<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US">Workshop
title: The diachrony of referential null arguments</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US">Venue: 20
International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Osaka 25-30 July 2011 </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US"><span style=""> </span>(see <a href="http://www.ichl2011.com">http://www.ichl2011.com</a> )<br style="">
<br style="">
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US">Convenors: Dag
Haug (University of Oslo) / Silvia Luraghi (University of Pavia)<br>
Contact: <a href="mailto:d.t.t.haug@ifikk.uio.no">d.t.t.haug@ifikk.uio.no</a>
/ <a href="mailto:silvia.luraghi@unipv.it">silvia.luraghi@unipv.it</a><br style="">
<br style="">
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US">Deadline for final
submission: 15 January 2011</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.ichl2011.com/call_for_papers.html">http://www.ichl2011.com/call_for_papers.html</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US">Workshop description</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US"><span style=""> </span>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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US"><span style=""> </span>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<span style=""> </span>1997).
Descriptions of increasing use of over objects in Latin and Germanic point to
increasing transitivity or emerging configurationality. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US">Papers presented
at the workshop should aim to assess: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US">a) the relation
between null objects and other parameters of configurationality;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US">b) the relation of
null objects to other null argument, in particular to null subjects;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US">c) the relation
between null objects and the parameter of head/dependent marking (Baker 2001);</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US">d) null objects
and the grammaticalization of valency;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US">e) incorporation
and the rise of null objects.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US">Papers should have
a diachronic orientation; research based on extensive corpora and quantitative
approaches to language change are especially encouraged.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US">References</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 14.2pt; text-indent: -14.2pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;" lang="EN-US">Baker, Mark (2001),
‘Configurationality and polysynthesis’, in M. Haspelmath, E. König, W.
Oesterreicher, W. Raible (eds.),<span style=""> </span><i style="">Language Typology and Language Universals .
An International Handbook</i>. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, vol. 2, pp.
1433-41.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 14.2pt; text-indent: -14.2pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;" lang="EN-US">Luraghi, Silvia 2004, ‘</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;" lang="EN-GB">Null Objects in
Latin and Greek and the Relevance of Linguistic Typology for Language
Reconstruction’, in <i style="">Proceedings of the
15th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference</i></span><i style=""><span style="font-size: 10pt;" lang="EN-US">, JIES Monograph 49,</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt;" lang="EN-US"> pp.234-256.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 14.2pt; text-indent: -14.2pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;" lang="EN-US">Schäufele, Steven (1990), <i style="">Free Word-Order Syntax: the Challenge from
Vedic Sanskrit to Contemporary Formal Syntactic Theory</i>. Ph. D.
dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 14.2pt; text-indent: -14.2pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;" lang="EN-US">Sigurðsson, Halldór A.
(1993), ‘Argument-drop in Old Islandic’.<span style="">
</span><i style="">Lingua </i>89, 247-280.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 14.2pt; text-indent: -14.2pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;" lang="EN-US">Wurff, Wim van der,
1994.<span style=""> </span>“Null objects and learnability:
The case of Latin”, <i style="">Working Papers of
Holland Institute for Generative Linguistics</i> 1/4.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 14.2pt; text-indent: -14.2pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;" lang="EN-US"> </span></p>