27.4440, Calls: Historical Linguistics, Linguistic Theories/Greece

Tue Nov 1 15:48:25 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4440. Tue Nov 01 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.4440, Calls: Historical Linguistics, Linguistic Theories/Greece

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Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2016 11:47:59
From: Alexander Bergs [abergs at uos.de]
Subject: Historical Language Contact in English and Beyond

Full Title: Historical Language Contact in English and Beyond 

Date: 31-Mar-2017 - 02-Apr-2017
Location: Thessaloniki, Greece 
Contact Person: Alexander Bergs, Nikolaos Lavidas
Meeting Email: abergs at uos.de, nlavidas at enl.auth.gr

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Linguistic Theories 

Call Deadline: 15-Dec-2016 

Meeting Description:

The role of contact in the development of English has been acknowledged in
various recent studies. As stated by Hundt & Schreier (2013), English has been
“contact-derived from its very beginnings onwards” (see also Trudgill 2016,
among others). For instance, multiple possible contact-induced changes in
English resulting from contact with Celtic, Old Norse and Norman French have
been at the center of discussions and debates over the last decade. In this
respect, various analyses have been proposed with regard to the question of
superstratal (in the case of Anglo-Saxons and Celts or Norman French and
Middle English) or adstratal (in the case of Old English and Norse)
relationships among the languages spoken in Britain. The substratal position
of a language is related to restricted toponymic borrowing; adstratal
positions may lead to the mixing of populations, language shift and even
grammatical borrowing. Moreover, it is important to distinguish between the
different types of historical (written or oral) language contact: for
instance, in the case of Latin, the contact situation developed through a
process of acquisition of a foreign language and was heavily affected by the
dominant position of Latin as means of literary and spiritual communication
(Timofeeva 2010).  

Attempts to analyze changes in the history of English as the result of a
transfer or borrowing from other languages focus on innovations in later
English, including, among others: 

(a) The periphrastic do, the progressive form, the it-cleft construction, and
the Northern subject rule, with regard to the contact with Celtic (Poussa
1990; Poppe 2003; Ball 1991; Klemola 2013, among many others)
(b) The absolute construction (ablativus absolutus), the passive infinitive,
and the nominativus and accusativus-cum-infinitivo constructions, with regard
to the contact with Latin (Fischer 1991, 1994, 2013; Kohnen 2003; Nagucka
2003; Timofeeva 2010)
(c) The historical present tense, the use of second-person pronouns and the
pragmatics of politeness, the post-posed adjectives, the wh-relatives, and the
causative do, with regard to the contact with Norman French (Mustanoja 1960,
Fischer 1992, 2004, 2006, among others)
(d) The northern/eastern Middle English present participle ending -ande, the
reduction in case agreement, and the V2 syntax, with regard to the contact
with Norse (cf. Emonds & Faarlund’s (2014) perspective – for the opposite
view, cf. Bech & Walkden (2016)).

Contact-induced changes are prevalent in instances of full bilingualism and
code-switching (Fischer 2013). In this respect, results from studies on
bilingual language acquisition can lead to a new analysis of change:
grammatical changes are likely to happen in instances of successive
acquisition of bilingualism (Meisel 2011).

Call for Papers:

The idea of this workshop is to bring together scholars interested in the
systematic study of historical language contact. The special focus of the
workshop will be on contact-induced changes in the history of English. The aim
of the workshop is to open new perspectives in the research of contact-induced
changes in the history of English, particularly regarding explanations of
changes that involve the role of bilingualism. The issues to be addressed
include, among others:  

- Approaches to historical bilingualism and language contact;
- Case studies of contact-induced changes in English;    
- Social aspects of historical language contact;
- The re-birth of the Celtic hypothesis and the North Germanic Middle English
hypothesis; 
- The relationship between Sprachbunds and language change; 
- Areal and typological considerations with regard to historical language
contact;  
- Recent developments and on-going contact-induced changes.

The workshop will be part of the 23rd International Symposium on Theoretical
and Applied Linguistics (ISTAL 23), organized by the Department of Theoretical
and Applied Linguistics, School of English, Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki, to be held March 31-April 2, 2017, in Thessaloniki, Greece.
Please send us (Alexander Bergs [abergs at uos.de]; Nikolaos Lavidas
[nlavidas at enl.auth.gr]) a 300-word abstract of your paper no later than
December 15, 2016. 

Important Dates:

December 15, 2016: Deadline for submission of 300-word abstracts to the
workshop conveners  
January 5, 2017: Notification of acceptance by the workshop conveners  
March 31-April 2, 2017: Historical Language Contact in English and beyond

Alexander Bergs (Universität Osnabrück) & Nikolaos Lavidas (Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki)

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