<div dir="ltr"><p><strong><font size="4">Workshop on the Loss of Inflection</font><br></strong></p>
<p><b><br></b></p><p><b>Call for papers</b><br></p><p>Abstracts are invited for participation in a <a href="http://www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/projects/loss-of-inflection/workshop/" target="_blank">Workshop on the Loss of Inflection</a> to be held as part of the <a href="http://ichl23.utsa.edu/" target="_blank">23rd International Conference on Historical Linguistics</a> (ICHL) in San Antonio, Texas (31 July - 4 August 2017). <br></p>
<p><b><br></b></p><p><b>Background</b><br></p>
<p>During its recorded
history English has lost most of its inflection, including the
morphological marking of mood, case and gender, and almost all of its
person and number marking. English is far from unique in this regard:
the loss of inflection has been observed in the history of a vast number
of languages, representing disparate genealogical and geographical
classes. At first glance this may appear to be just a matter of decay:
words have got shorter, categories reduced, and meaning simplified. But
closer inspection reveals that this reduction typically comes about
through the interaction of innovations at all levels of grammar. At one
level the result is simplification, but the processes that lead to it
involve a complex series of systemic changes and the adoption of new
organizing principles. Far from being just a matter of decay, the
evidence so far shows that the loss of inflection follows along lines
determined by paradigmatic structure, and so reveals properties of the
organization of inflectional systems that might otherwise remain hidden.</p>
<p>The overarching research
question of the workshop will thus be: what are the possible pathways of
inflectional loss, and what do they reveal about the nature of
inflectional systems? We particularly encourage submissions approaching
this question from the following five angles:</p>
<p>1. What role do the
morphosyntactic features themselves play? That is, are certain types of
function more likely to be lost than others?</p>
<p>2. What is the influence
of the type of morphological form? For example, are suffixes
particularly prone to loss because of the particular susceptibility of
word-final position to phonological weakening?</p>
<p>3. Could the complexity of the inflectional system itself bring about its demise?</p>
<p>4. Since the loss of
morphological marking often goes hand-in-hand with changes in syntax,
what is the relationship between the two? Does syntactic change motivate
the loss of inflection, or vice versa?</p>
<p>5. Is the 'natural' loss of inflection different from contact-induced change?</p>
<p><b><br></b></p><p><b>Workshop organisers: <br></b></p><p>Helen Sims-Williams, Matthew Baerman, Oliver Bond and Greville G. Corbett (University of Surrey)<br></p><p><b><br></b></p><p><b>Deadline for abstracts:</b></p><p>1 December 2016</p><p><br></p>
<p><b>ICHL abstract submission guidelines:</b></p>
<p>Abstracts are invited for
papers for the General Session and Workshops. Abstracts should be a
maximum of two pages in length, including references, and may focus on
any aspect of historical linguistics. <br></p><p>Abstracts
should be submitted via the conference Easy Chair link
(<a href="https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ichl23">https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ichl23</a>). (If you have problems
using Easy Chair, please contact us at ichl23@utsa.edu.). <br></p><p>Authors
may present a maximum of two papers, whether single-authored or
co-authored. Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by at least three
members of the Scientific Committee.</p>
<p>Abstracts may be submitted
for the General Session or for one of the Workshops listed below.
Abstracts submitted for a workshop but not accepted there will be
automatically considered for inclusion in the general session.</p>
<p>For further details on abstract submission see <a href="http://ichl23.utsa.edu/cfp/" target="_blank">http://ichl23.utsa.edu/cfp/</a></p><div><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><u> </u></div><div> </div><div>Dr. Oliver Bond<br> <br>Senior Lecturer in Linguistics<br> <br>Surrey Morphology Group<br>School of English and Languages<br>University of Surrey<br>Guildford<br>GU2 7XH<br>UK<br> <br>Telephone: +44 (0)1483 689957<br>Email: <a href="mailto:o.bond@surrey.ac.uk" target="_blank">o.bond@surrey.ac.uk</a><br>Room: 01AC05, AC Building, fifth floor<br><br></div><div><a href="http://www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/bond" target="_blank">www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/bond</a><br><br></div><div><br>Recent publications:<br><br></div><div>Bond, Oliver, Greville G. Corbett, Marina Chumakina and Dunstan Brown (eds.). 2016. <i>Archi: Complexities of agreement in cross-theoretical perspectives</i>. Oxford: Oxford University Press.<br><span><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/archi-9780198747291?cc=gb&lang=en&" target="_blank">Available now from OUP</a><br></span><br></div><div>Bond, Oliver. 2016. Negation through reduplication and tone: Implications for the Lexical Functional Grammar/Paradigm Function Morphology interface. <i>Journal of Linguistics</i>, 52, 2: 277-310. <br>doi: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022226715000134" target="_blank">10.1017/S002222671500013</a><br><br></div><div>Bond, Oliver and Gregory D. S. Anderson. 2014. Aspectual and focal functions of
Cognate-Head-Dependent Constructions: Evidence from Africa. <i>Linguistic Typology</i>,
18, 2: 215-250.
<br>doi: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2014-0010" target="_blank">10.1515/lingty-2014-0010</a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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