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<p>A workshop at the <a
href="https://www.zfs.uni-hamburg.de/dgfs2020/dgfs2020.html">DGfS
Annual Conference in Hamburg</a>, 2020 March 4-6 (workshop
coordinated by <strong>Martin Haspelmath</strong>):</p>
<h2><strong>Empirical
consequences of universal claims in grammatical theorizing</strong></h2>
<p>Universals of grammar have played a
prominent role in general linguistics since the 1960s, but the
connection
between universal claims and empirical testing has often been
tenuous. The
great majority of linguists have always been working on a single
language, but
many linguists now strive to contribute to a larger enterprise.
Thus, general
claims have often been based initially on a few languages, or even
just on one.
As a result, the literature is full of proposals that have
universal implications while
we do not know to what extent they are true.</p>
<p>This workshop is intended to complement the
conference theme of “linguistic diversity” by focusing on
empirical evidence
for linguistic uniformity, but from a variety of different
perspectives.
Evidence for universal claims can come from a wide range of
sources, e.g.</p>
<ul>
<li>large-scale worldwide <strong>grammar-mining </strong>(along
the lines of Greenberg’s seminal work)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> large <strong>text collections</strong>, either parallel
(Cysouw & Wälchli 2007), or annotated in a parallel way
(Universal Dependencies, Nivre et al. 2016)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>artificial language learning experiments</strong>,
because these remove the conventionality that is associated with
all naturally developed languages (e.g. Culbertson 2012)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>the absence of a credible way of learning the relevant pattern
(<strong>poverty of the stimulus</strong>, Lasnik & Lidz
2016)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>– the absence of published counterevidence </strong>to
well-known claims</li>
</ul>
<p>This workshop would ideally bring together
general linguists with diverse theoretical outlooks, so in
addition to papers
that discuss actual evidence for actual universal claims, it is
also open to
well-argued contributions questioning the idea that special
evidence is needed
for universal claims, and/or that justify the widespread practice
of basing
general claims on few languages.</p>
<h2><strong>Invited speakers</strong></h2>
<ul>
<li><a
href="https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/58779047/Hartmann_Syntax">Katharina
Hartmann</a> (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://hpsg.hu-berlin.de/~stefan/">Stefan Müller</a>
(Humboldt University Berlin)</li>
</ul>
<h2><strong>Call for abstracts</strong></h2>
<p>Abstracts for 30-minute oral presentations are invited (ca. 20
minutes presentation time + discussion). They should not exceed
one page and can (but need not) be anonymous. Please submit your
abstract to <strong><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:universal.claims.theorizing@gmail.com">universal.claims.theorizing@gmail.com</a></strong>.<br>
<br>
Abstract submission deadline: <strong>31-Aug-2019</strong> <br>
Notification of acceptance: 6-Sep-2019 </p>
Workshop website:<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://research.uni-leipzig.de/unicodas/dgfs-workshop-universals-in-grammatical-theorizing-2020/">https://research.uni-leipzig.de/unicodas/dgfs-workshop-universals-in-grammatical-theorizing-2020/</a><br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
IPF 141199
D-04081 Leipzig </pre>
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