CfP: The Diachronic Typology of Differential Argument Marking / University of Konstanz, April 5-6, 2014

Thu Jul 4 16:37:38 UTC 2013

- apologizes for multiple posting -
*CALL FOR PAPERS*

/E-mail:/ DAM.2014 at uni-konstanz.de.
/URL:/ http://www.uni-konstanz.de/serzants/DAM_2014/

Workshop/Conference: *The Diachronic Typology of Differential Argument 
Marking, *University of Konstanz, April 5-6, 2014

Differential marking of grammatical relations has been the topic of a 
number of investigations. However, no large-scale, comprehensive study 
of the historical development of the differential case-marking 
strategies has been carried out yet. The present workshop aims at 
filling this gap. Its task is to uncover the multi-factorial mechanisms 
leading to the rise of the differential argument marking, more 
specifically, to the Differential Subject- (DSM) and the Differential 
Object Marking (DOM).

The phenomenon of the DOM/DSM is typically conditioned various factors 
such as definiteness and/or specificity, or discourse prominence, cf. 
Aissen (2003), Bossong (1998), von Heusinger and Kaiser (2007), Kittilä 
(2006), Kittilä et al. (2011), Leonetti (2004), just to mention some. 
Cross-linguistically, it may be differently realized formally and 
triggered by a variety of conditions (cf. de Hoop and de Swart 2008). 
Beside DOM/DSM based on formal or semantic properties of the respective 
NP, it may also be governed by the tense or aspectual properties of the 
verb phrase or the clause type (de Hoop, forthc.). The DSM/DOM phenomena 
are also sensitive to the thematic roles of the respective arguments 
(e.g., rather to agents and less to experiencers), and their inherent 
properties. Thus DSM often involves the marking of highly agentive 
subjects rather than atypical ones (cf. de Hoop and Malchukov 2007, de 
Hoop and de Swart 2008), in order to contrast both arguments of a 
transitive clause.

Striking about the DOM/DSM phenomena is the fact that the aforementioned 
distinctions are often morphologically expressed by assigning distinct 
cases, quasi-allomorph case affixes or prepositions to encode these 
contrasts. From the typological research we know, however, that the 
primary function of case is to encode relations among constituents of a 
clause (Blake 2001), including the thematic roles, whereas such NP 
properties as definiteness/specificity/non-referentiality, animacy, and 
discursive prominence are typically encoded by other means, e.g., by 
determiners primarily. We ask how this atypical functional extension of 
the case-related morphological inventory emerges historically.

We are not only interested in the functional history of the phenomenon; 
syntactic changes that lead to syntactically uniform behaviour of both 
alternating markings is equally interesting and unstudied. Thus, at an 
early developmental stage, the assignment of different cases may have 
impact on the syntactic properties of that argument, cf. (1) from Russian:

(1) /   Ja          vypil           sok                         / sok-a/
          I:NOM drink:PAST juice:ACC(=NOM) / juice-GEN
         'I drank up the jouce / I drank (some) juice.'

The clause in (1), if uttered with the object NP sok, can be passivized, 
while with the (partitive) genitive-marked NP sok-a the passivization 
and thereby the promotion of the object NP into the subject is not 
available.

Essentially, while our knowledge on functional semantics of DOM/DSM and 
its possible integration into different approaches to grammar has 
considerably increased in the last decades, there has not been done much 
research on how DOM/DSM arise across languages and what are the 
triggering mechanisms for it. The whole process involving a non-trivial 
shift in the domain of application from the functional domain of a 
"typical" case, i.e. from encoding relations among constituents, into, 
e.g., the domain of definiteness or specificity, ontological classes or 
aspectually relevant opposition (e.g., partitive vs. total in Finnic), 
has not been extensively studied yet.

We invite contributions relating to any aspect of the DSM/DOM diachrony 
from any perspective. We emphasize that diachrony does not necessarily 
imply reconstructions of proto-stages of a language or involvement of 
ancient texts. Diachronic changes can be observed on a quasi-synchronic 
level, e.g., between the conservative and colloquial style of a present 
day language. Moreover, such quasi-synchronic changes can often be 
described and analyzed even at a more fine-grained level and, hence, 
provide for more insights on what kind of diachronic processes DAM 
systems typically undergo.

We welcome studies dealing with macro-changes (e.g., with the rise or 
demise of DAM) as well as studies treating micro-changes (e.g., changes 
in the functional semantics of a particular DAM system).

Possible questions that might be addressed includes (but are not 
confined to) the following:

- What is the etymology of the morphological markers that gave rise to 
DOM/DSM?
- How to model the functional shift of a prototypical case marker into a 
DSM/DOM marker with the respective (e.g., determiner-like) semantics in 
the particular case?
- How to model the morphosyntactic development from a solid, 
valence-driven case frame of a predicate into a sort of labile predicate 
with a DSM/DOM-driven case frame?
- What kinds of morphosyntactic processes enable overriding or loosening 
the case frame?
- What kind of syntactic changes accompany rise, development and demise 
of DAM?
- Are the animacy-driven, definiteness-driven, 
information-structure-driven DOM/DSM phenomena diachronically 
interrelated with regard to their relative chronology? Which function is 
typically acquired first?
- What is the relative chronology of the lexical input restrictions in 
the rise of DOM/DSM? Which NP types acquire DOM/DSM first and which last?
- How can DOM/DSM phenomena be transferred or copied via language contact?
- How do DOM/DSM disappear in favor of a straightforward government?
- Can DOM/DSM be regarded as just transitional stages in a development, 
whereby some new, productive case-marking pattern replaces the old one 
(or the lack thereof) and develops into a canonical object or subject 
case-marking, respectively, gradually affecting more and more NP types?

References
Aissen, Judith (2003): Differential Object marking: Iconicity vs. 
Economy. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21, 435-448.
Blake, Barry J. (2001): Case. Cambridge textbooks in linguistics. 2nd 
edition. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bossong, G. (1998): Le marquage différentiel de l'objet dans les langues 
d'Europe. In: Feuillet, J. (ed.): Actance et Valence dans les Language 
de l'Europe. Berlin, New York : Mouton de Gryuter, 193-258.
de Hoop, Helen, forthc.: The rise of animacy based differential subject 
marking in Dutch. In: Seržant, I. A. and L. Kulikov (eds.), The The 
Diachronic Typology of Non-canonical Subjects. SLCS. 
Amsterdam/Philadelphia. John Benjamins.
de Hoop, Helen and Malchukov, Andrej (2007): On fluid differential case 
marking: a bidirectional OT account. Lingua 117, 1636-1656.
de Hoop, Helen and Peter de Swart eds., (2008): Differential subject 
marking. Dordrecht: Springer.
von Heusinger, Klaus and Georg A. Kaiser (2007): Differential Object 
Marking and the lexical semantics of verbs in Spanish. In: Kaiser, G.A. 
and M. Leonetti (eds.): Proceedings of the Workshop "Definiteness, 
Specificity and Animacy in Ibero-Romance Languages". Universität 
Constance (Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft. Arbeitspapier 122), 85-110.
Kittilä, Seppo T. (2006): Object-, animacy- and role-based strategies: A 
typology of object marking, Studies in Language 32/1, 1-32.
Kittilä, Seppo, Jussi Ylikoski, Katja Västi, eds., (2011): Case Animacy 
and Semantic Roles. Typological Studies in Language 99. 
Amsterdam/Philadelphia. John Benjamins.
Leonetti, Manuel (2004): Specificity and differential object marking in 
Spanish. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 3, 75-114 [revised version of: 
Specificity and object marking: the case of Spanish a. In: K. von 
Heusinger & G.A. Kaiser (eds.). Proceedings of the Workshop "Semantic 
and Syntactic Aspects of Specificity in Romance Languages". 
Arbeitspapier 113. Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Constance 
2003, 67-101].

*Invited speakers* (alphabetically):

Miriam Butt
Eleanor Coghill
Dmitriy Ganenkov
Alice Harris
Klaus von Heusinger
Axel Holvoet
Peter Hook
Tuomas Huumo
Giorgio Iemmolo
Seppo Kittilä and Jussi Ylikoski
Marian Klamer
Andrej Malchukov
Chantal Melis
Sergey Say

*Abstracts*

Abstracts are invited for the workshop session. Each presentation has 20 
minutes followed by 10 minutes of discussion. Only one paper per 
participant is admitted.
Abstracts should be anonymous, maximally of one page in length, 
excluding references and examples (in .doc, .pdf or .docx).
Abstracts should be submitted per e-mail at DAM.2014 at uni-konstanz.de.
The URL of the workshop is: http://www.uni-konstanz.de/serzants/DAM_2014/

*The deadline for the submission of the abstract is: November 10, 2013.**
**Applicants will be notified of abstract acceptance by: November 20, 
2013.**
*
All contributors will be invited to submit a version of their paper to 
be published in a peer-reviewed conference follow-up volume.
Further details may be found on the webpage: 
http://www.uni-konstanz.de/serzants/DAM_2014/.

Workshop organizers,
Ilja Ser ž ant & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich

-- 
Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc
University of Konstanz
Department of Linguistics
Zukunftskolleg, Box 216
D-78457 KONSTANZ

URL: http://www.uni-konstanz.de/serzants/

Tel.: +49 753 188 5672

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