28.4536, Calls: General Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Language Documentation, Sociolinguistics, Typology/Estonia

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-4536. Mon Oct 30 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.4536, Calls: General Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Language Documentation, Sociolinguistics, Typology/Estonia

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Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 15:36:44
From: Livio Gaeta [livio.gaeta at unito.it]
Subject: A Specter is Haunting Europe: The Alps as an area?

 
Full Title: A Specter is Haunting Europe: The Alps as an area? 

Date: 29-Aug-2018 - 01-Sep-2018
Location: Tallinn, Estonia 
Contact Person: Livio Gaeta
Meeting Email: livio.gaeta at unito.it

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Language Documentation; Sociolinguistics; Typology 

Call Deadline: 12-Nov-2017 

Meeting Description:

It is a well-known fact that the Alps are a zone of long-standing, intensive
contact and multilingualism between Germanic, Romance and Slavic languages and
varieties. Exchange between Alpine dialects of different genetic affiliations
is well attested in vocabulary and onomastics (Krefeld & Lücke 2014). However,
the Alpine context seems to meet exactly the kind of extralinguistic setting
where areal convergence in grammatical structure is likely to emerge, too.

Indeed, unidirectional grammatical borrowing has been reported: As for
Germanic varieties, Mayerthaler & Mayerthaler (1990) have made the
(controversial, cf. Rowley 2017) proposal that many syntactic traits of
Bavarian are actually pattern-borrowings from (Rhaeto-) Romance. In a similar
vein, Ramat (1998) draws attention to different morphosyntactic features
resulting from long-lasting contacts around the Alps, and particularly to what
Wiemer (2011) in a survey on passive constructions has even termed the ‘Alpine
passive’ based on the auxiliary verb come. As for Romance, cases of verb
second (Poletto 2002, Liver 2009) or do-periphrasis (Benincà & Poletto 2004)
have been reported in Alpine varieties, i.e. constructions that are highly
reminiscent of similar patterns otherwise much better known from Germanic. As
for Slavic, Reindl (2008) attributes a number of morphosyntactic features of
(varieties of) Slovenian to the influence of Germanic varieties.

Crucially, the structural effects of long-standing language contact may be
more complex than putative unidirectional grammatical borrowing. For example,
it is not clear whether the passive based on the auxiliary go as it is found
for instance in Walser German islands in Northern Italy also results from the
adoption of a Romance model or rather points to a more complex context of
contact-induced grammaticalization (cf Gaeta ms., 2017). Furthermore,
bidirectional contact-induced change may result in Alpine shared innovations
(cf. Seiler 2004 on case marking and clitic doubling): developments that (i)
are plausibly explained on the basis of language contact within the Alpine
region, (ii) are shared among languages/varieties of different genetic
affiliations, and (iii) are much less (or not at all) found in non-Alpine
varieties of Germanic, Romance, and Slavic. Shared innovations seem to be the
most striking examples for areal structural convergence within the Alpine
area.

The goals of the proposed workshop are twofold: 

‑ First, to discuss the question as to whether there exists an Alpine
linguistic convergence area, based on convincing empirical case studies of
Alpine contact-induced change, in particular shared innovations (in the sense
as defined above) in phonological, morphological, and syntactic structure,
especially with regard to other closely located convergence zones such as the
Charlemagne area or the Balcan area;
‑ Second, to discuss methodological challenges related to fieldwork, language
documentation, use of (electronic) resources especially with lesser-used
languages, quantification, and the interpretation of change as being
contact-induced or not.


Call for Papers:

A specter is haunting Europe: The Alps as a linguistic area?
Convenors: Livio Gaeta (Turin) & Guido Seiler (Munich)

We invite for contributions discussing empirically well-grounded case studies
as well as methodological issues related to the identification of Alpine
structural features, i.e. features that are possibly due to structural
convergence within the area. Such features may deal with, among others:
phonological quantity and prosody; vowel and consonant inventories; case
systems; morphology and syntax of pronouns (e.g. clitic doubling, pro-drop and
the lack thereof, reinforced pronouns such as noi altri, etc.); verb second
and deviations thereof; expletive elements, including expletive verbs (‘do’);
auxiliaries and other functional verbs; subordination (relativization, doubly
filled COMP, complementizer agreement, etc.); demonstratives and deictic
systems; verb-framing vs. satellite-framing.

Abstracts must not exceed 300 words excluding references. 

Please send an abstract to
Livio Gaeta (livio.gaeta at unito.it) and/or Guido Seiler (seiler at lmu.de)

Deadline: 12 November 2017.




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