28.4679, Confs: Historical Ling, Morphology, Pragmatics, Semantics, Typology/Estonia

Tue Nov 7 19:26:25 UTC 2017

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-4679. Tue Nov 07 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.4679, Confs: Historical Ling, Morphology, Pragmatics, Semantics, Typology/Estonia

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Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2017 14:26:14
From: Yvonne Treis [yvonne.treis at cnrs.fr]
Subject: Attenuated qualities in a cross-linguistic perspective

Attenuated qualities in a cross-linguistic perspective 

Date: 29-Aug-2018 - 01-Sep-2018 
Location: Tallinn, Estonia 
Contact: Yvonne Treis 
Contact Email: yvonne.treis at cnrs.fr 

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Morphology; Pragmatics; Semantics; Typology 

Meeting Description: 

Workshop proposal to be submitted to the 51st Annual Meeting of the Societas
Linguistica Europaea (SLE), 29/08-01/09/2018, U Tallinn, Estonia
Convenors: Guillaume Segerer & Yvonne Treis (CNRS-LLACAN)

Our workshop focusses on the diverse morphological and lexical means of
expressing attenuation (reduced degree of a quality) in the languages of the
world. See e.g. derivational affixes (a/b), reduplication (c) and attenuating
ideophones (d).

- English -ish as in green-ish
- Kambaata (Cushitic) -lab as in qaraar-lab-á ‘a bit bitter’
- Gashua Bade (Chadic) ɓuwâ-ɓuwâ ‘reddish’
- Sar (Central Sudanic) pùtɨ̀-pùtɨ̀ attenuates ndà ‘white’, kɨ̀rē ‘white’,
ndùl ‘red’

Typological studies show that attenuation is among the most frequent
adjectival derivational categories world-wide. But attenuative morphology has
attracted much less attention in cross-linguistic studies than, e.g.,
diminutives. Although attenuation is discussed in the major typological works
on “Evaluative morphology”, see especially Grandi & Körtvélyessy (2015), there
are still synchronic and diachronic aspects that remain unexplored. To the
best of our knowledge, it has so far not yet been investigated systematically
which semantic classes of adjectives (or quality lexemes) are most likely to
permit attenuative marking. We also have little knowledge of the diachronic
origin of attenuative morphology of non-Indo-European languages. Furthermore,
we would like to extend the study of attenuation from morphological to lexical
means of expressing attenuation and to also study modifying attenuative
adverbs and ideophones. 

The aim of our workshop is to bring together scholars from different subfields
and theoretical frameworks of linguistics and working on a variety of
languages world-wide. We invite abstracts from the perspective of
language-specific analysis (especially of little known languages), typology,
semantics, pragmatics and/or grammaticalisation.

- What are the morphological means to mark attenuation on adjectives or other
quality lexemes in individual languages/groups? Does the occurrence of
attenuative morphology exclude the marking of other grammatical categories? 
- How productive is attenuative morphology in individual languages? Which
semantic classes of quality lexemes are most likely to permit attenuation? Are
there languages with several attenuative morphemes that specialise on certain
semantic classes?
- What are dedicated lexical attenuators in individual languages? What is
their degree of semantic specialisation? 
- What are the precise semantic features of attenuative morphemes in
individual languages? What are frequent discourse-pragmatic contexts in which
attenuated qualities are used?
- What are possible diachronic sources of attenuative morphology? 
- What are little known functional extensions/multifunctionality patterns of
attenuative morphology? 
- In which geographical areas is attenuative morphology most common? Where do
we find attenuation by ideophones? Where partial/full reduplication as an
attenuating means? 

Potential participants are invited to contact the workshop organisers with an
expression of interest (max. 300 words) before 13/11/2017.

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