<html>
<body>
We are glad to announce that our workshop proposal for a workshop
on:<br><br>
The diachrony of referential null arguments<br><br>
has been accepted! The workshop will take place at:<br><br>
20 International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Osaka 25-30 July
2011 <br>
(see
http://www.ichl2011.com )<br><br>
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.<br><br>
The deadline for final submission is 15 January 2011<br>
abstract must be submitted directly to the ICHL:<br>
<a href="http://www.ichl2011.com/call_for_papers.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.ichl2011.com/call_for_papers.html<br>
</a> <br><br>
<b>Workshop description<br>
</b> <br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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. <br><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 (Baker 2001);<br>
d) null objects and the grammaticalization of valency;<br>
e) incorporation and the rise of null objects.<br><br>
Papers should have a diachronic orientation; research based on extensive
corpora and quantitative approaches to language change are especially
encouraged.<br>
<b> <br>
References<br>
</b>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>
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>
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’.
<i>Lingua </i>89, 247-280.<br>
Wurff, Wim van der, 1994. “Null objects and learnability: The case
of Latin”, <i>Working Papers of Holland Institute for Generative
Linguistics</i> 1/4.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">We look forward to seeing you in
Osaka!</blockquote><br>
Silvia Luraghi and Dag Haug<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>
<a href="http://lettere.unipv.it/diplinguistica/docenti.php?&id=68" eudora="autourl">
http://lettere.unipv.it/diplinguistica/docenti.php?&id=68</a></body>
</html>