From johanna.barddal at uib.no Mon Oct 10 22:33:54 2011 From: johanna.barddal at uib.no (johanna.barddal at uib.no) Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:33:54 +0200 Subject: 2nd CfP: Non-Canonically Case-Marked Subjects within and across Languages and Language Families: Stability, Variation and Change Message-ID: In collaboration with the Institute of Linguistics at the University of Iceland, the IECASTP/NonCanCase project at the University of Bergen is organizing a conference on "Non-Canonically Case-Marked Subjects within and across Languages and Language Families: Stability, Variation and Change" Invited Speakers: - Miriam Butt (University of Constance) - Thórhallur Eythórsson (University of Iceland) - Julie Ann Legate (University of Pennsylvania) - Andrej Malchukov (Max Planck Institute, Leipzig) Date: 4.-8. June 2012 Location: Reykjavík and Hótel Hekla (near Eyjafjallajökull) Website 1: http://vefir.hi.is/SubjectCase (under construction) website 2: http://org.uib.no/iecastp/IECASTP/SubjectCase.htm Contact Person: Tonya Kim Dewey (University of Bergen) Official Email: SubjectCase @ gmail.com Second call for papers: Oblique, "quirky", or non-canonically case-marked subjects have been the focus of enormous interest and massive research ever since Andrews (1976) and Masica (1976). Early on, research in this area was mainly carried out within the generative tradition, but by now interest in oblique subjects has spread to all other frameworks (cf. papers in Aikhenvald, Dixon & Onishi 2001, Bhaskararao & Subbarao 2004, and Malchukov & Spencer 2009). The attention has generally been on the syntactic behavior of oblique subjects, such as their ability to be left unexpressed in conjoined clauses and control infinitives, their ability to figure in object and subject raising, and to control reflexives, as well as on their word order properties (e.g. Sigurðsson 1991). Nevertheless, the validity of certain tests for subjecthood remains controversial, especially in diachronic studies (e.g. Eythórsson & Barðdal 2005). Recent research has increasingly turned to the semantics of oblique subjects, both within individual languages and within language families. Barðdal et. al (2011), for instance, show that there is a host of lexical-semantic verb classes associated with oblique subjects in several of the ancient/archaic Indo-European languages, ranging from experiencer, cognition, perception, and attitudinal predicates, to all kinds of happenstance predicates and predicates denoting purely relational and ontological states. Oblique subjects may also denote possession, modality and evidentiality, as well as featuring in the intransitive variant of causative pairs (anticausatives) in some Indo-European languages (e.g. Cennamo, Eythórsson & Barðdal 2011). In a wider typological perspective, it remains to be established which semantic features are language-family-specific and which are generally found cross-linguistically. Given the central role that Icelandic has played in research on oblique subjects (witness the classic paper by Zaenen, Maling & Thráinsson 1985), Iceland is the obvious location for this conference. The conference will start in Reykjavík, followed by a one-day tour in Southern Iceland, visiting Thingvellir, Geysir, Gullfoss and other places of great natural beauty and historical interest. The concluding part of the conference will take place at Hótel Hekla, a charming country hotel about 70 km east of the capital, Reykjavík, with a marvelous view of (in)famous volcanoes such as Hekla and Eyjafjallajökull. We welcome contributions focusing on a specific language, language family or cross-linguistic comparison, from different theoretical frameworks, on all aspects of oblique subjects, synchronic, diachronic and typological, including the following: - The semantics of the oblique subject construction, for instance in terms of lexical semantics, within a single language, or in a comparative or a typological perspective - The syntactic behavior of oblique subjects within a language, a language family, or across languages - The validity of particular tests for subjecthood, both in modern languages as well as corpus languages (e.g. the older Indo-European languages). - The dichotomy between oblique subjects and subject-like obliques which pass some, but perhaps not all, of the subject tests, and its practical and theoretical implications - The origin and emergence of non-canonical subject case marking The potential role of oblique anticausatives in the emergence of oblique subjects - The syntax and semantics of oblique subjects in non-Indo-European languages Please submit your abstracts of 500 words or less through http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=subjectcase2012, no later than November 15th, 2011. A response on abstracts will be sent out on December 15th, 2011. References: Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y., R.M.W. Dixon & M. Onishi (eds.). 2001. Non-Canonical Marking of Subjects and Objects. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Andrews, Avery D. 1976. The VP complement analysis in Modern Icelandic. North Eastern Linguistic Society 6: 1-21. Barðdal, Jóhanna, Valgerður Bjarnadóttir, Eystein Dahl, Gard B. Jenset & Thomas Smitherman. 2011. Reconstructing Constructional Semantics: The Dative Subject Construction in Old Norse-Icelandic, Latin, Ancient Greek, Old Russian and Lithuanian. Submitted to a thematic volume in Studies in Language, entitled "Theory and Data in Cognitive Linguistics", Nikolas Gisborne & Willem Hollmann (eds). Bhaskararao, Peri & K. V. Subbarao (eds.) 2004. Non-Nominative Subjects. (2 vols.) (Typological studies in language 60-61.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Cennamo, Michela, Thórhallur Eythórsson & Jóhanna Barðdal. 2011. The Rise and Fall of Anticausative Constructions in Indo-European: The Context of Latin and Germanic. Submitted to a thematic volume in Linguistics, entitled "Typology of Labile Verbs: Focus on Diachrony", Leonid Kulikov & Nikolaos Lavidas (eds). Eythórsson, Thórhallur & Jóhanna Barðdal. 2005. Oblique Subjects: A Common Germanic Inheritance. Language 81(4): 824-881. Malchukov, Andrej & Andrew Spencer (eds.). 2009. In The Oxford Handbook of Case. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Masica, Colin P. 1976. Defining a Linguistic Area: South Asia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sigurðsson, Halldór Ármann. 1991. Icelandic Case-Marked PRO and the Licensing of Lexical Arguments. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 9: 327-362. Zaenen, Annie, Joan Maling & Höskuldur Thráinsson. 1985. Case and Grammatical Functions: The Icelandic Passive. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3: 441-483. -- =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ Jóhanna Barðdal Research Associate Professor Coeditor of the Journal of Historical Linguistics 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 Oct 24 21:11:41 2011 From: caterina.mauri at unipv.it (Caterina Mauri) Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 23:11:41 +0200 Subject: Call for Papers - Workshop on "The meaning and form of vagueness: a cross-linguistic perspective" Message-ID: *** WE APOLOGIZE FOR CROSS-POSTING *** ------------------------ Workshop on: THE MEANING AND FORM OF VAGUENESS: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE Proposal to be submitted to the: 45th Annual Meeting of Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE2012) Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University Stockholm (Sweden), 29 August-1 September 2012 http://www.societaslinguistica.eu http://sle2012.eu ------------------------ CONVENORS: Francesca Masini (University of Bologna) – francesca.masini at unibo.it Caterina Mauri (University of Pavia) – caterina.mauri at unipv.it Lucia Tovena (University of Paris VII) – tovena at linguist.jussieu.fr Miriam Voghera (University of Salerno) – voghera at unisa.it SUBFIELDS Historical linguistics, intonation, lexicon, pragmatics, semantics, syntax, typology. KEYWORDS Approximation, categorization, identification, (in)definiteness, (in)determinacy, vagueness. CALL FOR PAPERS - Important dates Potential participants should send us a provisional title and a short abstract (300 words) no later than November 6, 2011, so that we can submit the workshop proposal (including a preliminary list of participants) to the SLE Scientific Committee by November 15, 2011. If the workshop is accepted, all abstract will have to be submitted to the SLE by January 15, 2012 via the conference site (http://www.sle2012.eu/). The full call for papers is attached. For any information please contact workshop.vagueness2012 at gmail.com. DESCRIPTION “Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn’t the indistinct one often exactly what we need?” (Wittgenstein 1953). Indeed, vagueness is a basic property of human languages, which manifests itself at all level of signification and in a number of different ways (Channel 1994). Vagueness is basic in that it fulfills the important communicative task of conveying a piece of information that is indefinite, imprecise, in a word “vague”. The notion of vagueness is part of different scholar traditions and has received numerous definitions. Traditionally, for philosophers and formal linguists, a sentence is vague when it does not give rise to precise truth conditions, and the vagueness of an expression originates in imperfect discrimination (Sorensen 2006, van Rooij 2011), e.g. gradable adjectives or quantity adjectives. In this tradition, a vague expression is not well defined with respect to the specific entities in its domain of application, or when truth is not preserved when moving from a case of which it is true to qualitatively very similar cases (sorites) (Hyde 2005), or when the cutoff point of a series is not known. However, the coverage of the term can be broadened, since vagueness may also concern the information that is communicated and may affect the identification of the referent, be it a class or an entity. Therefore we can recognize two different levels of vagueness: a systemic vagueness, closely related to the notion of indeterminacy, which responds to the general need of multiplicity of meaning in linguistic expressions, and a contextual vagueness, which refers to the multiple determinability of the meaning and function of words or expressions depending on specific speakers’ choices and situational needs. In other words, forms of vagueness may also concern the very content a sentence is meant to convey. We refer to this as “intentional vagueness”. The aim of the workshop is to gather together scholars working on the form and meaning of intentional vagueness, namely on the fact that some constructions (at whatever level, of whatever type) are used by the speakers precisely to encode a vague referent or state of affairs. This type of vagueness can be conveyed by a variety of forms at different levels of encoding, which, by virtue of their belonging to different domains, are often studied by distinct subfields and linguistic traditions: a) syntax: see binominal constructions with approximators of the sort/kind type (cf. Tabor 1994, Denison 2002 for English; Mihatsch 2007, Masini 2010 for Romance languages), some of which have developed into hedges with a more metalinguistic function (Lakoff 1972, Kay 1997), but also some kinds of list constructions, which have been proved to have an approximating function (Bonvino, Masini & Pietrandrea 2009), or again connectives that encode the non-finite nature of the set of linked elements, thus serving as vagueness markers; b) lexicon and semantics: see the relationship between the coding of vagueness and a specific type of lexical source which is recurrent in different languages, e.g. the class of taxonomic nouns, such as Italian tipo (Voghera to appear), Swedish typ (Rosenkvist & Skärlund to appear), French genre (Fleischmen & Yaguello 2004); c) pragmatics: discourse studies have a special role in the investigation of vagueness, since a number of expressions encoding vagueness (e.g. adverbs, connectives, vague category identifiers or general extenders, cf. Channel 1994, Overstreet 1999, Mihatsch 2009) have been mainly examined in terms of their function in discourse, rather than as markers that bear a grammatical meaning (cf. Dubois 1992, Dines 1980, Aijmer 1985 who assimilate these constructions to discourse markers); d) and, recently, intonation: it is generally recognized that vagueness is more frequent in spoken discourse than in written language (Biber et al. 1999) and that prosody can play a crucial role in conveying a vague interpretation of a chunk of speech (Warren 2007). What emerges from this picture is a great specialization in individual areas, but very little communication between the various subfields and methodologies. Moreover, we observe a lack of a true cross-linguistic perspective. This workshop aims at investigating the following three lines of research: 1) Cross-linguistic variation and diachronic paths in the coding of intentional vagueness - How are the various types of vagueness encoded in the world’s languages? Is it possible to identify recurrent patterns? Are there significant typological differences? - On what levels may vagueness be encoded (intonation, lexicon, morphology, syntax, discourse)? Do different levels match with different types of vagueness (e.g. vagueness conveyed syntactically vs. vagueness conveyed phonetically)? - Are there recurrent diachronic patterns leading to the coding of vagueness? - Are specific categories more apt to be reanalyzed as vagueness markers (e.g. connectives, generic nouns, epistemic adverbs)? The latter question is directly related to the second line of research we propose to explore. 2) Intentional vagueness and other functional domains: delimitation issues - How is intentional vagueness connected with phenomena such as indefiniteness, indeterminacy and non-factuality/irrealis that have been discussed in the literature (cf. Lyons 1999, Jayez & Tovena 2006, Mauri & Sansò to appear)? - Assuming that vagueness is a category of its own, then how can we tell it apart from the above-mentioned domains? - Assuming, instead, that vagueness is a larger category, can we say that there are different types of vagueness that typically trigger different encoding strategies across the world’s languages (e.g. indefinite reference is typically encoded by pronouns, adjectives and adverbs)? - In any of the above cases, what would be the best way to represent the relation between all these expressions and their distribution in the languages of the world (e.g. a semiotic hierarchy, a functional map)? 3) Theoretical and metalinguistic issues: how to talk about vagueness? Given the great intra- and cross-linguistic variation in the coding of vagueness, and the lack of a systematic analysis of intentional vagueness, there is a tendency to overproduce ad-hoc categories for given strategies, suffice it to mention the great variety of terms used to name so-called general extenders (Overstreet 1999), e.g.: set marking tags (Dines 1980), utterance-final tags (Aijmer 1985), extension particles (Dubois 1993), vague category identifiers (Channel 1994), post-detailing component (Selting 2006). This probably depends on various factors: - first, the defining criteria of traditional grammatical categories are of little help in identifying the vagueness functions of the investigated constructions. What about items such as English etcetera or Italian tipo: does it say something about their semantics to describe them in terms of “adverbs”? Another case in point is the Italian connective piuttosto che, which has recently developed the value ‘or something like that’ in particular syntactic contexts (Mauri & Giacalone Ramat 2011): is it useful to still analyze it as a connective even if it does not link anything in such contexts? - secondly, vagueness markers are difficult to classify because they may have a reduced or broader distribution than other items of the same grammatical class; - third, vagueness is not only a semantic phenomenon, nor a purely morphosyntactic one, but it may be rather encoded across different levels, and can require multilevel criteria and representation tools. All these factors – we believe – produce great terminological variation and many distinctions. In our opinion, a better understanding of such a complex phenomenon would take great advantage of an effort also on the metalinguistic side: this would be a decisive step not only forward a better descriptive adequacy, but also forward a better explicative adequacy. In other words, we should try to be less ‘vague’ when we talk about vagueness if we want to develop a good theory of vagueness. TOPICS We welcome submissions discussing the form and meaning of vagueness from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective, in line with the questions raised above. Topics of interest include: - identification and description of specific constructions encoding intentional vagueness (at any level of analysis) in one or more languages; - identification and description of strategies (e.g. connectives, adverbs, etc.) used for coding vagueness intra- and cross-linguistically; - typological studies describing recurrent patterns in the coding of intentional vagueness; - synchronic and diachronic analyses regarding the relation of vagueness with (what seem to be) functionally related domains (such as indeterminacy, indefiniteness, non-factuality/irrealis); - diachronic analyses regarding the emergence of constructions encoding intentional vagueness in the languages of the world; - cognitive or formal representations of intentional vagueness, as part of the meaning encoded by a linguistic expression. (For references, see the attached file) --- Caterina Mauri Dept. of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics University of Pavia Strada Nuova 65 27100 Pavia Italy Email: caterina.mauri at unipv.it Homepage: http://lettere.unipv.it/diplinguistica/docenti.php?&id=1114 -------------- 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 caterina.mauri at unipv.it Tue Oct 25 09:12:54 2011 From: caterina.mauri at unipv.it (Caterina Mauri) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:12:54 +0200 Subject: Call for Papers - Workshop on "The meaning and form of vagueness: a cross-linguistic perspective" Message-ID: (this time with the attachment!) *** WE APOLOGIZE FOR CROSS-POSTING *** ------------------------ Workshop on: THE MEANING AND FORM OF VAGUENESS: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE Proposal to be submitted to the: 45th Annual Meeting of Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE2012) Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University Stockholm (Sweden), 29 August-1 September 2012 http://www.societaslinguistica.eu http://sle2012.eu ------------------------ CONVENORS: Francesca Masini (University of Bologna) – francesca.masini at unibo.it Caterina Mauri (University of Pavia) – caterina.mauri at unipv.it Lucia Tovena (University of Paris VII) – tovena at linguist.jussieu.fr Miriam Voghera (University of Salerno) – voghera at unisa.it SUBFIELDS Historical linguistics, intonation, lexicon, pragmatics, semantics, syntax, typology. KEYWORDS Approximation, categorization, identification, (in)definiteness, (in)determinacy, vagueness. CALL FOR PAPERS - Important dates Potential participants should send us a provisional title and a short abstract (300 words) no later than November 6, 2011, so that we can submit the workshop proposal (including a preliminary list of participants) to the SLE Scientific Committee by November 15, 2011. If the workshop is accepted, all abstract will have to be submitted to the SLE by January 15, 2012 via the conference site (http://www.sle2012.eu/). The full call for papers is attached. For any information please contact workshop.vagueness2012 at gmail.com. DESCRIPTION “Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn’t the indistinct one often exactly what we need?” (Wittgenstein 1953). Indeed, vagueness is a basic property of human languages, which manifests itself at all level of signification and in a number of different ways (Channel 1994). Vagueness is basic in that it fulfills the important communicative task of conveying a piece of information that is indefinite, imprecise, in a word “vague”. The notion of vagueness is part of different scholar traditions and has received numerous definitions. Traditionally, for philosophers and formal linguists, a sentence is vague when it does not give rise to precise truth conditions, and the vagueness of an expression originates in imperfect discrimination (Sorensen 2006, van Rooij 2011), e.g. gradable adjectives or quantity adjectives. In this tradition, a vague expression is not well defined with respect to the specific entities in its domain of application, or when truth is not preserved when moving from a case of which it is true to qualitatively very similar cases (sorites) (Hyde 2005), or when the cutoff point of a series is not known. However, the coverage of the term can be broadened, since vagueness may also concern the information that is communicated and may affect the identification of the referent, be it a class or an entity. Therefore we can recognize two different levels of vagueness: a systemic vagueness, closely related to the notion of indeterminacy, which responds to the general need of multiplicity of meaning in linguistic expressions, and a contextual vagueness, which refers to the multiple determinability of the meaning and function of words or expressions depending on specific speakers’ choices and situational needs. In other words, forms of vagueness may also concern the very content a sentence is meant to convey. We refer to this as “intentional vagueness”. The aim of the workshop is to gather together scholars working on the form and meaning of intentional vagueness, namely on the fact that some constructions (at whatever level, of whatever type) are used by the speakers precisely to encode a vague referent or state of affairs. This type of vagueness can be conveyed by a variety of forms at different levels of encoding, which, by virtue of their belonging to different domains, are often studied by distinct subfields and linguistic traditions: a) syntax: see binominal constructions with approximators of the sort/kind type (cf. Tabor 1994, Denison 2002 for English; Mihatsch 2007, Masini 2010 for Romance languages), some of which have developed into hedges with a more metalinguistic function (Lakoff 1972, Kay 1997), but also some kinds of list constructions, which have been proved to have an approximating function (Bonvino, Masini & Pietrandrea 2009), or again connectives that encode the non-finite nature of the set of linked elements, thus serving as vagueness markers; b) lexicon and semantics: see the relationship between the coding of vagueness and a specific type of lexical source which is recurrent in different languages, e.g. the class of taxonomic nouns, such as Italian tipo (Voghera to appear), Swedish typ (Rosenkvist & Skärlund to appear), French genre (Fleischmen & Yaguello 2004); c) pragmatics: discourse studies have a special role in the investigation of vagueness, since a number of expressions encoding vagueness (e.g. adverbs, connectives, vague category identifiers or general extenders, cf. Channel 1994, Overstreet 1999, Mihatsch 2009) have been mainly examined in terms of their function in discourse, rather than as markers that bear a grammatical meaning (cf. Dubois 1992, Dines 1980, Aijmer 1985 who assimilate these constructions to discourse markers); d) and, recently, intonation: it is generally recognized that vagueness is more frequent in spoken discourse than in written language (Biber et al. 1999) and that prosody can play a crucial role in conveying a vague interpretation of a chunk of speech (Warren 2007). What emerges from this picture is a great specialization in individual areas, but very little communication between the various subfields and methodologies. Moreover, we observe a lack of a true cross-linguistic perspective. This workshop aims at investigating the following three lines of research: 1) Cross-linguistic variation and diachronic paths in the coding of intentional vagueness - How are the various types of vagueness encoded in the world’s languages? Is it possible to identify recurrent patterns? Are there significant typological differences? - On what levels may vagueness be encoded (intonation, lexicon, morphology, syntax, discourse)? Do different levels match with different types of vagueness (e.g. vagueness conveyed syntactically vs. vagueness conveyed phonetically)? - Are there recurrent diachronic patterns leading to the coding of vagueness? - Are specific categories more apt to be reanalyzed as vagueness markers (e.g. connectives, generic nouns, epistemic adverbs)? The latter question is directly related to the second line of research we propose to explore. 2) Intentional vagueness and other functional domains: delimitation issues - How is intentional vagueness connected with phenomena such as indefiniteness, indeterminacy and non-factuality/irrealis that have been discussed in the literature (cf. Lyons 1999, Jayez & Tovena 2006, Mauri & Sansò to appear)? - Assuming that vagueness is a category of its own, then how can we tell it apart from the above-mentioned domains? - Assuming, instead, that vagueness is a larger category, can we say that there are different types of vagueness that typically trigger different encoding strategies across the world’s languages (e.g. indefinite reference is typically encoded by pronouns, adjectives and adverbs)? - In any of the above cases, what would be the best way to represent the relation between all these expressions and their distribution in the languages of the world (e.g. a semiotic hierarchy, a functional map)? 3) Theoretical and metalinguistic issues: how to talk about vagueness? Given the great intra- and cross-linguistic variation in the coding of vagueness, and the lack of a systematic analysis of intentional vagueness, there is a tendency to overproduce ad-hoc categories for given strategies, suffice it to mention the great variety of terms used to name so-called general extenders (Overstreet 1999), e.g.: set marking tags (Dines 1980), utterance-final tags (Aijmer 1985), extension particles (Dubois 1993), vague category identifiers (Channel 1994), post-detailing component (Selting 2006). This probably depends on various factors: - first, the defining criteria of traditional grammatical categories are of little help in identifying the vagueness functions of the investigated constructions. What about items such as English etcetera or Italian tipo: does it say something about their semantics to describe them in terms of “adverbs”? Another case in point is the Italian connective piuttosto che, which has recently developed the value ‘or something like that’ in particular syntactic contexts (Mauri & Giacalone Ramat 2011): is it useful to still analyze it as a connective even if it does not link anything in such contexts? - secondly, vagueness markers are difficult to classify because they may have a reduced or broader distribution than other items of the same grammatical class; - third, vagueness is not only a semantic phenomenon, nor a purely morphosyntactic one, but it may be rather encoded across different levels, and can require multilevel criteria and representation tools. All these factors – we believe – produce great terminological variation and many distinctions. In our opinion, a better understanding of such a complex phenomenon would take great advantage of an effort also on the metalinguistic side: this would be a decisive step not only forward a better descriptive adequacy, but also forward a better explicative adequacy. In other words, we should try to be less ‘vague’ when we talk about vagueness if we want to develop a good theory of vagueness. TOPICS We welcome submissions discussing the form and meaning of vagueness from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective, in line with the questions raised above. Topics of interest include: - identification and description of specific constructions encoding intentional vagueness (at any level of analysis) in one or more languages; - identification and description of strategies (e.g. connectives, adverbs, etc.) used for coding vagueness intra- and cross-linguistically; - typological studies describing recurrent patterns in the coding of intentional vagueness; - synchronic and diachronic analyses regarding the relation of vagueness with (what seem to be) functionally related domains (such as indeterminacy, indefiniteness, non-factuality/irrealis); - diachronic analyses regarding the emergence of constructions encoding intentional vagueness in the languages of the world; - cognitive or formal representations of intentional vagueness, as part of the meaning encoded by a linguistic expression. (For references, see the attached file) --- Caterina Mauri Dept. of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics University of Pavia Strada Nuova 65 27100 Pavia Italy Email: caterina.mauri at unipv.it Homepage: http://lettere.unipv.it/diplinguistica/docenti.php?&id=1114 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CFP_vagueness_SLE2012.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 153806 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- 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 Mark.Janse at UGent.be Tue Oct 25 13:23:37 2011 From: Mark.Janse at UGent.be (Mark Janse) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:23:37 +0200 Subject: Call for Papers: 5th International Conference on Modern Greek Dialects & Linguistic Theory (Mark Janse) Message-ID: 5th International Conference on Modern Greek Dialects & Linguistic Theory Universiteit Gent / Ghent University (Belgium), 20-22 September 2012 Contact: mgdlt5 at ugent.be The Greek Section of the Department of Linguistics at Ghent University is pleased to announce the 5th International Conference on Modern Greek Dialects & Linguistic Theory (MGDLT5), which will be held 20-22 September 2012 at the Royal Academy of Dutch Language & Literature ( KANTL), Koningstraat 18, Ghent. MGDLT5 continues the series that began in Patras (Greece), 2000, and had its latest instantiation in Chios (Greece), 2009. As opposed to the Romance languages and their dialects, the Modern Greek dialects are much less well-known among general linguists, yet these dialects exhibit a bewildering variety of phenomena due to the fact that many of them have developed in relative isolation or in contact-situations with other dialects and/or other languages. The aim of MGDLT is to highlight the importance of the Modern Greek dialects for general linguists, whether they are interested in phonetics & phonology, morphology & word-formation, syntax & semantics, pragmatics & discourse analysis, psycho- or sociolinguistics, historical-comparative or contact linguistics. The Modern Greek dialects offer a plethora of interesting or even intriguing data which can be used to test prevailing hypothesis about language structure and language use, or which can be analyzed in different ways, using different methods and theories developed in modern linguistics. The organizing committee invites linguists, both senior and junior, to submit a one-page abstract dealing with any aspect of Modern Greek dialectology relevant for linguistic theory to mgdlt5 at ugent.be (Times New Roman, 12 pt.; please use a Unicode-based font for Greek text), by January 31, 2012. Notification of acceptance will be given by the end of February 2012. Invited Speakers: § Geoffrey Horrocks (University of Cambridge) § Adam Ledgeway (University of Cambridge) § Peter Trudgill (University of Agder) Permanent Scientific & Organizing Committee Mark Janse (UGent) Brian D. Joseph (Ohio State University) Angela Ralli (University of Patras) Local Organizing Committee: Mark Janse (UGent), Chair Metin Bağrıaçık (UGent / University of Patras) Klaas Bentein (UGent) Jorie Soltic (UGent) ===================== Best wishes, Mark Janse logo Prof. Dr. Mark Janse Research Professor in Ancient & Asia Minor Greek Department of Linguistics Blandijnberg 2 9000 Gent Belgium Visiting address: Sint-Hubertusstraat 2B ( map) T: +329 264 98 80 F: +329 264 94 51 M: +32 486 288 138 W: ugent.academia.edu/MarkJanse -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 20315 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 bjoseph at ling.ohio-state.edu Tue Oct 25 20:34:47 2011 From: bjoseph at ling.ohio-state.edu (Brian Joseph) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:34:47 -0400 Subject: Conference announcement: Ecology AND Language Message-ID: This may well be of interest to some of you; please feel free to share it with any friends or colleagues you think might be interested as well. --Brian =========================== CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: Ecology AND Language The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 43210 Friday 13 January – Saturday 14 January, 2012 As the 9th Annual Martin Luther King Day Linguistics Symposium, the Department of Linguistics of The Ohio State University is pleased to announce a conference on “Ecology AND Language”, where the emphasis on the conjunction of the two notions is intentional. The symposium will explore various types of mutual enrichment between the study of language and the study of ecology, understood in its broadest sense as referring to interactions between organisms, including language-using humans, and their environment as it is shaped by social, political, and natural factors. There will be invited presentations by Lenore Grenoble of the University of Chicago, on ecology of language use and language endangerment in the circumpolar regions, and by Salikoko Mufwene of the University of Chicago, on an ecological approach to language development and change. In addition, there will be a presentation by John Wenzel, of the Center for Biodiversity and Ecosystems of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, on biological and linguistic “extinction science”, a panel featuring Amanda Miller, Jane Mitsch, and Deborah Morton (all of The Ohio State University) on the ecology of literacy in Africa, and talks on several ecologically inspired linguistics projects under way at The Ohio State University involving researchers in the Department of Linguistics, the Department of Greek and Latin, and the School of Environment and Natural Resources. There is room on the program for more papers, so we invite submission of abstracts for presentations of 20 minutes (with 10 additional minutes for questions and discussion) on any topic relating to the symposium theme investigating the intersection of ecology and language. Please send one-page 500-word (maximum) abstracts (with references and key data placed on a second page if needed) abstracts electronically as a pdf file to joseph.1 at osu.edu. The deadline for receipt of your abstract is MONDAY NOVEMBER 28, 2011. Please include your name, affiliation, and contact information along with the abstract. We will send notifications about acceptances by DECEMBER 5. For information on the MLK Day Linguistics Symposia, please visit: http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~bjoseph/mlk/MLKhistory.html (and links therefrom). -------------- 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 m.norde at rug.nl Wed Oct 26 19:54:56 2011 From: m.norde at rug.nl (Muriel Norde) Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 21:54:56 +0200 Subject: CfP Exaptation follow up Message-ID: ***APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTING*** Call for papers: Exaptation in Language Change -- Constraining the Concept Call deadline November 8, 2011 convenors Freek Van de Velde, University of Leuven, Freek.VanDeVelde at arts.kuleuven.be Muriel Norde, University of Groningen, M.Norde at rug.nl call for papers This is a workshop propsal to be submitted to the 45th Annual Meeting of the /Societas Linguistica Europaea, /to be held at the University of Stockholm, 29 August - 1 September 2012. If you are interested in participating in this workshop, please send both of us a title + a 300 word abstract by November 8, 2011, so we can submit our proposal (including a provisional list of participants and abstracts) to the SLE Conference Manager by November 15. If our proposal is accepted, participants will be invited to submit a full abstract (500 words) by January 15. All abstracts will be reviewed by the convenors as well as by the SLE Scientific Committee. Conference website http://www.sle2012.eu/ Workshop description Exaptation is a concept that was first used in evolutionary biology (Gould & Vrba 1982), to refer to co-optation of a certain trait for a new function.A typical example is the use of feathers, originally serving a thermo-regulatory function, for flight. The term was borrowed into linguistics by Roger Lass (1990) for a specific type of morpholoical change in which "junk" morphemes come to serve different function. In Lass's own words, exapation is "the opportunistic co-optation of a feature whose origin is unrelated or only marginally related to its later use. In other words (loosely) a 'conceptual novelty' or 'invention'." In order to meet this definition of exaptation, a change thus needed to satisfy two criteria: the source morpheme had to be functionless "junk", and its new function needed to be entirely novel. Both criteria have been criticized. With regard to the first criterion, Vincent (1995: 435), Giacalone Ramat (1998), Smith (2006) and Willis (2010) pointed out difficulties with regard to the notion of junk. And indeed, Lass later stretched his notion of exaptation, admitting that linguistic exaptation - just like biological exaptation - could also affect non-junk morphology (see Lass 1997: 318), to the effect that the old and the new function may co-exist. Doubt has also been raised with regard to the second criterion, the novelty of the new function, which is central to the notion of exaptation according to Lass (1990: 82) (see also Norde 2001: 244, 2009: 117 and Traugott 2004). Some scholars have argued against the purported novelty of the function after exaptation (Vincent 1995: 436; Giacalone Ramat 1998, Hopper & Traugott 2003: 135-136). If this criterion is jettisoned, we arrive at a fairly broad definition of exaptation, like for instance in Booij (2010: 211), who defines it as "[t]he re-use of morphological markers". Such a broad conception of exaptation is in line with the notion in evolutionary biology, where neither of the two criteria is decisive for the application of the term to shifts in function, but the question then arises whether this does not make the concept vacuous (see De Cuypere 2005). Despite these criticisms, exaptation has been used as a convenient label for morphological changes that at first sight seem to proceed unpredictably, e.g. by running counter to grammaticalization clines (see Norde 2009: 115-118). It has been applied to various cases of morphological change, discussed in Lass (1990), Norde (2002), Fudeman (2004), Van de Velde (2005, 2006), Narrog (2007), Booij (2010, ms.), Willis (2010) among others. In this workshop, we aim to explore if exaptation is a useful concept in language change and if it is, how it can be constrained so as to avoid over-application. Apart from specific case studies drawing on original data, we welcome papers that address the following issues: (1)Do we need the concept of exaptation in historical linguistics, or does it reduce to more traditional mechanisms such as reanalysis and analogy (De Cuypere 2005)? (2)What is the relation between exaptation and grammaticalization? Do they refer to fundamentally different kinds of changes (Vincent 1995), is exaptation a final stage of grammaticalization (Greenberg 1991, Traugott 2004), or are exaptation and grammaticalization just two different labels for the same type of change? After all, both processes involve reanalysis (Narrog 2007), both processes can come about through pragmatic strengthening (see Croft 2000: 126-130). Furthermore, if the old and new function of the exaptatum co-exist (see above) and if the new function is related to the old one, then exaptation involves 'layering' and 'persistence', respectively (see Van de Velde 2006: 61-62), which are also key features of grammaticalization (see Hopper 1991). (3)What is the relation between exaptation and degrammaticalization? Does exaptation always entail some sort of 'degrammaticalization' (as argued by Heine 2003 and arguably Narrog 2007: 9, 18), or does exaptation often, but not always, go together with degrammaticalization (Norde 2009: 118)? (4)Does exaptation only apply to morphology (Heine 2003: 173), or is it relevant to syntactic change as well, as Brinton & Stein (1995) have argued? (5)Is exaptation language-specific (as argued by Heine 2003: 173, but see Narrogfor evidence to the contrary)? (6)Does exaptation happen primarily in cases of 'system disruption', such as typological word order change or deflection (see Norde 2002: 49, 60, 61)? (7)How should we define the concept of 'novelty', and is it a useful criterion for a change to be qualified as exaptation? Currently, there seem to be different views in the literature on what is exactly understood by a 'new' function. Does this mean (a) an entirely new category in the grammar, (b) a function unrelated to the morpheme's old function, or (c) a different though perhaps not totally unrelated function from the old function? (8)Is exaptation infrequent (Heine 2003:174, Traugott 2004) and non-recurrent (as argued by Heine 2003: 172)? Or can one morpheme undergo several successive stages of exaptation (as argued by Giacalone Ramat 1998: 110-111 with regard to the -/sk/- suffix and by Van de Velde 2006 with regard to the Germanic adjective inflection)? (9)Is exaptation the same thing as what Greenberg (1991) understands by 'regrammaticalization' and as what Croft (2000) understands by 'hypoanalysis', or are there significant differences between these concepts? And what is the overlap with related concept such as 'functional renewal' (Brinton & Stein 1995)? (10)Morphosyntactic change is often /constrained/ by the overall grammatical structure of a language, in particular when a grammaticalizing element provides a new way of expressing an older formal arrangement (see Heath 1997, 1998). Does this also hold for exaptation? To what extent are exaptation processes triggered, influenced, directed or constrained by the overall structure of the language in which they take place? Can exaptation generally be considered as restorative change, whereby language users opportunistically seize on available morphology to preserve the system, or is it the other way around, and do language users try to attribute meaning to functionless morphology, irrespective of the question whether this new meaning aligns with the older grammatical system? *References* Booij, G. 2010 (to appear). /Construction morphology/. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Booij, G. manuscript. Recycling morphology: Case endings as markers of Dutch constructions. . Brinton, L. & D. Stein. 1995. Functional renewal. In: H. Andersen (ed.), /Historical Linguistics 1993/. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 33-47. Croft, W. 2000. /Explaining language change. An evolutionary approach. /Harlow: Longman. De Cuypere, L. 2005. Exploring exaptation in language change. /Folia Linguistica Historica/ 26: 13-26. Fudeman, K. 2004. Adjectival agreement vs. adverbal inflection in Balanta. /Lingua/ 114: 105-23. Giacalone Ramat, A. 1998. Testing the boundaries of grammaticalization. In: A. Giacalone Ramat & P.J. Hopper (eds.), /The limits of grammaticalization/. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 227-270. Gould, Stephen J. & Elizabeth S. Vrba. 1982. Exaptation: a missing term in the science of form. /Paleobiology/ 8:1, 4-15. Greenberg, J.H. 1991. The last stages of grammatical elements: Contractive and expansive desemanticization. In: E.C. Traugott & B. Heine (eds.), /Approaches to grammaticalization/. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 301-314. Heath, J. 1997. Lost wax: abrupt replacement of key morphemes in Australian agreement complexes. /Diachronica/ 14: 197-232. Heath, J. 1998. Hermit crabs: formal renewal of morphology by phonologically mediated affix substitution. /Language/ 74: 728-759. Heine, B. 2003. On degrammaticalization. In: B.J. Blake & K. Burridge (eds.), /Historical linguistics 2001/. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 163-179. Hopper, P.J. 1991. On some principles of grammaticalization. In: E.C. Traugott & B. Heine (eds.), /Approaches to grammaticalization/. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 17-35. Hopper, P.J. & E.C. Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. 2^nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lass, R. 1990. How to do things with junk: Exaptation in language evolution. /Journal of Linguistics/ 26: 79-102. Lass, R. 1997. /Historical linguistics and language change/. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Narrog, H. 2007. Exaptation, grammaticalization, and reanalysis. /California Linguistic Notes/ 32 (1). . Norde, M. 2001. Deflexion as a counterdirectional factor in grammatical change. /Language Sciences/ 23: 231-264. Norde, M. 2002. The final stages of grammaticalization: Affixhood and beyond. In: I. Wischer & G. Diewald (eds.), /New reflections on grammaticalization/. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 45-81. Norde, M. 2009. /Degrammaticalization/. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, J.C. 2006. How to do things without junk: the refunctionalization of a pronominal subsystem between Latin and Romance. In: J.-P.Y. Montreuil (ed.), /New perspectives on Romance linguistics/. Volume II: /Phonetics, phonology and dialectology/. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 183-205. Traugott, E.C. 2004. Exaptation and grammaticalization. In: M. Akimoto (ed.), /Linguistic studies based on corpora/. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo. 133-156. Van de Velde, F. 2005. Exaptatie en subjectificatie in de Nederlandse adverbiale morfologie [Exaptation and subjectification in Dutch adverbial morphology]. /Handelingen der Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis/ 58: 105-124. Van de Velde, F. 2006. Herhaalde exaptatie. Een diachrone analyse van de Germaanse adjectiefflexie [Iterative exaptation. A diachronic analysis of the Germanic adjectival inflection]. In: M. Hüning, A. Verhagen, U. Vogl & T. van der Wouden (eds.), /Nederlands tussen Duits en Engels/. Leiden: Stichting Neerlandistiek Leiden. 47-69. Vincent, N. 1995. Exaptation and grammaticalization. In: H. Andersen (ed.), /Historical linguistics 1993/. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 433-445. Willis, D. 2010. Degrammaticalization and obsolescent morphology: evidence from Slavonic. In: E. Stathi, E. Gehweiler & E. König (eds.), /Grammaticalization: current views and issues/. 151-178. -- Prof. dr. Muriel Norde Scandinavian Languages and Cultures University of Groningen P.O. Box 716 9700 AS Groningen The Netherlands http://www.murielnorde.com -------------- 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