7.637, Calls: Phonology, Comparative grammar, OV/VO
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LINGUIST List: Vol-7-637. Tue Apr 30 1996. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 363
Subject: 7.637, Calls: Phonology, Comparative grammar, OV/VO
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---------------------------------Directory-----------------------------------
1)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 14:55:55 BST
From: vdweijer at rullt3.leidenuniv.nl (Jeroen van de Weijer)
Subject: Calls: Phonology, Comparative Grammar, OV/VO
---------------------------------Messages------------------------------------
1)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 14:55:55 BST
From: vdweijer at rullt3.leidenuniv.nl (Jeroen van de Weijer)
Subject: Calls: Phonology, Comparative Grammar, OV/VO
Three conference announcements!
The Holland Institute of Generative Linguistics (HIL) will organize
three conferences and workshops in the beginning of 1997 at the Vrije
Universiteit in Amsterdam. HIL will then exist five years. Here are
the announcements and calls for papers of these conferences, viz.
* The Third HIL Phonology Conference (9-11 January)
* The Twelfth Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop (9-11 January)
* The OV/VO Workshop (7-8 January)
HILP 3
Call for Papers
On 9-11 January 1997, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam will host the
3rd Holland Institute of Generative Linguistics Conference on
Phonology, HILP 3.
Abstracts should be submitted before July 1st 1996. The address of
the selection committee is:
Selection Committee HILP 3
Prof. Geert Booij
Vrije Universiteit, vakgroep Taalkunde
De Boelelaan 1105
1081 HV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Please send 5 anonymous abstracts.
Speakers whose abstract is selected will receive a (partial)
reimbursement of their traveling costs.
E-mail: booij at let.vu.nl
WWW: http://oasis.leidenuniv.nl/hil/confs/hilp3/hilp3.htm
=============================================================================
12th COMPARATIVE GERMANIC SYNTAX WORKSHOP
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam/HIL
9-11 January 1997
================================
On 9-11 January 1997, the 12th meeting of the Comparative Germanic
Syntax Workshop will be held at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam/HIL.
Abstracts are solicited for 40-minute presentations (followed by 15
minutes of discussion) which address topics in the syntax of the
Germanic languages from a comparative point of view.
To submit, send *five copies* of an abstract whose length should not
exceed 2 pages (single-spaced; 12pt. font), including examples,
diagrams and references. Please add a 3x5 card stating the title of
your abstract, your name and affiliation (including E-mail address,
fax and telephone number).
Abstracts should be received at the address given below by 1 July
1996. (Submissions by E-mail or fax will be accepted; please make
sure that, if you opt for this route, your abstract is properly
decipherable.)
Speakers will be partially reimbursed for their travel expenses.
Address your queries and send your submissions to:
CGSW 12
c/o Marcel den Dikken
Holland Institute of Generative Linguistics
Vakgroep Taalkunde (ATW)
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
De Boelelaan 1105
1081 HV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Fax: +31 20 4446500
Phone: +31 20 4446482
E-mail: dikken at jet.let.vu.nl
WWW: http://oasis.leidenuniv.nl/hil/confs/cgsw12/cgsw.htm
============================================================================
WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT
On the typological differences between VO- and OV-languages:
Minimalism and the Uniform Base Hypothesis
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam/HIL
7-8 January 1997
================================
On 7-8 January 1997, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam/HIL will host a
workshop specially focused on the typological differences between VO-
and OV-languages and their formal account, against the background of
recent theoretical developments in the minimalist framework (Chomsky
1993, 1995) and Kayne's (1994) antisymmetry thesis. The theme of the
workshop is detailed in what follows.
In the eighties, the distinction between VO-languages, on the one
hand, and OV-languages, on the other, used to be generally accounted
for by assuming a directionality parameter on government (Travis
1984): in VO-languages canonical government is to the right, so that
the (nominal) complement of a verb must be on the right of the verb in
order to get Case, whereas OV-languages set the canonical government
directionality parameter to the left, so that the complement of the
verb must be on the left in order to get Case. With the introduction
of Checking Theory (Chomsky 1993), the postulation of a canonical
direction of Case-assignment was rendered superfluous, and in fact
unstatable; in all languages, checking the Case-feature of the nominal
complement of the verb takes place in the specifier position of some
func- tional projection (FP, commonly identified as AgrOP) above VP:
by moving the object into SpecFP and moving V into F, as in (1), the
verb and its complement enter into a Spec-Head relation and
Case-checking can take place.
(1) ... [FP .... F ... [VP ... V Object]
^\ ^\___________/ /
\_________________/
In principle, this proposal makes it possible to assume that the
distinction between VO- and OV-languages is only a
"surface"-phenomenon, which is due to the level at which the pertinent
movement operation takes place -- a difference which is expressible in
terms of the strength of the N-features of F, such that in
VO-languages, in contradistinction to OV-languages, the N-feature is
weak and movement of NP is postponed to LF, and is consequently not
reflected in the phonetic realization of the construction.
The prospect of reducing directionality effects to the parametrized
strength of the features of functional heads is interesting from the
perspective of language acquisition (since it allows us to restrict
parametrization to properties of the functional system; the
directionality of government approach held no such promise). It also
comports well with Kayne's (1994) independent argument that all
languages have a specifier-head-complement order in the base, and that
all apparent complement-head orders are transformationally derived by
movement of the complement into some specifier position that
c-commands the surface position of the head.
Kayne's hypothesis has yielded a host of problems for the description
of (especially) the OV-languages, not least because it followed from
Kayne's proposal that movement is always leftward. Consequently,
besides the fact that all proposals that relied on a government
directionality parameter had to be recast in terms of movement, all
accounts that involved rightward movement had to be reformulated as
cases of leftward movement. Today witnesses a wide variety of
proposals along these lines, typically taking the following form: if
an element Y surfaces to the right of some element X in language La,
whereas the order is reversed in language Lb, then either X takes an
additional movement step in overt syntax in La that is lacking in Lb,
or Y under- goes an overt-syntactic movement operation in Lb that is
lacking in La. Proposals of this general type often reach a fair
degree of observational and descriptive adequacy; their explanatory
adequacy ultimately rests upon the identification of appropriate
triggers for the postulated movement operations, triggers that (in the
optimal case) are independently motivated.
This workshop is NOT primarily interested in accounts aimed at showing
that minimalist and antisymmetric approaches to the OV/VO distinction
can be con- ceived and technically made to work. Rather, this workshop
aims to investigate the systematic (typological) properties of VO- and
OV-languages. For instance, predicative adjectives always follow the
verb in VO-languages (see English (2a)), whereas they always precede
the verb in the OV-languages (cf. Dutch (2b)).
(2) a. that we painted the house green.
b. dat we het huis groen schilderden.
On a directionality parameter approach there are various ways to
account for this. One proposal involves assuming that the accusative
object and the resultative adjective form a Small Clause: since the
object is assigned Case by the verb under government, the complete
Small Clause must follow the verb if canonical government is to the
right, whereas it has to precede it if canonical government is to the
left. In the minimalist and antisymmetric framework, explanations of
this sort are lost. For example, one could in principle imagine a(n
unwanted) derivation of the type in (3) in which only the verb and the
object move, but in which the adjectival predicate remains in situ.
(3) ... [FP .... F ... [VP ... V [SC NP Predicate]
^\ ^\___________/ /
\___________________/
Since movement of the object is triggered by some strong N-feature of
the functional head F, descriptive generalizations such as "adjectival
predicates precede the verb iff the accusative object precedes the
verb" constitute a tough challenge for the new framework outlined
above, since apparently the position of the resultative adjective must
in some way be made sensitive to the strength of the N-feature of F
(which is responsible for the obligatorily overt movement of the NP),
which is not an easy task.
That there is tight relationship between the position of the object
with respect to the verb, on the one hand, and the position of other
elements and the verb, on the other, is quite clear from the
diachronic development of English. Old English can be characterized as
an OV-language, and elements such as resultative adjectives, particles
and stranded prepositions (generally) preceded the verb (in
clause-final position). After the change from OV to VO, these elements
henceforth occurred after the verb. And there are reasons to assume
that these changes took place simultaneously. The need to arrive at a
principled account of word order generalizations such as the one given
above is evident from the fact that numerous generalizations of this
sort can be formulated.
Typological questions concerning the OV/VO dichotomy, or, more
generally, the distinction between head-finality/initiality, arise not
only in syntax. In morphology, it seems that languages treat
derivation in an essentially uniform fashion (the head being final;
see Williams' 1981 Righthand Head Rule), while difficult typological
challenges are posed in the domain of compounding, which, as far as
head placement is concerned, is cross-linguistically much more
diverse. Consider for instance the word-order difference between the
Romance and Germanic languages within deverbal compounds: French
"ouvre-bonte" (V-N) vs. Dutch "blikopener"/English "can-opener" (N-V)
(see Kayne 1994 for discussion). This difference does not strictly
correlate with the OV/VO dichotomy in syntax (witness the fact that
English behaves like Dutch, not like French), which raises the
question whether the factors determining head placement in morphology
are different from those that rule head placement in syntax. If the
latter is a function of the strength of morphological features of
functional heads, then how should the former be given formal shape?
The answer to this question will depend to a significant extent on
other important questions about morphology: (i) where morphological
complexes are built, (ii) whether morphological structure (i.e. the
internal structure of morphological complexes) features functional
elements or not, and (iii) whether the internal structure of words
(the lexicon) comes under the purview of the Linear Correspondence
Axiom.
In suprasegmental phonology, syllables are taken to consist of a
structure (e.g. the classic [Onset [Nucleus Coda]] structure; see also
Dependency Phonology) which parallels the Kayne type antisymmetric
layout of syntactic structures: the head (Nucleus) precedes its
dependent (Coda), and the constituent comprising the head and its
dependent linearly follows the "specifier" (Onset). Metrical
phonology has moreover witnessed a recent shift away from Hayes (1982)
type foot typologies distinguishing iambic and trochaic patterns,
towards a systematically trochaic (i.e. left-headed) foot inventory,
in apparent harmony with the antisymmetric movement in syntactic
theory. Meanwhile, at the higher level of prosodic structure it seems
(cf. Nespor & Vogel 1982, 1986) that there is an OV/VO-distinction
reflected in the relative prominence of the constituents that form a
phonological phrase -- weak/strong in VO-languages vs. strong/weak in
OV-languages. It is not clear how the observed prominence structure of
the phonological phrase can be related to the strength of the
N-features of functional heads.
Nespor et al. (1995) argue that the prosodic structure of the
phonological phrase is an essential aid in the child's task of finding
out whether the language it is acquiring is of the OV or the VO
type. This leads us into the realm of the acquisition of word-order
related phenomena, both in the realm of L1 acquisition and in the
domain of second language learning.
With regard to the former, it is to be noted that children in the
earliest stage of speech production consistently use the order of the
verb and the object found in the adult language, as is evident from
the Dutch and English examples in (4a) and (4b), respectively.
(4) a. eat candy
b. snoepjes eten
Kayne's antisymmetry would lead us to say that the Dutch order is the
result of overt-syntactic movement of the NP "snoepjes" into some
higher SpecFP. One is then led to ask whether there is any other
evidence that movement of this type takes place at this stage of
language development.
With regard to the latter, there is a protracted debate going on about
the influence of the source language on the acquisition of word-order
patterns in the object language. To take a specific example, it seems
to be the case that in the acquisition of the word order of Dutch
possessive DPs, Moroccan and Turkish learners follow different
strategies, which suggests that the properties of the learner's mother
tongue play a role in L2 acquisition of word order. How can this
source language influence be accommodated in a minimalist and
antisymmetric approach to syntactic structure?
CALL FOR PAPERS
- Abstracts are solicited for 40-minute presentations (followed by 15
minutes of discussion) which contribute to the empirical inventory and
theoretical analysis of the systematically differential properties of
VO- and OV-languages.
- Contributions addressing this overall theme against the background
of *all* areas of linguistic specialization (syntax, phonology,
morphology, semantics, language acquisition etc.) are equally welcome.
- Submissions that entirely confine themselves to showing that
minimalist and antisymmetric approaches to the OV/VO distinction can
be conceived and technically made to work will *not* be eligible for
selection.
- To submit, send *three copies* of an abstract whose length should
not exceed 2 pages (single-spaced; 12pt. font), including examples,
diagrams and references. Please add a 3x5 card stating the title of
your abstract, your name and affiliation (including E-mail address,
fax and telephone number).
- Abstracts should be received at the address given below by 1 July
1996. (Submissions by E-mail or fax will be accepted; please make sure
that, if you opt for this route, your abstract is properly
decipherable.)
Send your submissions to:
Workshop OV/VO
c/o Marcel den Dikken
Holland Institute of Generative Linguistics
Vakgroep Taalkunde (ATW)
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
De Boelelaan 1105
1081 HV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Fax: +31 20 4446500
Phone: +31 20 4446482
E-mail: dikken at jet.let.vu.nl
WWW: http://oasis.leidenuniv.nl/hil/confs/ovvo/ovvo.htm
==================================================================
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