29.4029, Confs: General Linguistics/Germany

Wed Oct 17 18:15:54 UTC 2018

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-4029. Wed Oct 17 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.4029, Confs: General Linguistics/Germany

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Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2018 14:15:18
From: Roberta Mastrofini [roberta.mastrofini at unipg.it]
Subject: The Concept of Lightness: New Perspectives and Applications

The Concept of Lightness: New Perspectives and Applications 

Date: 21-Aug-2019 - 24-Aug-2019 
Location: Leipzig, Germany 
Contact: Roberta Mastrofini 
Contact Email: roberta.mastrofini at unipg.it 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics 

Meeting Description: 

(Session of 52nd Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea)

The term lightness was first coined by Jespersen in relation to English verbal
constructions formed by “an insignificant verb, to which the marks of person
and tense are attached, before the really important idea” (Jespersen, 1954:
117-118). In other words, lightness was first detected as a property of
general English predicates (i.e. to make, to have, to give, to take) when
found in combination with a nomen actionis (Nickel, 1968) or, following a more
recent definition, an eventive deverbal noun (Kiefer & Gross, 1995; Kiefer,
1998), as in the case of to make a call, to give a talk, to take a walk, to
have a row. These examples represent a verbal construction in which the
predicate is devoid of its literal meaning through a process of “predicate
bleaching” (Szabolsci, 1986). As a consequence, the verb turns into a mere
syntactic device (sometimes serving as an aspectual element too), while the
noun undertakes the main semantic content of the construction (i.e. to make a
call means “to call”; to give a talk means “to talk”, and so forth).

There have been many varied approaches to the study of LVCs, ranging from
morphology (Helbig 1979, 1984) to syntax (Cattell, 1984; Grimshaw & Mester,
1988; Kearns, 2002), and semantics (Wierzbicka, 1982, 1988; Stein, 1991), just
to name a few. Nevertheless, many aspects seem to be unsolved. 

Our workshop proposal wants to bring together scholars working on lightness
from any type of perspective ranging from syntax to semantics, in English, or
even better in a cross-linguistic perspective. Diachronic, typological, and
corpus-based approaches are welcome. The aim is to find an answer to the
following unsolved questions:
What is a LVC and what is not? Should we consider “light” only the
prototypical instances retrieved by Jespersen or postulate different degrees
of lightness in verbal constructions? And, if so, how, and by which parameters
is lightness assessed?
Would it be plausible to say that any lexical predicate may turn “light” under
specific syntagmatic conditions? If so, which ones?
Is lightness only a verbal property? 
Can lightness in LVEs be the result of a metaphorical shift? If so, could a
semantic cognitive approach be relevant?
How can lightness be considered from a Cognitive Linguistics approach? Is it a
matter of conceptual metaphor extension (Lakoff, 1990; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999,
2003)?
When did lightness emerge, in a diachronic perspective? Can we apply Prototype
Theory to distinguish LVCs from LVEs?

Keywords: Light Verb Extensions, Cognitive Semantics, Prototype Theory, Light
nouns, Scale of nouniness/verbiness.

Call for Papers:

Deadline for sending a 300-word abstract: Oct 31, 2018

Abstracts should be sent to:
E-mail: roberta.mastrofini at unipg.it

Convenors: 

Roberta Mastrofini, 
Jodi L. Sandford, 
Marco Bagli (University of Perugia, Italy).

Contact Person: Roberta Mastrofini

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