martin & Uri Tadmor (eds.). 2009. Loanwords in the world’s languages: a comparative handbook. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Law, Danny. 2009. Pronominal borrowing among the Maya. Diachronica 26(2). 214-252. Matras, Yaron. 2009. Language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomason, Sarah G. & Daniel L. Everett. 2005. Pronoun borrowing. Berkeley Linguistic Society 27. 301-315. Wallace, Stephen. 1983. Pronouns in contact. In Frederic B. Agard, Gerald Kelley, Adam Makkai & Valerie Becker Makkai (eds.), Essays in honor of Charles F. Hockett, 573-589. Leiden: Brill. _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From johncharles.smith at stcatz.ox.ac.uk Mon Nov 22 12:32:30 2010 From: johncharles.smith at stcatz.ox.ac.uk (John Charles Smith) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2010 12:32:30 +0000 Subject: =?windows-1252?Q?=91The_Role_of_Autonomous_Morphology_in_Language_Chan?= =?windows-1252?Q?ge=92_?= (Workshop, ICHL XX, Osaka, July 2011) Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, We (Martin Maiden and John Charles Smith) are organizing a Workshop on ‘The Role of Autonomous Morphology in Language Change’ at the Twentieth International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL XX), to be held in Osaka between 25 and 30 July 2011. Several papers have already been promised; but we would clearly like to open the Workshop to as many interested colleagues as possible, hence this announcement to the HistLing List. If you want to submit an abstract for consideration, please do so by 15 January 2011, using the on-line submission form at www.ichl2011.com and specifying that you wish your abstract to be considered for presentation at the Workshop. If your abstract is not accepted for the Workshop, it will still be considered for inclusion in the general conference sessions. A brief description of the background to the Workshop and the issues we aim to discuss is appended at the end of this posting. If you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to contact the organizers: martin.maiden [at] mod-langs.ox.ac.uk johncharles.smith [at] stcatz.ox.ac.uk With all good wishes, John Charles Smith Martin Maiden -- John Charles Smith Official Fellow and Tutor, St Catherine's College, Oxford, OX1 3UJ, UK Deputy Director, Research Centre for Romance Linguistics, University of Oxford tel. +44 1865 271700 (College) / 271748 (direct) / 271768 (fax) ____________________________________________________ Mark Aronoff’s seminal work Morphology By Itself (1994) brought analytical rigour to the identification of a class of phenomena of which many linguists — and perhaps especially historical linguists working on the inflectional morphology of ‘fusional’ languages — already sensed the existence. Some aspects of morphology are demonstrably autonomous in that they are not (synchronically) determined by any phonological, syntactic or semantic factor. They pertain, that is, to a ‘morphomic level’ located between phonology and syntax yet independent of either. Among Aronoff’s most striking illustrations were the so-called Latin ‘third stem’ (an irreducibly heterogeneous set of paradigm cells within the inflectional paradigm of the Latin verb always shares the same stem-shape, regardless of the phonological identity of the stem) and the English ‘past participle’ (again, both phonologically and functionally heterogeneous). In the conclusion to his book, Aronoff called for linguists to begin a wider search for morphomic phenomena among the world’s languages, and evidence that they exist in many languages (at least of the ‘fusional’ type) emerges in, for example, Nübling (2000), Stump (2001:169-211), Baerman et al. (2005:183-86). Most work on ‘morphology by itself’ has had a synchronic perspective. However, in a series of studies dealing with the historical development of Romance languages, Maiden (e.g., 2005, 2009a,b) identifies a number of ‘morphomic’ phenomena within inflectional morphology whose significance is twofold. • First, they provide powerful evidence in favour of the psychological reality of apparently morphomic phenomena. To the extent that Aronoff’s prime examples are synchronic, they are liable to the accusation that they are the historically accidental remnants of some earlier état de langue in which the alleged ‘morphome’ was still extramorphologically motivated, and that the survival of such remnants is a matter simply of ‘inertia’, their distributional regularities not necessarily being ‘psychologically real’ to speakers. Maiden’s diachronic examples involve morphological changes which are argued to presuppose speakers’ awareness of ‘morphomic’ distributional patterns. • Second, not only do the Romance examples provide valuable diagnostics for the existence of morphomes, but they in turn suggest that the replication of morphomic structure is a powerful driver of inflectional morphological change. Indeed, a good deal of the Romance evidence suggests that speakers have no particular preference for clearly extramorphologically motivated patterns of allomorphy over morphomic ones. The study of the diachrony of autonomous morphological phenomena raises some major questions which deserve exploration and explanation across a wide range of languages, and we suggest that among the issues which might be addressed are: • How can we be sure that allegedly morphomic phenomena in diachrony are genuinely such? This issue is particularly important if, precisely, diachrony is used as a diagnostic of ‘morphomehood’. The vestigial persistence of the original extramorphological conditioning often leads linguists to deny the ‘morphomic’ status of certain phenomena. • In what ways do morphomes emerge diachronically? Common scenarios seem to be the continuing effects of defunct sound change, and functional splits, but can other factors be involved, such as language contact, or the effects of frequency in the lexical diffusion of morphological change? • How and why does autonomously morphological structure persist diachronically? This question is tantamount to asking why morphomes exist at all. One possible conclusion is that the maintenance and reinforcement of morphomic patterns over time simply serves to make the relationship between lexemes and their form paradigms maximally predictable. • How and why do morphomes die out? The question is closely related in its implications to the foregoing. There is some evidence that morphomes ‘die’ not necessarily because speakers seek to ‘realign’ them with extramorphological properties, but through the destructive effects of sound change. The death of one morphome often involves the birth of another, rather than greater transparency in the form-meaning relationship. • Is there a discrete boundary between the autonomously morphological and the extramorphologically motivated? The question may seem to imply a contradiction, but evidence has recently emerged from the history of Romance languages for changes which seem inexplicable unless we admit an autonomously morphological motivation ‘abetted’, but underdetermined, by extramorphological factors such as phonological environment. • Can morphomes be sociolinguistically variable? There is evidence emerging (see Smith forthcoming) that morphomes, just like syntactic, phonological, semantic and lexical, phenomena, may be subject to sociolinguistic variation. Scholarly interest in issues of autonomous morphology can be seen in the recent (October 2010) conference in Coimbra on ‘Perspectives on the Morphome’, and the two recent workshops (2008 and 2010) in Oxford on ‘Autonomous Morphology in Diachrony’. The focus of the Coimbra gathering was principally synchronic, while the Oxford meetings have been almost exclusively concerned with Romance languages and attended almost exclusively by Romanists. The time is clearly ripe for a broad cross-linguistic, diachronically orientated, discussion of the place of autonomous morphology in diachrony, and of the relevance of diachrony for our understanding of morphomic phenomena generally. This is what we seek to achieve in the proposed Workshop. References Aronoff, Mark. 1994. Morphology By Itself. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Baerman, Matthew, Dunstan Brown & Greville Corbett. 2005. The Syntax-Morphology Interface. A study of syncretism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maiden, Martin. 2005. ‘Morphological autonomy and diachrony’, Yearbook of Morphology 2004, 137-75. Maiden, Martin. 2009a. ‘From pure phonology to pure morphology. The reshaping of the Romance verb’. Recherches linguistiques de Vincennes 38:45-82. Maiden, Martin. 2009b. ‘Where does heteroclisis come from? Evidence from Romanian dialects’. Morphology 19:59-86. Nübling, Damaris. 2000. Prinzipien der Irregularisierung. Eine kontrastive Analyse von zehn Verben in zehn germanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Smith, John Charles. Forthcoming. ‘Variable analyses of a verbal inflection in (mainly) Canadian French’, in Maria Goldbach, Marc-Olivier Hinzelin, Martin Maiden & John Charles Smith (eds.). Morphological Autonomy: perspectives from Romance inflectional morphology. Oxford: Oxford Unversity Press. Stump, Gregory. 2001. Inflectional morphology. A theory of paradigm structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen at manchester.ac.uk Mon Nov 22 13:11:14 2010 From: Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen at manchester.ac.uk (Maj-Britt Hansen) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2010 13:11:14 +0000 Subject: ICHL 2011 - Workshop on The Diachrony of Negation Message-ID: 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Osaka, 2011 Workshop proposal: The Diachrony of Negation Organizers: Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen & Jacqueline Visconti This workshop aims to bring together scholars working on the genesis and evolution of negative constructions in a wide spectrum of both related and unrelated languages. The adoption of different theoretical and methodological approaches, both functional and formal, will provide new insights into the nature and function of negation, which will be investigated from a variety of mutually complementary angles. The workshop is expected to make a significant contribution to current theorizing on (i) the typology, structure, and development of negative constructions; (ii) the nature of "Jespersen Cycle", a well-known and cross-linguistically instantiated pattern whereby elements that were introduced into negative clauses to reinforce negation are reanalysed as negative markers; (iii) the different pace and form of grammaticalization of negative markers in closely related languages; (iv) the role of language contact in negation renewal phenomena; (v) the nature and causes of grammatical change/models of language change in general. References: * Breitbarth, A., C. Lucas, D. Willis, eds. 2011. The development of negation. The languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, vols. I-II. Oxford: OUP. * van Gelderen, E., ed. 2009. Cyclical change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. * Ingham, R. & P. Larrivée, eds. Fc. Cycles of grammaticalization. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. * Jespersen, O. 1917. Negation in English and other languages. Copenhagen: Høst og Søn. Prospective participants (**Additional contributors are welcome!**): * Theresa Biberauer (confirmed): TBA * Anne Breitbarth (confirmed): The Quantifier Cycle in Low German from a cross-linguistic perspective * Viviane Déprez & Sabine Ploux (to be confirmed): Historical evolution of semantic networks: the case of French negative terms, a computational approach. * Richard Ingham (confirmed): Split-scope readings and the syntax of NegP in Late Middle English. * Agnes Jäger (to be confirmed): TBA * Pierre Larrivee (confirmed): Sociolinguistic pressures on language evolution - the case of negative doubling in French * France Martineau (confirmed): Ne-deletion in French * Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen (confirmed): TBA * Ian Roberts (confirmed): TBA * Scott Schwenter (to be confirmed): TBA * Johan van der Auwera & Lauren van Alsenoy (confirmed): On negative indefinites. * Johan van der Auwera & Frens Vossen (confirmed): On sentence negation * Jacqueline Visconti (confirmed): TBA * David Willis (confirmed): TBA * Phillip Wallage (confirmed): Quantitative evidence for the role of information structure in the Middle English Jespersen Cycle __________________________________________________________ Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen Professor of French Language and Linguistics School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, The University of Manchester Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom Tel.: +44(0)161 306-1733 Web site: http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/french/staff/maj-britt-mosegaard-hansen/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From evie.cousse at ugent.be Tue Nov 23 10:06:10 2010 From: evie.cousse at ugent.be (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Evie_Couss=E9?=) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:06:10 +0100 Subject: Call for papers: workshop "Usage-based approaches to language change" - ICHL 2011 Message-ID: Call for papers for the workshop "Usage-based approaches to language change" at ICHL 2011 in Osaka (Japan). Conveners: Evie Coussé (Ghent University, Belgium) and Ferdinand von Mengden (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) Workshop description Most approaches to language (change) have principally in common that they locate the main explanandum of language in the human mind and that they operate with categories. Change is, implicitly or explicitly, seen as a shift of a linguistic form from one category to another ? whether across discrete or fuzzy boundaries. A well-know example of this view is the importance of reanalysis in explaining language change in mainstream historical linguistics. Reanalysis is considered to be the underlying mechanism that motivates changing patterns in usage such as contextual extension and increasing generalization / abstraction in meaning. However, alternative views have also been expressed, in which linguistic structure is seen as subject to constant negotiation in communication. Hopper?s (1998) Emergent Grammar or Keller?s (1994) Invisible Hand are prominent examples. Without denying the share that cognition has in the production of utterances and the usefulness of categories for linguistic description, structure is seen as epiphenomenal in these approaches. Structure is in a constant flux across time, area and social strata and, therefore, language use or actual communication are the loci of structure formation and hence of change. In line with this usage-based perspective of language and language change, an alternative for reanalysis has been proposed in which (changing) discourse patterns are directly related to meaning without referring to changes in abstract structures (e.g. Bybee e.a 1994, Haspelmath 1998, De Smet 2009). However, a larger coherent vision of the relation between language usage and language change is still largely missing. The workshop aims at discussing possibilities for such a usage-based framework on language change. We wish to combine case studies with theoretical contributions that help setting up a comprehensive model on language change, in which language use is in the focus and in which the core properties of language are seen in its dynamics rather than in its states. Call for papers As the workshop has been approved and accepted by the conference organizers of ICHL 2011, a call for papers is launched for interested speakers. Abstracts of no more than 300 words, including literature references, should be submitted through the conference website ( http://www.ichl2011.com/call_for_papers.html). Please remember to indicate the workshop title in the appropriate place on the abstract submission form. Please note that also potential speakers that have reacted positively to the initial call for participation in October 2010 are required to send a full abstract through the conference website. Important deadlines: 15 January 2011: abstract submission deadline 28 January 2011: notification of acceptance References Bybee, J., R. Perkins & W. Pagliuca (1994) The evolution of grammar. Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. De Smet, H. (2009) Analysing reanalysis. In: Lingua 119, 1728-1755. Haspelmath, M. (1998) Does grammaticalization need reanalysis? In: Studies in Language 22, 315-351. Hopper, P.J. (1998) Emergent grammar. In: M. Tomasello (ed.) The new psychology of grammar: cognitive and functional approaches to language structure. Mahwah: Erlbaum: 155-176. Keller, R. (1994) On language change. The invisible hand in language. London: Routlegde. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From Freek.VanDeVelde at arts.kuleuven.be Tue Nov 23 13:36:00 2010 From: Freek.VanDeVelde at arts.kuleuven.be (Freek Van de Velde) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:36:00 +0100 Subject: call for papers: workshop on exaptation (ICHL 20 Japan) Message-ID: This is a call for papers for a workshop on the topic of 'exaptation' (in short, the process of recycling morphology, see Lass, R. 1990. How to do things with junk: exaptation in language evolution. Journal of Linguistics 26: 79-102), hosted by Muriel Norde (University of Groningen) and Freek Van de Velde (University of Leuven) at the ICHL-20 conference in Osaka. A detailed description of the workshop can be found here: http://www.ichl2011.com/pdf/Workshop_A0020.pdf. We have quite a number of participants already, but we want to give people interested a chance to join the workshop. Abstracts should be sent via the ICHL website before January 15. If we can't accommodate your abstract in the workshop itself, it may still be accepted for the general session at the conference. Looking forward to seeing you in Osaka. Freek Van de Velde Postdoctoral research fellow Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), University of Leuven Fac. of Arts, Dept. of Linguistics Blijde Inkomststraat 21, P.O. Box 3308 BE-3000 Leuven Tel. 0032 16 32 47 81 Fax 0032 16 32 47 67 Dutch website: http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/nedling/fvandevelde/ English webiste: http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/nedling_e/fvandevelde/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From wvdbussc at vub.ac.be Fri Nov 26 15:16:29 2010 From: wvdbussc at vub.ac.be (Wim Vandenbussche) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2010 16:16:29 +0100 Subject: 2 vacancies for PhD students in Brussels Message-ID: *apologies for cross-postings* *please forward to potentially interested students/colleagues* The Centre for Linguistics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) currently has two vacancies for PhD research on 'Foundations for a European social history of language: Language planning in Europe during the long 19th century (1794-1914).' The project is part of ongoing historical-sociolinguistic research at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel on language and society during the long 19th century. Full details about the project can be found at the following web page: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~wvdbussc/vacancy.html The successful candidates should hold a Master's degree in philology/ linguistics but candidates from other disciplines with a strong interest in social history and sociolinguistics are welcome to apply. Knowledge of Dutch is not essential but willingness to acquire basic Dutch language skills during the project is a plus. Candidates should be aware that the research will encompass a strong comparative dimension (for example by integrating separate national case-studies on language planning in a larger European context, or by analysing crucial factors in various types of language policy across Europe at the time). The candidates are expected to conduct research that will lead to a finished PhD dissertation after 4 years. The successful candidates will in principle be based in Brussels but collaboration with a foreign research institute can be considered. Interested candidates can send a CV, a short text explaining their intended approach to the project and a copy of their Master's thesis to prof. dr. Wim Vandenbussche Vrije Universiteit Brussel Centrum voor linguïstiek Pleinlaan 2 1050 Brussel (Belgium) email: wvdbussc at vub.ac.be All queries regarding the vacancies and the project can be sent to that same address. We offer a full PhD scholarship (for 4 years in principle, renewable every year); in addition, travel/project expenses can be covered. The positions are vacant as of January 1st or February 1st, 2011. Please respond before December 10th, 2010. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From johanna.barddal at uib.no Mon Nov 8 13:03:21 2010 From: johanna.barddal at uib.no (johanna.barddal at uib.no) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 14:03:21 +0100 Subject: Last CfP: ICHL20 workshop on Reconstructing Syntax Message-ID: Last call for papers ICHL-20 in Osaka, Japan, 24-30 July 2011 Workshop title: Reconstructing Syntax URL: http://org.uib.no/iecastp/IECASTP/Workshop8.htm Organizers: J?hanna Bar?dal, University of Bergen & Spike Gildea, University of Oregon Description: Historical-comparative reconstruction has traditionally been focused on lexical, morphological and phonological comparisons, while syntactic reconstruction has either been systematically left unattended, regarded as fruitless or uninteresting, or even rebuked (cf. Watkins 1964, Jeffers 1976, Lightfoot 1979, 2006, Harrison 2003, Pires & Thomason 2008, Mengden 2008, inter alia). The reason for this is that syntactic structures have been regarded as fundamentally different from, for instance, morphological structures, in several respects. That is, syntactic structures are larger and more complex units than morphological units. Semantically they have not been regarded on par with morphological units either, in that their meaning is regarded as the sum of the meaning of the lexical parts that instantiate them, and because of this semantic compositionality they have not been regarded as being arbitrary form-meaning correspondences like words. It has also been argued in the literature that syntactic structures are not inherited in the same way as the vocabulary (Lightfoot 1979 and later work), that there is no cognate material to compare when comparing sentences across daughter languages (Jeffers 1976), there is no regularity of syntactic change, as opposed to the regularity of phonological change (Lightfoot 2002, Pirus & Thomason 2008), and that there is no arbitrariness found in syntax (Harrison 2003), all of which render syntactic reconstruction fundamentally different from phonological reconstruction. Recent work within historical-comparative syntax takes issue with this view of syntactic reconstruction (Kikusawa 2003, Harris 2008, Bauern 2008, Bar?dal & Eyth?rsson 2009, Bar?dal 2010), arguing that the concepts of "cognate status," "arbitrariness" and "regularity" are non-problematic for syntactic reconstruction. This is so, first, because cognates are also found in syntax (Kikusawa 2003, Bar?dal & Eyth?rsson 2009, Bar?dal 2010). Second, because the arbitrariness requirement is simply not needed in syntax, as it's role is first and foremost to aid in deciding on genetic relatedness, which is usually not an issue when doing syntactic reconstruction (Harrison 2003, Bar?dal & Eyth?rsson 2009, Bar?dal 2010). And, third, because a) the sound laws are only regular by definition (Hoenigswald 1978), and b) the sound laws are basically stand-ins for a similarity metric when deciding upon cognate status (Harrison 2003). It has also recently been claimed (cf. Bar?dal & Eyth?rsson 2009, Bar?dal 2010) that Construction Grammar is more easily extendible to syntactic reconstruction than other frameworks, due to the basic status of form-meaning/function pairings in that framework. This creates a natural leap from synchronic form-meaning pairings to historical reconstruction, based on form-meaning pairings. This ICHL workshop aims at accommodating contributions including, but not limited to, the following: - The fundamental issues of reconstruction in general and syntactic reconstruction in particular - Individual case studies of syntactic reconstruction from different languages and language families - A comparison of how different theoretical frameworks may contribute to syntactic reconstruction Please send your abstracts of 500 words or less to J?hanna Bar?dal (Johanna.Barddal at uib.no), no later than November 15th 2010, preferably in pdf-format. A response on abstracts will be sent out on December 15th 2010. References: Bar?dal, J?hanna. 2010. Construction-Based Historical-Comparative Reconstruction. To appear in Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar. Eds. Graeme Trousdale & Thomas Hoffmann. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bar?dal, J?hanna & Th?rhallur Eyth?rsson. 2009. Reconstructing Syntax: Construction Grammar and the Comparative Method. To appear in Sign-Based Construction Grammar. Eds. Hans C. Boas & Ivan A. Sag. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Bowern, Claire. 2008. Syntactic Change and Syntactic Reconstruction in Generative Grammar. In Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction. Eds. Gisela Ferraresi & Maria Goldbach, 187-216. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ferraresi, Gisella & Maria Goldbach (eds.). 2008. Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Harris, Alice C. 2008. Reconstruction in Syntax: Reconstruction of Patterns. In Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction. Eds. Gisela Ferraresi & Maria Goldbach, 73-95. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Harrison, S. P. 2003. On the Limits of the Comparative Method. In The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, eds. B. D. Joseph & R. D. Janda, 343-368. Oxford: Blackwell. Hoenigswald, H. M. 1978. The Annus Mirabilis 1876 and Posterity. Transactions of the Philological Society 76(1): 17-35. Jeffers, Robert J. 1976. Syntactic Change and Syntactic Reconstruction. In Current Progress in Historical Linguistics: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Historical Linguistics, ed. William M. Christie, Jr., 1-15, Amsterdam. Kikusawa, Ritsuko. 2003. The Development of Some Indonesian Pronominal Systems. Historical Linguistics 2001: Selected Papers from the 15th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Melbourne, 13-17 August 2001, eds. Barry J. Blake, Kate Burridge & Jo Taylor, 237-268. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lightfoot, David. 1979. Principles of Diachronic Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lightfoot, David W. 2002. Myths and the Prehistory of Grammars. Journal of Linguistics 38(1): 113-136. Lightfoot, David. 2006. How New Languages Emerge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mengden, Ferdinand von. 2008. Reconstructing Complex Structures: A Typological Perspective. In Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction. Eds. Gisela Ferraresi & Maria Goldbach, 97-119. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pires, Acrisio & Sarah G. Thomason. 2008. How Much Syntactic Reconstruction is Possible? In Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction. Eds. Gisela Ferraresi & Maria Goldbach, 27-72. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Watkins, Calvert. 1964. Preliminaries to the reconstruction of Indo-European sentence structure. In Proceedings of the IX International Congress of Linguists, ed. H.G. Lunt, 1035-1045. The Hague: Mouton. -- =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ J?hanna Bar?dal Research Associate Professor Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies University of Bergen P.O. box 7805 NO-5020 Bergen Norway johanna.barddal at uib.no Phone +47-55582438 (work) Phone +47-55201117 (home) Fax +47-55589660 (work) http://org.uib.no/iecastp/barddal _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From caterina.mauri at unipv.it Mon Nov 15 21:33:25 2010 From: caterina.mauri at unipv.it (Caterina Mauri) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2010 22:33:25 +0100 Subject: International Spring School - "Europe beyond Europe: new horizons on pidgins and creoles" Message-ID: ** WE APOLOGIZE FOR CROSS-POSTING ** ------------------------- INTERNATIONAL SPRING SCHOOL 2011 "Europe beyond Europe: new horizons on pidgins and creoles" LETiSS - Center for Postgraduate Education and Research Pavia, 18-22 April 2011 DEADLINE EXTENDED !!! ------------------------- Dear list members, the Center for Postgraduate Education and Research on ?Languages of Europe: Typology, History and Sociolinguistics? (LETiSS) ANNOUNCES its 2nd International Spring School on "Europe beyond Europe: new horizons on pidgins and creoles", to be held in Pavia (Italy), 18-22 April 2011. The LETISS Center has been the first center in Italy (and in Europe) specifically dedicated to the linguistic situation of Europe, approached from a variety of perspectives. More information on the aims, the research topics and the activities of the Center can be found on the website (link provided below). When and Where The Spring School will last one week, from Monday, 18 until Friday, 22 April 2011, at the IUSS Institute in Pavia (viale Lungo Ticino Sforza 56, 27100 Pavia, Italy ? www.iusspavia.it). Who and What - Teachers and courses The everyday schedule, from Monday to Friday, will be as follows: 9-10.45: 1st course 11.15-13.00: 2nd course 15-16.45: 3rd course 17.15-19.15: 4th course 1st course? Margot van den Berg (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen): "Creoles at birth? The role of nativization" 2nd course? Barbara Turchetta (Universit? della Tuscia): "The contribution of Pidgin and Creole studies to the general theory of language change" 3rd course? Susanne Michaelis (University of Gie?en/Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig): "Grammatical structures in creole language. First results from APiCS" 4th course ? Bettina Migge (University College Dublin): "The Sociolinguistics and Pragmatics of Creole languages" The students 20 advanced students in linguistics and related fields will be selected by the Scientific Committee of the School. The main criterion will be the degree of relatedness/pertinence of their research interests with the topics of the School. A certificate of participation will be given to all participants. Applications *applicants must have achieved at least the B.A. + M.A. level (= a five years cycle); therefore students may be Ph.D. students, Post- docs, and young researchers; *in the CV applicants should indicate any research activities and publications that may be relevant for the admission; *applicants should also attach a short description of their past, ongoing and future research projects (up to three pages). No tuition fee is required!! LETiSS will even cover attendants? accommodation expenses! Important dates - 10th December: application deadline. At this stage, the CV + short description of the research projects must be attached (please write an e-mail to: letiss at iusspavia.it or emanuele.miola at unipv.it). - 15th December: applicants who have been accepted will receive a communication with all relevant information Contacts Organizers: Caterina Mauri, Emanuele Miola, Paolo Ramat, Andrea Sans?. Please send your application and any questions to: letiss at iusspavia.it or emanuele.miola at unipv.it LETiSS website: www.iusspavia.it/eng/LETiSS LETiSS Spring School 2011 website: http://www.iusspavia.it/eng/LETiSS.springschool -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From Robert.Mailhammer at asu.edu Tue Nov 16 03:32:53 2010 From: Robert.Mailhammer at asu.edu (Robert Mailhammer) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2010 20:32:53 -0700 Subject: Call for papers, session at ICHL 20 Message-ID: Dear HISTLING, would you be able to post the attached call for papers for a session at ICHL 20? Please let us know if you've any questions. Thank you very much Best, Rob Robert Mailhammer Assistant Professor Department of English Arizona State University P.O. Box 870302 Tempe, AZ 85287-0302 Phone: +1 480 727-9131 Fax: +1 480-965-3451 E-Mail: Robert.Mailhammer at asu.edu https://webapp4.asu.edu/directory/person/1638174 http://lrz-muenchen.de/~mailhammer -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Call for papers_ICHL 20_session.doc Type: application/msword Size: 31744 bytes Desc: Call for papers_ICHL 20_session.doc URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From werner_abraham at t-online.de Tue Nov 16 07:00:21 2010 From: werner_abraham at t-online.de (Werner Abraham) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:00:21 +0100 Subject: call for papers Message-ID: Dear Histling: Please make this call available to your listees. Thanks! Werner Abraham -- **************************** Prof.Dr. Werner Abraham Universit?t Wien 1090, Sensengasse 3a Allg. Sprachwissenschaft Studies in Language/LA/SLCS/SDG http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_series_list.cgi?t=b www.stauffenburg.de http://www.let.rug.nl/abraham/ home: Lindwurmstrasse 120c, D-80337 M?nchen werner.abraham at lmu.de -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Workshop proposal SLE 2011.doc Type: application/octet-stream Size: 62976 bytes Desc: URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From silvia.luraghi at unipv.it Tue Nov 16 09:46:35 2010 From: silvia.luraghi at unipv.it (Silvia Luraghi) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 10:46:35 +0100 Subject: WORKSHOP AT ICHL 20 - The Diachrony of Referential Null Arguments - Final Call In-Reply-To: Message-ID: We are glad to announce that our workshop proposal for a workshop on: The diachrony of referential null arguments has been accepted! The workshop will take place at: 20 International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Osaka 25-30 July 2011 (see http://www.ichl2011.com ) We received about ten abstracts and have some space for a couple of other talks. We would like to call attention especially on the diachrony of referential null objects in non-IE languages, so we encourage submission by colleagues who work on this or related topics. The deadline for final submission is 15 January 2011 abstract must be submitted directly to the ICHL: http://www.ichl2011.com/call_for_papers.html Workshop description Definite referential null arguments are apparently one of the distinctive features of non-configurational languages, see Baker (2001). Even though descriptions are available for various genetically unrelated languages, there are little if any accounts of their diachrony. Our workshop aims to bring together scholars working on different language families and on typologically different languages who are interested in diachronic changes concerning the creation or disappearance of null arguments, with a focus on null objects or other types of null arguments not coreferenced on the verb. The rise of null objects deserves further investigation. Null objects can be the result of incorporation, wherebt object clitics become verb affixes (Baker 2001). Related to incorporation is the Hungarian objective conjugation, whose rise is also a possible topic of discussion. The occurrence of definite referential null objects has been observed in many ancient Indo-European languages. In spite of this, and in spite of the long documented history of these languages, even in their case historical accounts are limited, as are detailed studies of the conditions licensing null objects (Sch?ufele 1990 on Sanskrit; several studies have been devoted to null objects in Old Icelandic, Sigur?sson 1993). At least in Latin and possibly in Greek, null objects seem to be obligatory in coordinated sentences, unless emphasis or disambiguation are involved (this is possibly a common phenomenon connected to coordination reduction and frequent in non-Indo-European languages as well, Luraghi 2004), as well as in answers to yes/no questions (van der Wurff 1997). Descriptions of increasing use of over objects in Latin and Germanic point to increasing transitivity or emerging configurationality. Papers presented at the workshop should aim to assess: a) the relation between null objects and other parameters of configurationality; b) the relation of null objects to other null argument, in particular to null subjects; c) the relation between null objects and the parameter of head/dependent marking (Baker 2001); d) null objects and the grammaticalization of valency; e) incorporation and the rise of null objects. Papers should have a diachronic orientation; research based on extensive corpora and quantitative approaches to language change are especially encouraged. References Baker, Mark (2001), ?Configurationality and polysynthesis?, in M. Haspelmath, E. K?nig, W. Oesterreicher, W. Raible (eds.), Language Typology and Language Universals . An International Handbook. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, vol. 2, pp. 1433-41. Luraghi, Silvia 2004, ?Null Objects in Latin and Greek and the Relevance of Linguistic Typology for Language Reconstruction?, in Proceedings of the 15th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, JIES Monograph 49, pp.234-256. Sch?ufele, Steven (1990), Free Word-Order Syntax: the Challenge from Vedic Sanskrit to Contemporary Formal Syntactic Theory. Ph. D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sigur?sson, Halld?r A. (1993), ?Argument-drop in Old Islandic?. Lingua 89, 247-280. Wurff, Wim van der, 1994. ?Null objects and learnability: The case of Latin?, Working Papers of Holland Institute for Generative Linguistics 1/4. >We look forward to seeing you in Osaka! Silvia Luraghi and Dag Haug Silvia Luraghi Dipartimento di Linguistica Teorica e Applicata Universit? di Pavia Strada Nuova 65 I-27100 Pavia telef.: +39-0382-984685 fax: +39-0382-984487 silvia.luraghi at unipv.it http://lettere.unipv.it/diplinguistica/docenti.php?&id=68 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From crm5 at rice.edu Tue Nov 16 15:44:25 2010 From: crm5 at rice.edu (crm5 at rice.edu) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 09:44:25 -0600 Subject: FINAL CALL: Rice Working Papers in Linguistics Vol 3. **New deadline: Nov. 30, 2010** Message-ID: Rice Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 3 EXTENDED DEADLINE: **November 30th, 2010** The Rice Linguistics Society (RLS) solicits submissions from all subfields of linguistics (with the exception of ESL/TESOL and related areas of applied linguistics) for publication in the Rice Working Papers in Linguistics. Students and post-docs are strongly encouraged to submit. We especially welcome submissions in line with our department's focus on functional, usage-based approaches to language study using empirical data, including but not limited to the following: -cognitive/functional linguistics -typology and language universals -field studies in less commonly researched languages -sociolinguistics, including sociophonetics -phonetics and speech processing -laboratory phonology -forensic linguistics -corpus linguistics -discourse -neurolinguistics -psycholinguistics and language processing -language change and grammaticalization Submitted papers must meet the following minimum style requirements: -recommended length 15-25 pages (normally 5000-8000 words); significantly longer or shorter papers will be considered on a case-by-base basis (contact the editorial board) -For comprehensive details on format (such as font, margins, examples, references, etc.) please refer to the RWPL template available on the Style sheet link at http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~rls/files/Style_Sheet.dot -submit an abstract (maximum 500 words), including 3-5 keywords, as a separate Word file -submit two copies (in addition to your abstract): (1) one copy in Word (2003 or 2007) (2) in addition to the Word submission, you must send a PDF version to ensure fonts are preserved RLS accepts only electronic submissions for the working papers. These must be sent to rwpl at rice.edu, and the body of the e-mail should include: -title of paper -name of author(s) -affiliation -address -phone number -contact e-mail address The EXTENDED DEADLINE for receipt of submissions is **November 30th, 2010**. Questions regarding the submissions process or style requirements may be addressed to the editorial board at rwpl at rice.edu. Carlos Molina-Vital RWPL-EIC _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From nlavidas at enl.auth.gr Tue Nov 16 16:05:39 2010 From: nlavidas at enl.auth.gr (Nikolaos Lavidas) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 18:05:39 +0200 Subject: PIE Syntax - Call for Papers Message-ID: Dear Histling, please make this call available to your listees. Thanks a lot! Nikolaos Lavidas -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: PIE Syntax.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 37147 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From claire.bowern at yale.edu Tue Nov 16 21:10:49 2010 From: claire.bowern at yale.edu (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:10:49 -0500 Subject: note regarding attachments Message-ID: Hi everyone, just a quick note with my moderator's hat on about list attachments. They are currently enabled, but I would like to discourage their use, since they are a good way to spread viruses. More importantly, they are also not searchable in the list archives. Pasting the text of announcements into the body of an email is a better way to go. Thanks! Claire ----- Claire Bowern Associate Professor Department of Linguistics Yale University 370 Temple St New Haven, CT 06511 North American Dialects survey: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~clb3/NorthAmericanDialects/ _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From honohiiri at yandex.ru Fri Nov 19 17:20:58 2010 From: honohiiri at yandex.ru (Idiatov Dmitry) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2010 20:20:58 +0300 Subject: Call for Papers (ICHL20): Stability & borrowability of interrogative pronominals Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS FOR A WORKSHOP AT ICHL 20 Workshop title: Stability and borrowability of interrogative pronominals Conference: 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Osaka, Japan, July 25-30, 2011 (http://www.ichl2011.com) Organizer: Dmitry Idiatov (LLACAN-CNRS, Paris) Contact: idiatov at vjf.cnrs.fr Invited speaker: Yaron Matras (University of Manchester) Deadline for abstract submission: January 15, 2011 Abstracts of no more than 300 words, including literature references, should be submitted through the conference website (http://www.ichl2011.com/call_for_papers.html). Please remember to indicate the workshop title in the appropriate place on the abstract submission form. Description: Interrogative pronominals, such as English who? and what?, are usually considered to be among the most change-proof elements in any language. They are believed to be highly resistant to both replacement through borrowing (Haspelmath & Tadmor 2009, Matras 2009:199) and language-internal renewal (Haspelmath 1997:176). In this respect, they strongly resemble personal pronominals. The two kinds of pronominals are also often perceived as good indicators of (long-range) genetic relationships and are regularly included in basic vocabulary lists. However, the view of personal pronominals as highly resistant to borrowing is not uncontroversial (cf. Wallace 1983, Thomason & Everett 2005, Matras 2009:203-208, Law 2009). It has also long been observed that reconstruction of personal pronominals tends to be fraught with difficulties due to their typically short forms and their tendency to undergo irregular changes, such as sound changes specific to them, various kinds of analogical changes and amalgamation with other elements. The workshop aims at assessing the claims on the universality of the extremely slow rate of change and high resistance to borrowing with respect to interrogative pronominals. Particularly welcome are papers on examples of fast changes of interrogative pronominals in families and subgroups, on examples of their borrowing and on the kinds of irregular changes affecting interrogative pronominals. Haspelmath, Martin. 1997. Indefinite pronouns. Oxford: Clarendon. Haspelmath, Martin & Uri Tadmor (eds.). 2009. Loanwords in the world?s languages: a comparative handbook. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Law, Danny. 2009. Pronominal borrowing among the Maya. Diachronica 26(2). 214-252. Matras, Yaron. 2009. Language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomason, Sarah G. & Daniel L. Everett. 2005. Pronoun borrowing. Berkeley Linguistic Society 27. 301-315. Wallace, Stephen. 1983. Pronouns in contact. In Frederic B. Agard, Gerald Kelley, Adam Makkai & Valerie Becker Makkai (eds.), Essays in honor of Charles F. Hockett, 573-589. Leiden: Brill. _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From johncharles.smith at stcatz.ox.ac.uk Mon Nov 22 12:32:30 2010 From: johncharles.smith at stcatz.ox.ac.uk (John Charles Smith) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2010 12:32:30 +0000 Subject: =?windows-1252?Q?=91The_Role_of_Autonomous_Morphology_in_Language_Chan?= =?windows-1252?Q?ge=92_?= (Workshop, ICHL XX, Osaka, July 2011) Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, We (Martin Maiden and John Charles Smith) are organizing a Workshop on ?The Role of Autonomous Morphology in Language Change? at the Twentieth International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL XX), to be held in Osaka between 25 and 30 July 2011. Several papers have already been promised; but we would clearly like to open the Workshop to as many interested colleagues as possible, hence this announcement to the HistLing List. If you want to submit an abstract for consideration, please do so by 15 January 2011, using the on-line submission form at www.ichl2011.com and specifying that you wish your abstract to be considered for presentation at the Workshop. If your abstract is not accepted for the Workshop, it will still be considered for inclusion in the general conference sessions. A brief description of the background to the Workshop and the issues we aim to discuss is appended at the end of this posting. If you have any queries, please don?t hesitate to contact the organizers: martin.maiden [at] mod-langs.ox.ac.uk johncharles.smith [at] stcatz.ox.ac.uk With all good wishes, John Charles Smith Martin Maiden -- John Charles Smith Official Fellow and Tutor, St Catherine's College, Oxford, OX1 3UJ, UK Deputy Director, Research Centre for Romance Linguistics, University of Oxford tel. +44 1865 271700 (College) / 271748 (direct) / 271768 (fax) ____________________________________________________ Mark Aronoff?s seminal work Morphology By Itself (1994) brought analytical rigour to the identification of a class of phenomena of which many linguists ? and perhaps especially historical linguists working on the inflectional morphology of ?fusional? languages ? already sensed the existence. Some aspects of morphology are demonstrably autonomous in that they are not (synchronically) determined by any phonological, syntactic or semantic factor. They pertain, that is, to a ?morphomic level? located between phonology and syntax yet independent of either. Among Aronoff?s most striking illustrations were the so-called Latin ?third stem? (an irreducibly heterogeneous set of paradigm cells within the inflectional paradigm of the Latin verb always shares the same stem-shape, regardless of the phonological identity of the stem) and the English ?past participle? (again, both phonologically and functionally heterogeneous). In the conclusion to his book, Aronoff called for linguists to begin a wider search for morphomic phenomena among the world?s languages, and evidence that they exist in many languages (at least of the ?fusional? type) emerges in, for example, N?bling (2000), Stump (2001:169-211), Baerman et al. (2005:183-86). Most work on ?morphology by itself? has had a synchronic perspective. However, in a series of studies dealing with the historical development of Romance languages, Maiden (e.g., 2005, 2009a,b) identifies a number of ?morphomic? phenomena within inflectional morphology whose significance is twofold. ? First, they provide powerful evidence in favour of the psychological reality of apparently morphomic phenomena. To the extent that Aronoff?s prime examples are synchronic, they are liable to the accusation that they are the historically accidental remnants of some earlier ?tat de langue in which the alleged ?morphome? was still extramorphologically motivated, and that the survival of such remnants is a matter simply of ?inertia?, their distributional regularities not necessarily being ?psychologically real? to speakers. Maiden?s diachronic examples involve morphological changes which are argued to presuppose speakers? awareness of ?morphomic? distributional patterns. ? Second, not only do the Romance examples provide valuable diagnostics for the existence of morphomes, but they in turn suggest that the replication of morphomic structure is a powerful driver of inflectional morphological change. Indeed, a good deal of the Romance evidence suggests that speakers have no particular preference for clearly extramorphologically motivated patterns of allomorphy over morphomic ones. The study of the diachrony of autonomous morphological phenomena raises some major questions which deserve exploration and explanation across a wide range of languages, and we suggest that among the issues which might be addressed are: ? How can we be sure that allegedly morphomic phenomena in diachrony are genuinely such? This issue is particularly important if, precisely, diachrony is used as a diagnostic of ?morphomehood?. The vestigial persistence of the original extramorphological conditioning often leads linguists to deny the ?morphomic? status of certain phenomena. ? In what ways do morphomes emerge diachronically? Common scenarios seem to be the continuing effects of defunct sound change, and functional splits, but can other factors be involved, such as language contact, or the effects of frequency in the lexical diffusion of morphological change? ? How and why does autonomously morphological structure persist diachronically? This question is tantamount to asking why morphomes exist at all. One possible conclusion is that the maintenance and reinforcement of morphomic patterns over time simply serves to make the relationship between lexemes and their form paradigms maximally predictable. ? How and why do morphomes die out? The question is closely related in its implications to the foregoing. There is some evidence that morphomes ?die? not necessarily because speakers seek to ?realign? them with extramorphological properties, but through the destructive effects of sound change. The death of one morphome often involves the birth of another, rather than greater transparency in the form-meaning relationship. ? Is there a discrete boundary between the autonomously morphological and the extramorphologically motivated? The question may seem to imply a contradiction, but evidence has recently emerged from the history of Romance languages for changes which seem inexplicable unless we admit an autonomously morphological motivation ?abetted?, but underdetermined, by extramorphological factors such as phonological environment. ? Can morphomes be sociolinguistically variable? There is evidence emerging (see Smith forthcoming) that morphomes, just like syntactic, phonological, semantic and lexical, phenomena, may be subject to sociolinguistic variation. Scholarly interest in issues of autonomous morphology can be seen in the recent (October 2010) conference in Coimbra on ?Perspectives on the Morphome?, and the two recent workshops (2008 and 2010) in Oxford on ?Autonomous Morphology in Diachrony?. The focus of the Coimbra gathering was principally synchronic, while the Oxford meetings have been almost exclusively concerned with Romance languages and attended almost exclusively by Romanists. The time is clearly ripe for a broad cross-linguistic, diachronically orientated, discussion of the place of autonomous morphology in diachrony, and of the relevance of diachrony for our understanding of morphomic phenomena generally. This is what we seek to achieve in the proposed Workshop. References Aronoff, Mark. 1994. Morphology By Itself. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Baerman, Matthew, Dunstan Brown & Greville Corbett. 2005. The Syntax-Morphology Interface. A study of syncretism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maiden, Martin. 2005. ?Morphological autonomy and diachrony?, Yearbook of Morphology 2004, 137-75. Maiden, Martin. 2009a. ?From pure phonology to pure morphology. The reshaping of the Romance verb?. Recherches linguistiques de Vincennes 38:45-82. Maiden, Martin. 2009b. ?Where does heteroclisis come from? Evidence from Romanian dialects?. Morphology 19:59-86. N?bling, Damaris. 2000. Prinzipien der Irregularisierung. Eine kontrastive Analyse von zehn Verben in zehn germanischen Sprachen. T?bingen: Niemeyer. Smith, John Charles. Forthcoming. ?Variable analyses of a verbal inflection in (mainly) Canadian French?, in Maria Goldbach, Marc-Olivier Hinzelin, Martin Maiden & John Charles Smith (eds.). Morphological Autonomy: perspectives from Romance inflectional morphology. Oxford: Oxford Unversity Press. Stump, Gregory. 2001. Inflectional morphology. A theory of paradigm structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen at manchester.ac.uk Mon Nov 22 13:11:14 2010 From: Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen at manchester.ac.uk (Maj-Britt Hansen) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2010 13:11:14 +0000 Subject: ICHL 2011 - Workshop on The Diachrony of Negation Message-ID: 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Osaka, 2011 Workshop proposal: The Diachrony of Negation Organizers: Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen & Jacqueline Visconti This workshop aims to bring together scholars working on the genesis and evolution of negative constructions in a wide spectrum of both related and unrelated languages. The adoption of different theoretical and methodological approaches, both functional and formal, will provide new insights into the nature and function of negation, which will be investigated from a variety of mutually complementary angles. The workshop is expected to make a significant contribution to current theorizing on (i) the typology, structure, and development of negative constructions; (ii) the nature of "Jespersen Cycle", a well-known and cross-linguistically instantiated pattern whereby elements that were introduced into negative clauses to reinforce negation are reanalysed as negative markers; (iii) the different pace and form of grammaticalization of negative markers in closely related languages; (iv) the role of language contact in negation renewal phenomena; (v) the nature and causes of grammatical change/models of language change in general. References: * Breitbarth, A., C. Lucas, D. Willis, eds. 2011. The development of negation. The languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, vols. I-II. Oxford: OUP. * van Gelderen, E., ed. 2009. Cyclical change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. * Ingham, R. & P. Larriv?e, eds. Fc. Cycles of grammaticalization. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. * Jespersen, O. 1917. Negation in English and other languages. Copenhagen: H?st og S?n. Prospective participants (**Additional contributors are welcome!**): * Theresa Biberauer (confirmed): TBA * Anne Breitbarth (confirmed): The Quantifier Cycle in Low German from a cross-linguistic perspective * Viviane D?prez & Sabine Ploux (to be confirmed): Historical evolution of semantic networks: the case of French negative terms, a computational approach. * Richard Ingham (confirmed): Split-scope readings and the syntax of NegP in Late Middle English. * Agnes J?ger (to be confirmed): TBA * Pierre Larrivee (confirmed): Sociolinguistic pressures on language evolution - the case of negative doubling in French * France Martineau (confirmed): Ne-deletion in French * Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen (confirmed): TBA * Ian Roberts (confirmed): TBA * Scott Schwenter (to be confirmed): TBA * Johan van der Auwera & Lauren van Alsenoy (confirmed): On negative indefinites. * Johan van der Auwera & Frens Vossen (confirmed): On sentence negation * Jacqueline Visconti (confirmed): TBA * David Willis (confirmed): TBA * Phillip Wallage (confirmed): Quantitative evidence for the role of information structure in the Middle English Jespersen Cycle __________________________________________________________ Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen Professor of French Language and Linguistics School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, The University of Manchester Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom Tel.: +44(0)161 306-1733 Web site: http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/french/staff/maj-britt-mosegaard-hansen/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From evie.cousse at ugent.be Tue Nov 23 10:06:10 2010 From: evie.cousse at ugent.be (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Evie_Couss=E9?=) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:06:10 +0100 Subject: Call for papers: workshop "Usage-based approaches to language change" - ICHL 2011 Message-ID: Call for papers for the workshop "Usage-based approaches to language change" at ICHL 2011 in Osaka (Japan). Conveners: Evie Couss? (Ghent University, Belgium) and Ferdinand von Mengden (Freie Universit?t Berlin, Germany) Workshop description Most approaches to language (change) have principally in common that they locate the main explanandum of language in the human mind and that they operate with categories. Change is, implicitly or explicitly, seen as a shift of a linguistic form from one category to another ? whether across discrete or fuzzy boundaries. A well-know example of this view is the importance of reanalysis in explaining language change in mainstream historical linguistics. Reanalysis is considered to be the underlying mechanism that motivates changing patterns in usage such as contextual extension and increasing generalization / abstraction in meaning. However, alternative views have also been expressed, in which linguistic structure is seen as subject to constant negotiation in communication. Hopper?s (1998) Emergent Grammar or Keller?s (1994) Invisible Hand are prominent examples. Without denying the share that cognition has in the production of utterances and the usefulness of categories for linguistic description, structure is seen as epiphenomenal in these approaches. Structure is in a constant flux across time, area and social strata and, therefore, language use or actual communication are the loci of structure formation and hence of change. In line with this usage-based perspective of language and language change, an alternative for reanalysis has been proposed in which (changing) discourse patterns are directly related to meaning without referring to changes in abstract structures (e.g. Bybee e.a 1994, Haspelmath 1998, De Smet 2009). However, a larger coherent vision of the relation between language usage and language change is still largely missing. The workshop aims at discussing possibilities for such a usage-based framework on language change. We wish to combine case studies with theoretical contributions that help setting up a comprehensive model on language change, in which language use is in the focus and in which the core properties of language are seen in its dynamics rather than in its states. Call for papers As the workshop has been approved and accepted by the conference organizers of ICHL 2011, a call for papers is launched for interested speakers. Abstracts of no more than 300 words, including literature references, should be submitted through the conference website ( http://www.ichl2011.com/call_for_papers.html). Please remember to indicate the workshop title in the appropriate place on the abstract submission form. Please note that also potential speakers that have reacted positively to the initial call for participation in October 2010 are required to send a full abstract through the conference website. Important deadlines: 15 January 2011: abstract submission deadline 28 January 2011: notification of acceptance References Bybee, J., R. Perkins & W. Pagliuca (1994) The evolution of grammar. Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. De Smet, H. (2009) Analysing reanalysis. In: Lingua 119, 1728-1755. Haspelmath, M. (1998) Does grammaticalization need reanalysis? In: Studies in Language 22, 315-351. Hopper, P.J. (1998) Emergent grammar. In: M. Tomasello (ed.) The new psychology of grammar: cognitive and functional approaches to language structure. Mahwah: Erlbaum: 155-176. Keller, R. (1994) On language change. The invisible hand in language. London: Routlegde. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From Freek.VanDeVelde at arts.kuleuven.be Tue Nov 23 13:36:00 2010 From: Freek.VanDeVelde at arts.kuleuven.be (Freek Van de Velde) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:36:00 +0100 Subject: call for papers: workshop on exaptation (ICHL 20 Japan) Message-ID: This is a call for papers for a workshop on the topic of 'exaptation' (in short, the process of recycling morphology, see Lass, R. 1990. How to do things with junk: exaptation in language evolution. Journal of Linguistics 26: 79-102), hosted by Muriel Norde (University of Groningen) and Freek Van de Velde (University of Leuven) at the ICHL-20 conference in Osaka. A detailed description of the workshop can be found here: http://www.ichl2011.com/pdf/Workshop_A0020.pdf. We have quite a number of participants already, but we want to give people interested a chance to join the workshop. Abstracts should be sent via the ICHL website before January 15. If we can't accommodate your abstract in the workshop itself, it may still be accepted for the general session at the conference. Looking forward to seeing you in Osaka. Freek Van de Velde Postdoctoral research fellow Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), University of Leuven Fac. of Arts, Dept. of Linguistics Blijde Inkomststraat 21, P.O. Box 3308 BE-3000 Leuven Tel. 0032 16 32 47 81 Fax 0032 16 32 47 67 Dutch website: http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/nedling/fvandevelde/ English webiste: http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/nedling_e/fvandevelde/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From wvdbussc at vub.ac.be Fri Nov 26 15:16:29 2010 From: wvdbussc at vub.ac.be (Wim Vandenbussche) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2010 16:16:29 +0100 Subject: 2 vacancies for PhD students in Brussels Message-ID: *apologies for cross-postings* *please forward to potentially interested students/colleagues* The Centre for Linguistics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) currently has two vacancies for PhD research on 'Foundations for a European social history of language: Language planning in Europe during the long 19th century (1794-1914).' The project is part of ongoing historical-sociolinguistic research at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel on language and society during the long 19th century. Full details about the project can be found at the following web page: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~wvdbussc/vacancy.html The successful candidates should hold a Master's degree in philology/ linguistics but candidates from other disciplines with a strong interest in social history and sociolinguistics are welcome to apply. Knowledge of Dutch is not essential but willingness to acquire basic Dutch language skills during the project is a plus. Candidates should be aware that the research will encompass a strong comparative dimension (for example by integrating separate national case-studies on language planning in a larger European context, or by analysing crucial factors in various types of language policy across Europe at the time). The candidates are expected to conduct research that will lead to a finished PhD dissertation after 4 years. The successful candidates will in principle be based in Brussels but collaboration with a foreign research institute can be considered. Interested candidates can send a CV, a short text explaining their intended approach to the project and a copy of their Master's thesis to prof. dr. Wim Vandenbussche Vrije Universiteit Brussel Centrum voor lingu?stiek Pleinlaan 2 1050 Brussel (Belgium) email: wvdbussc at vub.ac.be All queries regarding the vacancies and the project can be sent to that same address. We offer a full PhD scholarship (for 4 years in principle, renewable every year); in addition, travel/project expenses can be covered. The positions are vacant as of January 1st or February 1st, 2011. Please respond before December 10th, 2010. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l