18.1529, Calls: Historical Ling/Germany; Ling Theories/South Korea

Sun May 20 17:36:09 UTC 2007

LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1529. Sun May 20 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 18.1529, Calls: Historical Ling/Germany; Ling Theories/South Korea

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            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>

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       <reviews at linguistlist.org> 

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1)
Date: 20-May-2007
From: Juerg Fleischer < jfleischer at staff.hu-berlin.de >
Subject: Comparing Diachronies (Workshop at DGfS 2008) 

2)
Date: 18-May-2007
From: Anna Maria Di Sciullo < di_sciullo.anne-marie at uqam.ca >
Subject: Interface Conditions. In the memory of Tanya Reinhart

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 13:33:17
From: Juerg Fleischer < jfleischer at staff.hu-berlin.de >
Subject: Comparing Diachronies (Workshop at DGfS 2008) 

Full Title: Comparing Diachronies (Workshop at DGfS 2008) 

Date: 27-Feb-2008 - 29-Feb-2008
Location: Bamberg, Germany 
Contact Person: Juerg Fleischer
Meeting Email: germlingconf at kcl.ac.uk

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 20-Aug-2007 

Meeting Description:
Workshop as part of the 29th Annual Meeting of the German Society for
Linguistics (DGfS) at the University of Bamberg, Germany (27th-29th February, 2008) 

Comparing Diachronies

Organizers:
Jürg Fleischer (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Horst Simon (King's College London)

Keynote Speakers: 
Bernd Heine (University of Cologne) 
Giuseppe Longobardi (University of Trieste) 

Assessing the relative importance of internal and external factors is of
paramount importance for any theory of language change. While it is the aim of
the study of internal factors to identify correlations between diachronic
developments belonging to different subsystems (e.g., loss of case morphology
entails fixation of word order), in studying external factors one tries to
establish the influence of language contact, normative settings, etc. However,
explanations of actual language change phenomena often stick to their particular
problems. Only rarely do researchers attempt at generalizations that go beyond
individual cases. Thus, in our view one central question for any theory of
language change is:

Couldn't things have developed in an entirely different way?

Our workshop ''Comparing Diachronies'' tries to fill a gap: By comparing various
diachronic developments we hope to identify differences and divergences that
allow for generalizable insights with respect to the functioning and
implementation of linguistic change.
In this perspective, research topics such as the following become interesting:
- In the history of English (similar in French), older tendencies to use
verb-second were given up, whereas in German the original tendency eventually
led to the generalization of verb-second in main clauses.
- In High German the tense system was reduced, whereas Low German reduced its
mood system.
- Only in High German do we find affricates, a class of phonemes foreign to
other West Germanic languages.
- In some Romance languages (e.g. Spanish), animate direct objects are marked
with the preposition normally used with indirect objects, a development which is
completely unknown in other Romance languages (e.g. French). 
- Punjabi and Marathi have reduced the original Indo-Aryan ergative marking on
some personal pronouns (Bengali and Sinhala have done so completely), while in
other languages (e.g. Hindi/Urdu and Nepali) these pronouns have retained their
ergative morphology.
- Some Nakh-Dagestan languages have a phoneme system with only three vowels
(e.g. Avar dialects), whereas others display as many as 33 vowels (e.g. Chechen). 

We invite contributions discussing language change phenomena of all linguistic
subsystems in a comparative perspective. Papers relating to different dialects
of a single language or to different languages of a larger genetic entity are as
welcome as work comparing developments in unrelated languages. Contributions
focusing on theoretical accounts or on modeling language change are especially
encouraged.

There will be talks in 30 and 60 minute slots, including discussion time. Note
that contributors can present only one paper at the DGfS Annual Meeting as a
whole. Conference languages are English and German. Please send an anonymous
abstract of max. 500 words, as a Word- or pdf- file, to 

germlingconf at kcl.ac.uk

by Aug 20th, 2007.

Notification of acceptance or rejection will be sent by email in September.

For further information please contact: 
Jürg Fleischer <jfleischer at staff.hu-berlin.de> or
Horst Simon <horst.simon at kcl.ac.uk>

-------------------------Message 2 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 13:33:22
From: Anna Maria Di Sciullo < di_sciullo.anne-marie at uqam.ca >
Subject: Interface Conditions. In the memory of Tanya Reinhart 

Full Title: Interface Conditions. In the memory of Tanya Reinhart 
Short Title: IC 

Date: 21-Jul-2008 - 26-Jul-2008
Location: Seoul, Korea, South 
Contact Person: Anna Maria Di Sciullo
Meeting Email: di_sciullo.anne-marie at uqam.ca
Web Site: http://cil18.org/workshop/workshop_01.htm 

Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories 

Call Deadline: 31-May-2007 

Meeting Description:

Invited speakers: Tecumseh Fitch, Sandiway Fong, Jim Higginbotham, Norbert
Hornstein, Mark Steedman, Charles Yang

Works in Minimalism aim at reducing interface conditions, including the
Binding theory and theta-theory, to deeper properties of the grammar (e.g.,
Hornstein 2002, Kayne 2002), thereby approaching explanation of linguistic
phenomena. Works on the properties of interfaces bring to fore the role of
computational efficiency and processing considerations in sentence
production and comprehension (e.g., Reinhart 2006, Yang 2005). The purpose
of this workshop is to discuss the interactions of grammar specific
properties and computational/processing properties, and their effects at
the interfaces. The workshop, more broadly, aims at exploring further the
three factors that according to Chomsky (2006) enter into to growth of
language in the individual, and in particular the independent principle of
efficient computation (Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch 2002; Fitch & Hauser 2004). 

In addition to the invited talks, a small number of papers will be accepted
for presentation at the conference. We invite submissions for thirty-minute
talks (20 minutes for presentation plus 10minutes for questions) on
research focusing on the role of computational efficiency and human
processing restrictions in language growth. Papers focusing on how language
independent principles can explain key properties of language are
encouraged to apply. A representative, but not exhaustive, list of topics
for potential papers includes the following:   

-- The manifestation of language independent principles at the interfaces. 
-- Language and language independent principles determining language growth. 
-- The architectural constraints that determine and limit possible
attainable languages. 

Important Dates:

- May 31, 2007: Deadline for submitting the abstract.
- August 31, 2007: Notification of acceptance.
- February 15, 2008: Deadline for submitting the final version of the
accepted abstract for publication in the proceedings of  CIL18. 
- September 30, 2008: Deadline for submitting the final version of the
presented paper to be published in CD.

Form and submission of abstracts:

An abstract (.pdf or .doc file) should be up to 3-page long, including data
and references. The abstract should start with the title of the paper,
followed by the text of the abstract.Please do not include the author's
name in the abstract. On a separate page, please give the author's name,
affiliation, e-mail address, telephone number, mailing address, the paper
title and the session number (title).

Please send the abstract and the author's information to both
cil18 at cil18.org and di_sciullo.anne-marie at uqam.ca.

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