27.3964, Calls: Gen Ling, Lang Doc, Philosophy of Lang, Typology/Switzerland

Wed Oct 5 18:47:52 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-3964. Wed Oct 05 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.3964, Calls: Gen Ling, Lang Doc, Philosophy of Lang, Typology/Switzerland

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Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2016 14:47:12
From: Giorgio Francesco Arcodia [giorgio.arcodia at unimib.it]
Subject: Linguistic Categories, Language Description and Linguistic Typology

Full Title: Linguistic Categories, Language Description and Linguistic Typology 

Date: 10-Sep-2017 - 13-Sep-2017
Location: Zurich, Switzerland 
Contact Person: Giorgio Francesco Arcodia
Meeting Email: giorgio.arcodia at unimib.it

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Language Documentation; Linguistic Theories; Philosophy of Language; Typology 

Call Deadline: 31-Oct-2016 

Meeting Description:

The workshop is planned as a part of the 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas
Linguistica Europea (SLE), which will take place in Zürich, 10-13 September
2017. 

The recent discussion in the LINGTYP mailing list (on multiple threads) on
linguistic categories and universals has sparked a heated debate which
highlighted the existence of vast differences (as well as much common ground)
in the understanding of the basics of the whole typological enterprise among
typologists, and of persisting uncertainties as to fundamental issues in the
discipline, as e.g. the distinction between ‘comparative concepts’ and
‘language-specific categories’, or about the dichotomy (or non-dichotomy)
between language description and ‘doing typology’ − and how the latter should
be done. Position papers summarising the views of some of the participants to
the LINGTYP mailing list have been collected in a forthcoming issue of
Linguistic Typology.

The question is hardly a new one. But the discussion on LINGTYP has shown that
even the most basic statements as ‘the basic word order of Cantonese is SVO’
may be understood in a significantly different way by different typologists: 
namely as an actual statement about the ‘default’ order of the constituents
Subject (as a syntactic pivot), Verb and Object in a language; as a
generalisation about a preferred order of constituents which however are not
necessarily a Subject and an Object, but possibly an Agent and a Patient; or
even a meaningless association, given that the categories at issue may have no
relevance for Cantonese. 

Moreover, the opposition between ‘categorial universalism’ – the assumption of
a set of universal cross-linguistic categories from which languages may pick –
and ‘categorial particularism’ – the idea that there are no universally valid
crosslinguistic categories, and that languages should be described in their
own terms (Croft 2001, Haspelmath 2010) – does not necessarily overlap with
the distinction between generative approaches and functional-typological
approaches to language; actually, typologists themselves seem to be divided
between these two opposed standpoints (compare Dixon 2010 and Haspelmath
2010). Even among ‘particularists’ there are important divergences of opinion
as well: while usually they “agree that language description should be
inductive and based on the facts of the language”, and that “there are no
cross-linguistic categories”, not everybody agrees on the separation between
language description and comparison – that is, that categories identified for
individual languages should not be taken as the base for typological
comparision (LaPolla forthcoming). Lastly, a compromise view between
particularism and universalism has also been proposed (Moravcsik forthcoming).

After a fruitful preliminary meeting in Naples (SLE 2016), we decided to
submit a proposal for a workshop for the next annual annual SLE meeting in
Zürich.

References:

Croft, William, 2001. Radical Construction Grammar. Syntactic Theory in
Typological Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dixon, Robert M.W., 2010. Basic Linguistic Theory. Volume 1: Methodology.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haspelmath, Martin, 2010. Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in
crosslinguistic studies. Language 86(3), 663-687.
LaPolla, Randy J., forthcoming. On categorization: Stick to the facts of the
languages. Linguistic Typology 20(2).
Moravcsik, Edith, forthcoming. On linguistic categories. Linguistic Typology
20(2).

Call for Papersː

We invite submissions of preliminary abstracts of 300 words (excluding
reference, 20 minute presentations) outlining contributions to the workshop,
which should be sent to Giorgio Francesco Arcodia (giorgio.arcodia at unimib.it)
and Paolo Ramat (paoram at unipv.it) by 31 October 2016. They will be selected to
prepare a workshop proposal to be submitted to the SLE.

If the workshop proposal is accepted, prospective participants will be invited
to submit their full abstracts by 15 January 2017 to the general call for
papers. Other authors interested in the workshop may submit their papers to
the workshop at the conference general call. All the full abstracts submitted
to the workshop will be reviewed individually by the Scientific Committee and
the workshop conveners.

We invite contributions on any topic related to linguistic categories,
including (but not limited to):

a. Language-specific categories, cross-linguistic categories and comparative
concepts (Haspelmath 2010). Do we use comparative concepts only for the
purposes of typological comparison, or also in language description (including
glossing; Haspelmath forthcoming)? How do we deal with the basic intuition
that, say, an English adjective and a Portuguese adjective, are perceived to
be instantiations of the same category, and that by denying this we may run
into the risk of an unnecessary proliferation of (language-specific)
categories (Haspelmath 2012, Moravcsik forthcoming)?

b. The definition of comparative concepts / cross-linguistic categories. Do we
accept that comparative concepts may have multiple definitions, as long as
they serve the purposes of the proponent/user, or do we want some general
consensus on what, say, ‘noun’, ‘subject’ or ‘relative clause’ mean (see e.g.
Dixon & Aikhenvald 2004 on adjectives; LaPolla forthcoming)?

c. Hybrid categories. Are we supposed to combine semantic, functional and
formal criteria to identify the constructions to be compared, or should we
rely primarily on function (see Rijkhoff 2009, forthcoming)?

d. The feasibility of large-scale typological comparison. How do we deal with
the (apparent?) contradiction of using labels as SOV and, at the same time,
admitting that concepts as ‘S’ may be irrelevant for the grammar of some
languages (see LaPolla 2002, forthcoming)? And, most importantly, how can we
conduct research on large samples if we cannot rely on the ‘traditional’
category labels for comparison? 

e. Typology vs. language description. Is the distinction between typologists
and documentary linguists an actual one? Do we need a separation between the
description of individual languages and typological comparison (Haspelmath
2010)?

Papers dealing with the use of categories in large-scale comparison, and with
the relation between categories in the description of individual languages and
in current linguistic theories are especially welcome.

Important Dates:

31 October 2016: Deadline for submission of 300-word abstracts to the workshop
organisers (giorgio.arcodia at unimib.it, paoram at unipv.it)
25 November 2016: Notification of acceptance by the workshop organisers and
submission of the workshop proposal to SLE
25 December 2016: Notification of acceptance of workshop proposals from SLE
organisers to workshop organisers 
15 January 2017: Submission of abstracts for review by SLE

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