17.1534, Calls: Syntax/Portugal;Socioling/Pragmatics/Germany

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LINGUIST List: Vol-17-1534. Thu May 18 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.1534, Calls: Syntax/Portugal;Socioling/Pragmatics/Germany

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1)
Date: 16-May-2006
From: João Costa < jcosta at fcsh.unl.pt >
Subject: Lisbon Workshop on the Acquisition of Functional Elements 

2)
Date: 15-May-2006
From: Eric Anchimbe < anchimbe_eric at yahoo.com >
Subject: Universalism and Relativism in Face-Saving: Focus on Postcolonial Contexts 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 17:24:57
From: João Costa < jcosta at fcsh.unl.pt >
Subject: Lisbon Workshop on the Acquisition of Functional Elements 
 


Full Title: Lisbon Workshop on the Acquisition of Functional Elements 

Date: 30-Oct-2006 - 31-Oct-2006
Location: Lisbon, Portugal 
Contact Person: João Costa
Meeting Email: jcosta at fcsh.unl.pt

Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition; Syntax 

Call Deadline: 08-Jul-2006 

Meeting Description:

Lisbon Workshop on the acquisition of functional elements
October 30-31, 2006
Universidade Nova de Lisboa 

Lisbon Workshop on the acquisition of functional elements
October 30-31, 2006
Universidade Nova de Lisboa

It is widely accepted that elements related to the functional domain emerge later and/or with differentiated paths in language acquisition. In particular, C-related phenomena (V2, I-to-C), verbal inflection, auxiliaries, determiners and clitics are known to be relevant domains to study the acquisition of functional categories.

A substantial part of the debate on the acquisition of functional categories, starting in the 90's, has been devoted to discuss whether the functional part of the structure is available for children from the onset or subject to maturation. Many good arguments have been advanced from both sides, making this an unsettled issue.

The primary goal of this workshop is to discuss the acquisition of functional categories, trying to address the following questions:

1.	Certain functional elements are known to be more problematic in some languages than in others (e.g. clitic omission, determiner omission, verbal inflection). What are the sources of these crosslinguistic differences? 
2.	What are the relevant linguistic markers for establishing whether a functional category or element has been acquired? 
3.	Are there relevant differences between different functional categories in the path of acquisition (e.g. does acquisition of I-related phenomena precede or follow the emergence of C-related phenomena; is there a relation between the acquisition of clitics and determiners?). If there are such differences, what explains them?
4.	Certain domains are claimed to be functionally defective in adult language (e.g. restructuring contexts, bare NPs). Are these acquired differently from other domains? What can such differences tell us about the notions of completeness and defectivity?
5.	Maturational approaches are often criticized for failing to account for early occurrence of functional elements in certain constructions/languages. How can these approaches explain these data?
6.	Continuity hypotheses are often criticized for failing to account for the differences between adult and child grammar in what concerns the difficulties with functional elements. How can these approaches account for such differences?
7.	There are ongoing debates on the status of the functional domain in adult grammar (e.g. composed by a fixed array of functional categories or subject to crosslinguistic and language-internal variation). How can acquisition data contribute to such debates?


Papers are invited for 20 minute talks followed by discussion. 
Please submit anonymous 2-page abstracts (font times new roman 12pt) in word or PDF format to the following email address: jcosta at fcsh.unl.pt 
Deadline for submission: July 8, 2006
Notice of acceptance: July 30, 2006
Workshop hosted by Centro de Linguística da Universidade Nova de Lisboa , project POCI/LIN/57377/2004


	
-------------------------Message 2 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 17:25:02
From: Eric Anchimbe < anchimbe_eric at yahoo.com >
Subject: Universalism and Relativism in Face-Saving: Focus on Postcolonial Contexts 

	

Full Title: Universalism and Relativism in Face-Saving: Focus on Postcolonial Contexts 

Date: 30-Aug-2006 - 02-Sep-2006
Location: Bremen, Germany 
Contact Person: Eric Anchimbe
Meeting Email: anchimbe_eric at yahoo.com

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics 

Call Deadline: 30-May-2006 

Meeting Description:

We are organising a workshop titled: 'Universalism and relativism in face-saving: Focus on postcolonial contexts' during the 39th annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE) scheduled for 30-Aug-2006 to 02-Sep-2006 in Bremen, Germany. It is our intention to bring together papers that evaluate the relevance of certain pragmatic issues claimed to be universal, within postcolonial contexts. Although the focus of this panel is primarily on face-saving, papers related to the myriad locutionary forms, illocutionary functions, and perlocutionary effects of language communication and communication systems in postcolonial contexts are welcome as well. 
 
Papers dealing with natural discourse and issues of cultural displacement, migration, hybridity, diaspora, and the role of public and government media in shaping perceptions of postcolonial history, politics, and regional, ethnic, and social identities will also be considered. With its emphasis on communication and issues of identity, agency, understanding, and empowerment in different postcolonial contexts, this panel wishes to provide a common platform for interdisciplinary cooperation between scholars of different persuasions with interests in language, communication, and postcolonial questions
 
Send abstracts to 
Richard W. Janney (University of Munich) janney at lmu.de
Eric A. Anchimbe (University of Munich) anchimbe_eric at yahoo.com
 
Deadline: May 30th, 2006.
 
More information on the SLE conference at: http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/sle2006 

Universalism and relativism in face-saving: Focus on postcolonial contexts
 
Richard W. Janney (University of Munich)
janney at lmu.de
Eric A. Anchimbe (University of Munich)
anchimbe_eric at yahoo.com
 
The main question this panel wishes to address is: to what extent are the patterns of face-saving claimed by Brown and Levinson (1978) really universal? Since the publication of Brown and Levinson's work, several other works have been published that describe patterns of politeness and face-saving in Non-western cultures that are distinctly different from those in Western cultures. Although some researchers have discussed politeness in certain African and Asian cultures, it is still not established if the further mix of languages and linguistic identities created by colonialism play a significant role in the way speakers in multilingual postcolonial speech communities produce and react to speech acts related to politeness and face-saving. This issue is particularly complex, because language use and abuse play important roles in many areas of postcolonial life. Language can be a powerful mediator of understanding, empowerment, and solidarity, or a source of repression, disempowerment, and discrimination. Choices of what and how (and in what languages) things are expressed stand at the centre of postcolonial pragmatic interest. 
 
If certain face-saving strategies (hedging, complimenting, understating, distancing, etc.) are relatively uniform in Western cultures, as Brown and Levinson claim, how are these realised in postcolonial contexts? What happens to these strategies among speakers who have complex, hybrid linguistic identities built on mixtures of foreign languages imposed during colonialism, indigenous languages, and the languages of wider communication (Pidgins and Creoles)? Do speakers adopt situational faces, using the different languages (and with these, identities) at their disposal to project such faces? Or do they adopt stabile face-saving patterns specific to one language and culture in their daily communication? Answers to these questions could be found by analyzing everyday face-to-face discourse, political and institutional discourse, print media discourse, literary discourse, and all forms of electronically mediated communication. 
 
Although the focus of this panel is primarily on face-saving, papers related to the myriad locutionary forms, illocutionary functions, and perlocutionary effects of language communication and communication systems in postcolonial contexts are welcome as well. Papers dealing with natural discourse and issues of cultural displacement, migration, hybridity, diaspora, and the role of public and government media in shaping perceptions of postcolonial history, politics, and regional, ethnic, and social identities will also be considered. With its emphasis on communication and issues of identity, agency, understanding, and empowerment in different postcolonial contexts, this panel wishes to provide a common platform for interdisciplinary cooperation between scholars of different persuasions with interests in language, communication, and postcolonial questions.
 



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LINGUIST List: Vol-17-1534