29.3935, Calls: Historical Linguistics, Linguistic Theories, Text/Corpus Linguistics/Greece

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3935. Wed Oct 10 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.3935, Calls: Historical Linguistics, Linguistic Theories, Text/Corpus Linguistics/Greece

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Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2018 15:42:22
From: Nikolaos Lavidas [nlavidas at enl.uoa.gr]
Subject: Language Change in English and Beyond: Linguistic Theory and Historical Corpora

 
Full Title: Language Change in English and Beyond: Linguistic Theory and Historical Corpora 

Date: 14-Mar-2019 - 15-Mar-2019
Location: Athens, Greece 
Contact Person: Nikolaos Lavidas
Meeting Email: nlavidas at enl.uoa.gr

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Text/Corpus Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 01-Dec-2018 

Meeting Description:

Workshop:

Language change in English and beyond: Linguistic theory and historical
corpora    

14-15 March 2019
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

Invited speakers:

Jóhanna Barðdal (Ghent University)
Alexander Bergs (University of Osnabrück)
Amalia Moser (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) 
Ioanna Sitaridou (University of Cambridge) 

Explanations of language change are always at the center of debates on the
nature of language and languages. The proposed causes of language change vary
extensively and include internal and external factors of change, universal
principles and language-specific properties, types of language contact. The
proposed analyses of diachronic data are typically informed by different
linguistic theories (generative, cognitive/ functional, constructional) and,
conversely, have opened up new directions for linguistic theories.
Grammaticalization and constructionalization, economy and reanalysis,
syntactic diglossia, and analogy are examples of perspectives that have
derived from diverse theoretical backgrounds and the cross-linguistic
investigation of change (e.g., Kroch 1989, Yang 2002, van Gelderen 2004, 2010,
Bergs & Diewald 2008, Croft 2000, Barðdal et al 2015).    

In recent years, a new direction of historical research has appeared with
diachronic corpora (particularly, annotated corpora) that facilitated the
development of a quantitative basis of historical linguistic studies. A
significant question in all relevant studies concerns the contrast between
continuity and discontinuity patterns in the diachrony of languages – in other
words, what remains stable and what changes over time. Quantitative approaches
may provide important insights on the domains and phenomena of continuity,
change, or variation. The diachrony of English, for instance, has been the
target of a rich tradition of corpus-based studies from diverse theoretical
backgrounds (e.g., Rissanen 2008, Kytö 2012, Traugott 2008 and elsewhere,
Hilpert 2016), and several surveys of grammatical change were based on
resources that include the Helsinki corpus, the ARCHER corpora, the Brown
family of corpora, and the Penn Parsed corpora. Significant challenges in the
case of diachronic corpora may include the use of heterogeneous data of “text
languages” due to, for instance, text transmission, absence of a language
norm, or presence of different dialects for the author and the copyists
(Schøsler 2005). However, the advantages of corpora for diachronic research
are numerous and easily observable. For instance, diachronic corpus-based
studies may even exclude a theoretical hypothesis; analyses based on corpus
studies include the absence of effects, which can exclude hypotheses that
would expect these particular effects (Hilpert & Gries 2016).


Call for Papers:

The aim of the workshop is to bring together scholars from different
theoretical frameworks interested in systematic explanation of language change
and the interrelation between current linguistic theories and corpus
diachronic data; the integrative basis is the special focus on (i) the
interface of semantics and syntax mainly (but not exclusively) in the history
of English, and (ii) the implications of corpus-based, quantitative analyses
for researching diachrony.

The issues to be addressed include:
- Modern approaches to explanations of change in the interface of semantics
and syntax (in English and other languages); approaches to change and
variation in the interface of syntax and semantics in earlier periods as well
as currently and in real time. 
- Universal constraints and principles of language change (e.g., Economy,
Reanalysis, Analogy); Is it possible to predict the direction of change? 
- Constructional approaches to language change and their relation to
corpus-based research. 
- Contact as an explanation of change: approaches to historical bilingualism
and language contact; case studies of contact-induced changes in English and
beyond.
- Ways of explaining language change and variation: corpora and quantitative
linguistic methodology; challenges of creating diachronic corpora;
Corpus-based case studies.   

The workshop will be held on March 14-15, 2019, in Athens, Greece. We invite
papers on all above-listed and related issues. Please send us (Nikolaos
Lavidas nlavidas at enl.uoa.gr; Kiki Nikiforidou vnikifor at enl.uoa.gr) a 300-word
abstract of your paper no later than December 1, 2018. Notification of
acceptance will be sent by December 20, 2018.

Nikolaos Lavidas & Kiki Nikiforidou
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens 
Faculty of English Language and Literature
Department of Language and Linguistics
nlavidas at enl.uoa.gr; vnikifor at enl.uoa.gr




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