27.4757, Calls: Morphology, Phonetics, Phonology, Pragmatics, Syntax/Switzerland

Sat Nov 19 18:41:34 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4757. Sat Nov 19 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.4757, Calls: Morphology, Phonetics, Phonology, Pragmatics, Syntax/Switzerland

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Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2016 13:41:21
From: Maria del Mar Vanrell Bosch [mm.vanrell at uib.cat]
Subject: Extra-Romance Structures (Section of 35th Romanistentag)

Full Title: Extra-Romance Structures (Section of 35th Romanistentag) 

Date: 08-Oct-2017 - 12-Oct-2017
Location: Zurich, Switzerland 
Contact Person: Maria del Mar Vanrell Bosch
Meeting Email: mm.vanrell at uib.cat
Web Site: http://www.romanistentag.de/index.php?id=1923 

Linguistic Field(s): Morphology; Phonetics; Phonology; Pragmatics; Syntax 

Call Deadline: 31-Dec-2016 

Meeting Description:

The section aims at the description and explanation of syntactic and
phonological structures observed in multilingual societies where Romance
languages are spoken together with typologically and genetically distant
languages. Our central question here is probably as old as contact linguistics
or multilingualism research itself: Can language-specific or typological
constraints be formulated that influence the interaction of grammatical
subsystems in multilingual utterances? 

We would like to make a new attempt at answering this question in our section
by comparing between selected ranges of phenomena, with facts that have been
reached at through better empirical control, and using more precise
formalization. The three linguistic domains we have chosen for this end vary
widely on the one hand regarding the particularities of their means of
expression and on the other in terms of their semantic and pragmatic workload.
We consider the comparison of different grammatical domains in this respect to
be particularly rewarding for the construction of theories.

Call for Papers:

We expressly encourage contributions on multilingual scenarios in which
Romance languages participate together with the large languages / language
families of America (Algonquin, Nahua, Mayan, Chibcha, Quechua, Guarani),
Africa (in particular West African languages and Bantu) and Asia (Vietnamese,
Chinese), but also welcome those on scenarios of Romance languages spoken
together with Basque, Slavic or Germanic languages.

Abstracts, not exceeding 500 words (+ graphs and references), should be sent
by December 31, 2016 to any of the organizers (Miguel Gutiérrez Mate -
miguel.gutierrez.mate at gmail.com, Uli Reich - uli.reich at fu-berlin.de, Melanie
Uth - melanie.uth at uni-koeln.de, Maria del Mar Vanrell Bosch -
mm.vanrell at uib.cat). 

Notification of acceptance for abstracts will be provided by e-mail no later
than January 15, 2017.

The three linguistic domains we have chosen vary widely on the one hand
regarding the particularities of their means of expression and on the other in
terms of their semantic and pragmatic workload. 

1. Morphology, syntax and intonation of information structure, including
evidentiality and mirativity besides focus and background:

In the Romance languages, intonation is strongly dominated by the separation
between focus and background, in which both pitch accents and boundary tones
play a role. Further important dimensions of the meaning of intonational forms
that can be subsumed under information structure in a wider sense concern the
expectability of propositions, discussed under the label of mirativity (De
Lancey 2001) in the morphological literature. It seems to be the case that
evidentiality (Aikhenvald 2004) doesn't play any role in intonation. However,
pragmatically, its uses overlap with those of focus of assertion or verum
focus that can be interpreted as speaker certainty (Vanrell et al. 2013). In
many African and American languages, segmental morphology is also used to
encode information structural meanings. How do these expressive options
interact in multilingual contexts? What does intonation look like in contexts
where Romance languages are spoken together with tonal languages? Can lexical
or grammatical tones somehow be combined with intonation? 

2. Metrical phonology:

The position of lexical and secondary stresses, their phonetic implementation
and rhythmic makeup are linguistic phenomena that are associated with
multilingualism even on an intuitive basis. They have also repeatedly been
claimed to be crucial for language change in historical linguistics (Lahiri
2015), but have nevertheless received relatively little consideration in
theories of language contact. How do metrical algorithms interact that play no
role either in semantics or pragmatics? How stable are lexically and
morphologically distinctive prominences in multilingual societies?

3. DP/NP-syntax, including possessive constructions:

The syntax of noun phrases and their determiners, complements and adjuncts
creates especially finely differentiated formal patterns in which the
languages of the world strongly differ from each other. This concerns the
inventory of inherent or discourse dependent categories. Interesting
linguistic areas emerge here, e.g. in the domain of grammatical systems of
gender: the most complex systems can be found in Africa, European languages
take a middle position, while many American and Asian languages seem to do
without gender completely (Corbett 2013). The discourse dependent categories
definiteness, genericity and specificity exhibit explicit morphology, come up
only epiphenomenally, or do not play any role at all in some languages. The
syntax of determiners, quantifiers and possessives, possibly expressed in all
languages, exhibits extremely subtle and complexly correlated differences. How
do different grammars interact in this domain in multilingual contexts? Can
any typological/parametric constraints be made out?

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