29.63, Calls: Historical Linguistics, Semantics, Typology/Belgium

Wed Jan 3 22:04:36 UTC 2018

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-63. Wed Jan 03 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.63, Calls: Historical Linguistics, Semantics, Typology/Belgium

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Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2018 17:04:22
From: Thanasis Georgakopoulos [athanasios.georgakopoulos at uliege.be]
Subject: Semantic Maps: Where do we stand and where are we going?

Full Title: Semantic Maps: Where do we stand and where are we going? 

Date: 27-Jun-2018 - 28-Jun-2018
Location: Liege, Wallonia, Belgium 
Contact Person: Thanasis Georgakopoulos
Meeting Email: athanasios.georgakopoulos at uliege.be
Web Site: http://web.philo.ulg.ac.be/lediasema/workshop/ 

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

Call Deadline: 15-Feb-2018 

Meeting Description:

The semantic map model is relatively new in linguistic research, but it has
been intensively used during the past three decades for studying a variety of
cross-linguistic and language-specific questions. The plethora of linguistic
domains to which the model has been applied highlights its efficiency in
capturing regular patterns of semantic structure and crosslinguistic
similarities of form-meaning correspondence. One of the advantages of the
model is that any type of meaning can be integrated in semantic maps, such as
the meanings or functions of grammatical morphemes, of entire constructions,
or of lexical items, resulting in Grammatical, Constructional, and Lexical
semantic maps, respectively.

Invited speakers (alphabetically):

William Croft (University of New Mexico)
Alexandre François (Lacito - CNRS)
Eitan Grossman (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (Stockholm University)
Johann Mattis List (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History,
Jena)
Silvia Luraghi (University of Pavia)
Andrej Malchukov (Johannes Gutenberg-University)
Tatiana Nikitina (Inalco - UMR 8135 CNRS)
Loic-Michel Perrin (Inalco - CNRS)
Ekaterina Rakhilina & Daria Ryzhova (National Research University Higher
School of Economics, Moscow)
Martine Vanhove (Inalco - UMR 8135 CNRS)
Anna Zalizniak (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow)

Discussant: Johan Van der Auwera (University of Antwerp)

Call for Papers:

The big bulk of research has produced Grammatical and Constructional semantic
maps, which represent the relationships between meanings in a wide range of
domains (cf. van der Auwera & Temürcü, 2006: 132; Cysouw, Haspelmath, &
Malchukov, 2010a; Narrog & van der Auwera, 2011): tense and aspect (Anderson,
1982), reflexives and middles (Kemmer, 1993), indefinite pronouns (Haspelmath,
1997a), impersonal constructions (Malchukov & Ogawa, 2011; Siewierska &
Papastathi, 2011; van der Auwera, Gast, & Vanderbiesen, 2012; Gast & van der
Auwera, 2013), modality (van der Auwera & Plungian, 1998; van der Auwera et
al., 2009; Simon-Vandenberge & Aijmer, 2007: ch. 10; Boye, 2010), temporal
markers (Haspelmath, 1997b), encoding of core arguments (Croft, 2001:
134–147), semantic roles (Luraghi, 2001; Haspelmath, 2003; Clancy, 2006;
Narrog & Ito, 2007; Rice & Kabata, 2007; Malchukov & Narrog, 2009; Nikitina,
2009; Luján, 2010; Malchukov, 2010; Wälchli, 2010; Grossman & Polis, 2012;
Hartmann, Haspelmath, & Cysouw, 2014; Luraghi, 2014), coordination
(Haspelmath, 2004: 20–24; Mauri, 2010), complementation (Matras, 2004),
adversatives (Malchukov, 2004), intransitive predication (Stassen, 1997),
secondary predication (van  der Auwera & Malchukov, 2005; Verkerk, 2009),
person-marking (Cysouw, 2007), imperative-hortatives (van der Auwera,
Dobrushina, & Goussev, 2003) negative existentials (Veselinova, 2013),
negative polarity items (Hoekstra, 2014), intensifying particles (Forker,
2015), additives (Forker, 2016).

In recent years, the semantic map method has experienced a ‘Lexical turn,’ the
starting point of which can be traced back to François’ (2008) seminal paper,
which, building on Haspelmath (2003), provides a blueprint for constructing
lexical semantic maps (see also Majid et al., 2007 for an early account).
Other studies that followed focused on polysemic patterns shared by diverse
notions, such as quality expressions (Perrin, 2010), notions belonging to the
motion domain (Wälchli & Cysouw, 2012), the notion of emptiness (Rakhilina &
Reznikova, 2016), natural and spatial features (Youn et al., 2016;
Georgakopoulos et al., 2016), temperature terms (see various articles in the
volume edited by Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 2015; e.g., Perrin, 2015;
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Rakhilina, & Vanhove, 2016).

Notably, most of the studies using the semantic map method has been adopting a
synchronic perspective, and the limited research that has added the diachronic
dimension has focused almost exclusively on the grammatical domain
(Lichtenberk, 1991; van der Auwera & Plungian, 1998; Narrog, 2010; Luján,
2010; Eckhoff, 2011; Luraghi, 2014). One can also notice that the scope of
constructional maps has been expanded in order to include the diachronic
dimension (Fried, 2007; 2009; Traugott, 2016). For lexical typology, on the
other hand, semantic maps have been conceptualized explicitly as “a strictly
synchronous device,” a stance justified by the complexity of the historical
relations between lexical meanings (Rakhilina & Reznikova, 2016: 113). Albeit
complex, the historical dimension can be integrated to semantic maps, provided
that there are available resources (see Zalizniak et al., 2012 for the
Catalogue of Semantic Shifts that could be used in this direction).

One major issue for the semantic map model, which is a recurrent concern in
language typology as a whole, is the choice of a good language sample that
will allow for valid cross-linguistic generalizations and will increase the
map’s accuracy. Although small-sized samples may suffice to arrive at a
certain degree of generalization (Haspelmath, 2003: 217), restricting
typological research to only a few languages could result in overlooking
interesting (even if infrequent) connections between meanings (Narrog & Ito,
2007: 276) or in missing language or culture associations that are specific to
geographical regions or areas. One important future area of research for the
semantic map method would then be to construct and to test various areally and
genealogically stratified samples (but see Bickel, 2012). One question that
will necessarily arise is whether lexical semantic maps should follow the same
principle as the grammatical semantic maps. In this respect, Rakhilina and
Reznikova (2016: 101–102) highlight the fact that some of the restrictions of
grammatical typology do not apply to lexical typology. For example, they claim
that related languages can provide reliable information just as genealogically
diverse ones do. Furthermore, despite the increasing availability of resources
(such as the Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications, see List et al.,
2014), the primary material for lexico-typological studies is not always
sufficient, a factor that may impede large-scale studies.

Besides quantity of data, the accuracy of a semantic map also depends heavily
on the quality of the collected crosslinguistic material, which is best
ensured by identifying comparable phenomena across languages. As to what
counts as meaning, comparability is reached if the same definition is used, a
definition that should ideally be purely descriptive and theory-neutral (see
François, 2008: 170; Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 2016: 5). As such, the meanings of a
map can be seen as comparative concepts (Haspelmath, 2010; see the special
issue of Linguistic Typology 20/2 [2016] devoted to this topic).

Another pending issue for the semantic map approach is to reach a point at
which it would be possible to generate maps automatically on the basis of a
given set of data (see Narrog & Ito, 2007: 280), given that it is practically
impossible to handle large-scale crosslinguistic datasets manually. Despite
the fact that significant steps towards this goal have been taken (see, e.g.,
Croft & Poole, 2008; Regier, Khetarpal, & Majid, 2013, to name but a few),
many questions remain to be explored in this highly promising domain. The
problem of network inference is a very active research area (especially in
biology, where network inference is used for uncovering causal relationships
between genotype and phenotype) and the number of available algorithms has
grown tremendously during the last decades (e.g., Siegenthaler & Gunawan,
2014). Such algorithms should be tested on large-scale cross-linguistic data
in order to evaluate their efficiency in plotting informative maps. Automatic
plotting of semantic maps goes hand-in-hand with the availability of graph
visualization platforms, which, with many built-in statistical methods, can
reveal much information otherwise ‘hidden’ in the network. Visualization
techniques and actual semantic analysis are and should be inseparable in the
future of the semantic map model (see Malchukov, 2010: 177).

The workshop aims to foster dialogue between experts in Typology, Areal
Semantics, Historical Linguistics, and Computational Linguistics, who would
address aspects of the aforementioned topics. In particular, we invite
contributions focusing on one or more of the following topics:

1. Methodological issues (including visualization techniques and tools).
2. Semantic maps and diachrony

a. How to integrate information about diachrony (beyond oriented vectors)?
b. How to exploit synchronic material to produce meaningful inferences about
diachrony?
c. How to account for contact-induced semantic changes with semantic maps?

3. Lexical semantic maps
4. Areal typology of lexico-semantics
5. Comparison between comparative approaches relying on large databases and
micro-scales studies

Call for Papers for a workshop in the framework of the Marie Curie BeIPD
Cofund postdoctoral project ''Le Diasema: Lexical Diachronic Semantic Maps:
Representing and explaining meaning extension''.

- Deadline for abstract submission: February 15, 2018
- Applicants notified of abstract acceptance: February 25, 2018
- Type of presentation: Please note that only poster presentations will be
accepted
- Organizers: Thanasis Georgakopoulos (University of Liège); Stéphane Polis
(University of Liège/ F.R.S.-FNRS)
- Venue: Liège, Belgium, University of Liège
- Host Institute: The Department of Classical and Oriental Studies of the
University of Liège (in collaboration with the research center in linguistics)
- No registration fee is required

Potential participants are requested to send an abstract (of up to 300 words,
exclusive of references) by February 15, to the following address:
athanasios.georgakopoulos at uliege.be (Thanasis Georgakopoulos) .

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