27.1603, Calls: Morphology/UK

Wed Apr 6 15:29:49 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1603. Wed Apr 06 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.1603, Calls: Morphology/UK

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Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2016 11:29:38
From: Matthew Baerman [m.baerman at surrey.ac.uk]
Subject: Workshop on Morphological Zeroes

Full Title: Workshop on Morphological Zeroes 

Date: 07-Sep-2016 - 07-Sep-2016
Location: York, United Kingdom 
Contact Person: Matthew Baerman
Meeting Email: morphological.zero at gmail.com
Web Site: http://www.lagb.org.uk/page-1829016 

Linguistic Field(s): Morphology 

Call Deadline: 08-May-2016 

Meeting Description:

This one-day workshop, part of the 2016 Linguistic Association of Great
Britain annual meeting at the University of York, will focus on the
ever-vexing problem of zeroes in morphology. 

If morphology is the study of word forms, then morphological zeroes are an
oxymoron. Still, there they are, in theory, and more importantly, in fact.
Take the Arapesh verb ‘strike/kill’ (Fortune 1940: 64, 66). The normal Arapesh
transitive sentence is SVO, and if the arguments are pronominal, they
distinguish subject and object forms (1a,b). But juxtapose a subject and
object pronoun with nothing intervening, and the verb ‘strike/kill’ emerges
(2a,b). 

(1) a. na  whar oku
  he call her 
  ‘he calls her’

 b. kwa  mitek an
  she clasp him
  ‘she clasps him’

(2) a. na  oku
  he her 
  ‘he strikes/kills her’

 b. kwa  an
  she him
  ‘she strikes/kills him’

The typological variety of morphological zeroes is striking, though
understandably elusive. Some involve roots or stems, as in Arapesh, where it
is a total zero; this contrasts with zero verb roots in Nimboran (Anceaux
1965, Inkelas 1993), which host derivational morphology that allows us to
identify several lexically distinct verbs. Orphaned inflectional suffixes in
Selepet (McElhanon 1972) arguably derive lexical content from inflection class
distinctions. In Akabea (Comrie and Zamponi 2016), zero roots can also be
contextually determined, e.g. by discourse. And these ‘present’ zeroes
contrast with ‘absent’ zeroes, namely paradigm gaps – which are words which
simply do not exist. 

The more familiar face of morphological zeroes is within inflectional
paradigms, where an expected affix position is meaningfully unoccupied. Here
too we find a contrast between zeroes which assert their presence, say,
through blocking (e.g. in Potowatami; Anderson 1992), and those which are
simply absent. In Murrinh-Patha (Nordlinger 2010) we have an example of zero
which really is empty. Object markers and dual subject markers occur in the
same slot in the verb template. In (3), the 1SG object marker -ngi blocks the
dual subject marker, leaving subject number marking partly ambiguous.  But
when the 3SG object marker -ka is used, the slot is freed up and the dual
subject marker can appear (4).

(3)  pubam-ngi-ngkardu
 3NSG.SBJ.SEE.NFUT-1SG.OBJ-see
 ‘They (two siblings) saw me.’
 OR ‘They (plural) saw me.’

(4)  pubam-ka-ngkardu
 3NSG.SBJ.SEE.NFUT-DU/PC.NFUT-see
 ‘They (two siblings) saw him/her.’

Although the concept of morphological zeroes has been with us for generations,
they still occupy an uneasy periphery of morphological theory, at once crucial
to model building and empirically evanescent, appearing and disappearing
according to changing analytic conventions (Corbett 2014). In this workshop we
aim to assess morphological zeroes in the light of recent thinking on
morphological structure. We invite papers on any topic connected with
morphological zeroes, and are looking for a mix of empirically and
theoretically informed contributions. 

Invited speaker 
Sharon Inkelas (University of California, Berkeley) 

The workshop is organized by Matthew Baerman (University of Surrey) and
Bernard Comrie (University of California, Santa Barbara), and is being held in
conjunction with Comrie’s Henry Sweet lecture ‘Verb Root Ellipsis’.

Sharon Inkelas (University of California, Berkeley) is the invited speaker.
The workshop is organized by Matthew Baerman (University of Surrey) and
Bernard Comrie (University of California, Santa Barbara), and is being held in
conjunction with Comrie’s Henry Sweet lecture ‘Verb Root Ellipsis’.

Call for Papers: 

This one-day workshop, part of the 2016 Linguistic Association of Great
Britain annual meeting at the University of York, will focus on the
ever-vexing problem of zeroes in morphology. We invite papers on any topic
connected with morphological zeroes, and are looking for a mix of empirically
and theoretically informed contributions. Please submit a one-page anonymous
abstract by email to morphological.zero at gmail.com by 08 May 2016, with your
contact details included in the body of the email.

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