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<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Dear all,</blockquote><br>
since the deadline for submission of workshop proposals has been moved to
October 15, the deadline for manifestations of interest for the workshop
"The diachrony of referential null arguments " (convenors:
Silvia Luraghi and Dag Haug) is now October 13. Up to now, we received a
number of reactions, mostly from colleagues who work on Indo-European
languages; in order to stimulate discussion, we'd like to point out that
our workshop is not limited to a specific language family.<br><br>
PRELIMINARY CALL FOR PAPERS FOR A WORKSHOP TO BE HELD AT ICHL 20
(Osaka)<br><br>
Workshop title: The diachrony of referential null arguments<br><br>
Convenors: Dag Haug (University of Oslo) /
Silvia Luraghi (University of Pavia)<br>
Contact:
d.t.t.haug@ifikk.uio.no /
silvia.luraghi@unipv.it<br><br>
Deadline for manifestation of interest: October 13, 2010<br>
(we need a title and a couple of lines of description; the abstract must
be submitted later directly to the ICHL. The final deadline for abstracts
is November 15).<br>
<br>
Definite referential null objects are apparently one of the distinctive
features of non-configurational languges, see Baker (2001). Even though
descriptions are available for various genetically unrelated languages
(see e.g. Austin 2001, Hale 1983, Chung 1984, Huang 1984, Raposo 1986),
there are little if any accounts of their diachrony. <br><br>
Our workshop aims to bring together scholars working on different
language families and on typologically different languages (e.g. head or
dependent marking) 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.<br><br>
<br>
The occurrence of definite referential null objects has been observed in
many ancient Indo-European languages, two examples are given below:<br>
(1) <i>dverginn
mælti,
at
sá
baugr</i><sub>i</sub><i>
skyldi
vera
<br>
</i>
dwarf say.prf.3sg that dem.nom.sg.m
ring(m) should.prf.3sg be.inf <br>
<i>
hverjum
hofuðsbani, er
atti
<b>Ø</i></b><sub>i<br>
</sub>
whosoever.dat.sg
death
rel have.prf.3sg <br>
“The
dwarf said that that ring should bring death to anybody who possessed
(it)”<br>
(Old
Icelandic, from Sigurðsson, 1993, p. 248);<br>
(2)
<i>toîsi dè deksiòn
hêken
<b>ero#diòn</i></b><sub>i</sub><b><i> </b>eggùs hodoîo Pallàs
Athe#naíe:#
toì
d’ <br>
</i>
3pl.dat ptc right send:aor.3sg heron:acc near
road:gen <i>P</i>.:nom <i>A</i>.:nom 3pl.nom ptc <i>ouk
ídon
<b>Ø</i></b><sub>i</sub><i>
ophthalmoîsi núkta
di’ orphnaíe#n allà
<b>Ø</i></b><sub>i</sub><i> <b>klágksantos<br>
</i></b>not see:aor.3pl
eyes:dat night:acc
through dark:acc but
scream:part.gen.sg.m<br>
<i>ákousan<br>
</i>
hear:aor.3pl<br>
“Athena sent them an heron to the right of their route: they could not
see <b>it</b> in the dark night, but heard <b>it</b> screaming.”, Hom.
<i>Il.</i> 10.274-276 (Greek);<br>
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
(see Schäufele 1990 on Sanskrit; several studies have been devoted to
null objects in Old Icelandic, see e.g. Sigurðsson 1993 and Rögnvaldsson
1995). At least in Latin and possibly in Greek, null objects seem to be
obligatory in coordinated sentences, unless emphasis or disambiguation
are involved (see Luraghi 1997, 1998a, b, 2003, Sznayder 1998; this is
possibly a common phenomenon connected to coordination reduction and
frequent in non-Indo-European languages as well, see Harris Delisle 1978,
Luraghi 2004), as well as in answers to yes/no questions (see van der
Wurff 1997, Luraghi 1997, 2003). Descriptions of increasing use of
over objects in Latin and Germanic point to increasing transitivity or
emerging configurationality (see e.g. Johnson 1991, Luraghi 2010). <br>
Papers presented at the workshop should aim to assess: <br>
a) the relation between null objects and other parameters of
configurationality;<br>
b) the relation of null objects to other null argument, in particular to
null subjects;<br>
c) the relation between null objects and the parameter of head/dependent
marking (cf. Baker 2001);<br>
d) null objects and the grammaticalization of valency.<br>
Papers should have a diachronic orientation; research based on extensive
corpora and quantitative approaches to language change are especially
encouraged.<br>
<br>
Austin, Peter K. 2001 Word order in a free word order language: the case
of Jiwarli. In Jane Simpson, David Nash, Mary Laughren, Peter Austin and
Barry Alpher (eds) <i>Forty years on: Ken Hale and Australian
languages</i>, 305-324. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. <br>
Baker, Mark (2001), ‘Configurationality and polysynthesis’, in M.
Haspelmath, E. König, W. Oesterreicher, W. Raible (eds.),
<i>Language Typology and Language Universals . An International
Handbook</i>. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, vol. 2, pp.
1433-41.<br>
Chung, S. 1984. ‘Identifiability and null objects in Chamorro.’ <i>BLS
</i>10: 116–30<i>.<br>
</i>Hale, Kenneth. 1983. Warlpiri and the grammar of nonconfigurational
languages. <i>Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 1:574.<br>
</i>Harris Delisle, Helga 1978 Coordination
reduction. In Universals of Human Language, ed. J. Greenberg.
Stanford: UP. Pp. 515-583.<br>
Huang, C-T. James. 1984. On the distribution and reference of empty
pronouns. <i>Linguistic Inquiry</i>, 15, 531-574. <br>
Johnson, Ruth Ann, 1991. <i>The Direct Object Pronoun as a Marker of
Transitivity in Latin</i>. Ph. D. Diss. UCLA.<br>
Luraghi, Silvia 1997. Omission of the direct object in Classical
Latin. <i>Indogermanische Forschungen </i>102, 239-257.<br>
Luraghi, Silvia 1998a Omissione dell’oggetto diretto in frasi
coordinate: dal latino all’italiano. In <i>Sintassi storica. Atti
del xxx Congresso SLI</i>, ed. P. Ramat. Roma: Bulzoni, 183-196.<br>
Luraghi, Silvia 1998b Participant tracking in Tacitus. In
<i>Estudios de Lingüística Latina</i>, ed. B. García-Hernandez. Madrid:
Ediciones Clásicas, 467-485.<br>
Luraghi, Silvia 2003, ‘Definite referential null objects in Ancient
Greek’. <i>Indogermanische Forschungen</i> 108, 169-196.<br>
Luraghi, Silvia (2004), ‘Null Objects in Latin and Greek and the
Relevance of Linguistic Typology for Language Reconstruction’, in
<i>Proceedings of the 15th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, JIES
Monograph 49,</i> pp.234-256.<br>
Luraghi, Silvia 2010. “The rise (and possible downfall) of
configurationality”. In S. Luraghi and V. Bubenik, eds.,
<i>Continuum Companion to Historical Linguistics</i>, London/New York,
Continuum, 212-229<br>
Raposo, Eduardo. 1986. On the null object in European Portuguese. Studies
in Romance linguistics, ed. by Osvaldo Jaeggli and Carmen Silva-Corvalán,
373-90. Dordrecht: Foris.<br>
Rögnvaldsson, Eiríkur (1995), ‘Old Icelandic: A Non-Configurational
Language?’. <i>North-Western European Language Evolution </i>26,
3-29.<br>
Schäufele, Steven (1990), <i>Free Word-Order Syntax: the Challenge from
Vedic Sanskrit to Contemporary Formal Syntactic Theory</i>. Ph. D.
dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.<br>
Sigurðsson, Halldór A. (1993), ‘Argument-drop in Old Islandic’.
<u>Lingua</u> 89, 247-280.<br>
Sznajder, Lyliane, 1998. “Conditions d’effacement des compléments
d’objet et agencement des propositions en latin”. In <i>Estudios de
Lingüística Latina</i>, ed. B. García-Hernandez. Madrid: Ediciones
Clásicas.<br><br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
Silvia Luraghi<br>
Dipartimento di Linguistica Teorica e Applicata<br>
Università di Pavia<br>
Strada Nuova 65<br>
I-27100 Pavia<br>
telef.: +39-0382-984685<br>
fax: +39-0382-984487<br>
silvia.luraghi@unipv.it<br>
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