27.2505, Calls: Germanic, Romance, General Ling, Historical Ling, Ling Theories, Syntax, Text/Corpus Ling/Austria

Tue Jun 7 13:59:45 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-2505. Tue Jun 07 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.2505, Calls: Germanic, Romance, General Ling, Historical Ling, Ling Theories, Syntax, Text/Corpus Ling/Austria

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Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2016 09:59:25
From: Anne Wolfsgruber [Anne.Wolfsgruber at sbg.ac.at]
Subject: Workshop on Impersonality and Correlated Phenomena: Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives

Full Title: Workshop on Impersonality and Correlated Phenomena: Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives 

Date: 10-Nov-2016 - 11-Nov-2016
Location: Salzburg, Austria 
Contact Person: Anne Wolfsgruber
Meeting Email: impersonality at sbg.ac.at
Web Site: http://www.uni-salzburg.at/index.php?id=204024 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Syntax; Text/Corpus Linguistics 

Language Family(ies): Germanic; Romance 

Call Deadline: 30-Jun-2016 

Meeting Description:

The aim of this workshop is to gain a more profound theoretical understanding
of the encoding of impersonality on a syntactic and/or a semantic level and to
investigate how impersonal constructions are intertwined with other factors
within a language system. 

The notion of impersonality generally comprises phenomena that show agent
alternation/defocusing/absence or (de-)masking which include configurations
like (non-)referential indefinite pronouns (fr. on, dt. man, nl. men, engl.
one, sp. uno/a, pt. a gente etc.), expletives, se-constructions, periphrastic
passives, p-labile verbs and anticausative alternations, deponent verbs and
their evolution, middles, etc.

Furthermore, we are especially interested in analyses that focus on how
impersonal constructions are linked to other properties of a language system,
some of which are illustrated here drawing on Romance languages:

In recent decades, it has been observed that there seems to be a relation
between the pro-drop parameter and the availability of impersonal se/si (cf.
Belletti 1982). Further evidence in this direction is provided by Brazilian
Portuguese which is claimed to be a partial pro-drop language and which shows
considerable differences in the use of se as compared to European Portuguese,
a consistent pro-drop language (cf. Holmberg et al 2009). Another interesting
case is Old French whose pro-drop status is widely debated (cf. Adams 1987,
Vance 1997 and many others) and which also shows less flexibility in using se
as compared to other Old Romance varieties. In opposition to that, there are
theoretical implementations that indicate that the correlation might not be as
straightforward as sketched above (cf. Dobrovie-Sorin 1998, Roberts 2010).

Another interesting question is how different degrees of grammaticalization of
impersonal constructions are linked to more general characteristics such as
word order phenomena or high/low Transitivity.
In this respect it is interesting that we find so-called man-constructions in
several Old Romance languages regardless of their null-subject status: Old
Spanish om(n)e, Old Catalan/Old Occitan (h)om, Old French om/on etc. In later
stages of the null-subject languages, man-constructions become less frequent.
In the case of Old Spanish, omne got lost completely in the 16th century (cf.
Brown 1931). In Catalan hom is viewed as archaic and se is preferred (cf.
Bartra Kaufmann 2002). How can we account for this pan-romance evolution? 

Moreover, we find different degrees of grammaticalization among
man-constructions and in a last step of their grammaticalization paths
man-constructions tend to be reanalyzed as plural markers in some languages
like e.g. Abruzzese nomǝ or as a pronoun that is able to refer to generic
subjects as well as 1.P.pl. like Modern French on. What factors condition the
different degrees in grammaticalization cross-linguistically? (cf. Giacalone
Ramat/Sansò 2007; D'Alessandro 2013).

Invited speakers
Dalina Kallulli, University of Vienna
Florian Schäfer, Humboldt University of Berlin

2nd Call for Papers: 

In addition to the phenomena presented in the meeting description section, the
following questions are also of special interest:
- How do impersonal constructions reflect differences in the interpretation of
the subject as generic, arbitrary, inclusion/exclusion of the speaker/or
discourse situation?
- Why do some languages clearly favor se-constructions and why do others show
a preference for strategies like periphrastic passives?
- What triggers p-lability and why are there reflexively marked and
non-reflexively marked anticausatives?

Abstract Requirements:
We invite abstracts for 25 minutes presentation and 10 minutes discussion.
Formal and/or quantitative approaches that investigate the synchronic state or
the diachronic evolution of the phenomena mentioned in the meeting description
section and above are particularly welcome. In addition, we are especially
interested in abstracts that focus on phenomena in Romance or Germanic
languages.

Abstracts should be anonymous and no longer than two pages, including
references and examples, in 12-point Times New Roman, with margins of at least
2,5 cm/1 inch. Submissions for the workshop are limited to a maximum of one
individual and one joint abstract per author. Abstracts are to be submitted in
PDF format via EasyAbs (http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/impersonality) until
30-Jun-16, 23:59 (CET).

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