21.3986, Calls: Slavic Languages, Semantics, Syntax/United Kingdom

Sat Oct 9 14:38:57 UTC 2010

LINGUIST List: Vol-21-3986. Sat Oct 09 2010. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 21.3986, Calls: Slavic Languages, Semantics, Syntax/United Kingdom

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1)
Date: 07-Oct-2010
From: Iwona Plisiecka < iw.plisiecka at gmail.com >
Subject: Aspect and Performativity in Slavic Languages

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 2010 10:37:10
From: Iwona Plisiecka [iw.plisiecka at gmail.com]
Subject: Aspect and Performativity in Slavic Languages

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Full Title: Aspect and Performativity in Slavic Languages 

Date: 03-Jul-2011 - 08-Jul-2011
Location: Manchester, United Kingdom 
Contact Person: Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka
Meeting Email: iw.plisiecka at gmail.com

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics; Syntax 

Language Family(ies): Slavic Subgroup 

Call Deadline: 16-Oct-2010 

Meeting Description:

Aspect and Performativity in Slavic Languages (and Beyond)

Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka and Igor Z Zagar - IPrA 2011 Panel 

Through discussions gathered in this panel we would like to contrastively
explore the relation between formal grammatical features, such as tense, 
aspect, Aktionsart, mood, voice, and the corresponding (potential) 
performativity in linguistic expressions. 

Final Call For Papers

We invite papers focused on the relation between performativity and 
grammar:
- the relation between tense, aspect, Aktionsart, mood, voice,
and 
- the corresponding (potential) performativity in linguistic expressions.
Exploration of the topic extends into:
- speech-act oriented research traditions outside the Anglo-Saxon world
- contrastive analysis of Anglo-Saxon and Continental research on 
performativity
- past and contemporary reflection on the actional nature of language
independent of the Austinian tradition

Conveners' statement:
We believe that performativity is still an issue worthy of exploration. We 
would like to emphasize speech-act oriented research traditions outside the
Anglo-Saxon world, next to better-known work by Emile Benveniste, 
contemporary to Austin, we would also like to draw attention to even earlier 
independent reflection on the actional nature of language, e.g. that of ?
krabec (1911) in Slovenian or Koschmieder (1934) in Polish.
In the Anglo-Saxon world 'the performative' is directly associated with John 
Austin's theory of speech acts, subsequently developed by John Searle, 
which concentrates on the institutional aspect in speech action. In turn our 
Slavic perspective seems to tend towards grammar and logic-oriented 
issues and focuses on the syntax-pragmatics, form-function relations. 
In describing what is happening, what is going on 'right now' as we speak, 
all Slavs would use the present tense of an imperfective and not a 
perfective verb. It, therefore, should not come as a surprise that in all Slavic 
languages performatives usually take the imperfective aspect. Dickey (2000: 
177-178), however, quite contentiously observes that the North Slavic 
languages all allow coincidence of simultaneous actions with performative 
verbs and certain verba dicendi (taking the perfective aspect [sic!]) to some 
degree, 'while the South Slavic languages, with the exception of Slovene, 
almost never do. Within the North Slavic languages, West Slavic exhibits a 
much higher degree of coincidence with performative verbs [...] than East 
Slavic does.'  There is thus an unsolved puzzle whether performativity can 
be directly related to tense and aspect and accounted for in a systematic 
way. Is the form-meaning of a performative necessarily either highly 
institutional or vague? To quote Stanislav ?krabec, a 19th-century Slovene 
linguist, '[a]s long as we are only promising (imperfective), we have not 
promised anything yet, and if we are not (doing anything) but promising 
(imperfective), we cannot take anything as having been promised.'

Faced with such problems, in this panel we would like to focus on Slavic
languages, whose rich and ramified morphology has not been widely 
documented with regard to the morphology-syntax-semantics-pragmatics 
interface. However, we believe that contrasting varied, even potentially 
contradictory Slavic data (cf. H. Galton's The Main Functions of the Slavic 
Verbal Aspect (1976) and S.M. Dickey's Parameters of Slavic Aspect 
(2000)), with related data from other language families can shed new light 
on the still mysterious and elusive concept of the performative value. In 
particular, we would like to explore the potential of converging Slavic 
linguistics research on tense, aspect and mood with the Anglo-Saxon 
research on related formal features of performativity, e.g. mood. This call is 
part of a bigger project whose aim is a separate volume devoted to aspect 
and performativity in Slavic and other Indo-European languages,  which is
to be published with John Benjamins' Pragmatics & Beyond New Series.

Deadlines:
Full texts and proposals in the form of abstracts should be sent by 16 
October 2010 to the panel conveners:

Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka (iw.plisiecka at gmail.com), University of Lodz, 
Poland & Igor ?. ?agar (igor.zzagar at gmail.com), Educational Research 
Institute & University of Maribor, Slovenia 

Please mind that in order to participate in teh panel you also need to submit
your final abstracts before 29 October 2010 via the IPrA site, following the
instructions available at 
http://ipra.ua.ac.be/main.aspxc=.CONFERENCE12&n=1398

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