31.3888, Calls: Gen Ling, Morphology, Syntax, Typology/Greece
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LINGUIST List: Vol-31-3888. Wed Dec 16 2020. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 31.3888, Calls: Gen Ling, Morphology, Syntax, Typology/Greece
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Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2020 14:38:08
From: Alexandra Rehn [Alexandra.Rehn at uni-konstanz.de]
Subject: Adjective: The unknown Category. Inflection articles and other functional material in the AP
Full Title: Adjective: The unknown Category. Inflection articles and other functional material in the AP
Date: 31-Aug-2021 - 03-Sep-2021
Location: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Contact Person: Alexander Pfaff
Meeting Email: a.p.pfaff at ilos.uio.no
Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Morphology; Syntax; Typology
Call Deadline: 15-Jan-2021
Meeting Description:
In spite of a substantial body of research on the status of A(djectives), from
both a generative (e.g. Baker 2003) and functionalist (e.g. Bhat, 1994) as
well as a diachronic and typological (Dixon 1982; Rießler 2016) perspective,
there does not seem to be a broad consensus on a number of relevant questions
like:
(i) Is A a universal category?
(ii) Is A a category at all or is it rather a version of N or V?
(iii) Are there (sub-)categories like “nouny” and “verby” As?
(iv) Which categorial properties make A clearly distinct from N and V?
Against the backdrop of these rather broad and general questions, this
workshop addresses a relatively specific domain – functional elements
(inflection, articles, ezafe) in the AP and their (possible) contribution to
or interaction with the categorial status of A:
(v) Are there functional elements/morphemes in the AP that are intimately
related to or dependent on the category A, or even determine adjectivehood?
(vi) Do they have cognates in other domains (NP, VP), and if so, how are they
related (morphologically/semantically/etymologically)?
The general aim of the workshop is to gain new insights regarding the – up to
this day unanswered – question of what it is that makes an A an A. Do As have
specific properties that allow a definition of their categorial status, and if
so, are they substantial or merely functional properties (e.g. attributive
modification) – or are As simply the least specified category (see Baker 2003)
that are best characterized by what they are not rather than by what they are?
The workshop has an empirical and a theoretical component, and explicitly
welcomes diachronic, comparative and typological, as well as theoretical
perspectives. On the empirical side, we want to bring together a number of
relevant phenomena from a range of languages, and try to establish a
(small-scale) typology of relevant items. The goal is to formulate diagnostics
that allow us to compare such AP internal material across languages. On the
theoretical side, we are interested in what role these items play regarding
the categorial status of A.
Call for Papers:
Below we give a brief (non-exhaustive) overview of relevant topics for the WS:
a) Early Indo-European has been claimed not to have a separate category A, but
merely one super-category nominal. One of the arguments used is that presumed
adjectives are syntactically, semantically and morphologically non-distinct
from nouns. This raises the question what characterizes inflectional material
as adjectival. Is it merely distinctness from nominal inflection, is it gender
(and phi-) agreement or something else? Germanic weak adjectives are
particularly interesting as they seem to have changed their categorial status
from N to A (see Osthoff 1876; Viti 2015; Rehn 2019).
We are thus particularly interested in adjectival inflection that appears to
be more than simply the spellout of agreement, such as the strong vs. weak
inflection in Germanic, the definite vs. indefinite inflection in Latvian and
Lithuanian, but also short vs. long adjectives in Slavic languages.
b) Some languages employ adjectival/linking/attributive articles: article
elements that appear to be inherently dependent on the presence of an
adjective. Although these elements are usually etymologically related to
demonstratives/definite determiners, they cannot be considered “regular”
definite articles since they are more closely associated with the adjectival
constituent, rather than the noun phrase at large. Consequently, it has been
argued that they are narrow components of the AP (Marušič & Žaucer 2007, 2013;
Perridon & Sleeman 2011; Rießler 2016; Börjars & Payne 2016; Pfaff 2019).
Elements fitting the profile of “adjectival article” can be found in Greek,
Slovenian, Albanian, Romanian, Gothic, Old Norse, Hebrew, and others. There
is, however, quite some (crosslinguistic) diversity, and the precise function
of these elements, their grammaticalization path and their relation to
definiteness remain unclear.
c) Comparative/superlative morphology is relevant in the present context
because it seems to be a paradigmatic adjectival property, designed for the
category A, and is often used as one diagnostic for adjectivehood. It has
however been pointed out that there are languages where comparative morphology
is also found with nouns and even verbs (e.g. Satomi 2008; for discussion and
further references, see Ratkus 2011). This suggest that comparison is not
uniquely dependent on a category A.
Participants should try to make reference to one or more of the following
questions:
- What is the role/function/contribution of AP-internal elements?
- Are they responsible for “adjectivehood”?
- Do they presuppose a category A?
- Can they serve as unambiguous diagnostics?
- How do they vary crosslinguistically?
- Do we find the same morphology with other “attributes” (e.g. appositions)?
- Do we find interesting cases of systematic multifunctionality/polysemy or
common grammaticalization paths with VP-/NP-internal elements?
The Workshop is part of the SLE-conference.
Please read the SLE call on http://sle2021.eu/call-for-papers
Follow the SLE-guidelines for your submission
http://www.sle2021.eu/submission-guidelines.
Submissions must be made via Easychair:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sle2021
Select the Workshop to which you want to submit in Easychair.
Important: In order for your abstract to be considered, you must be an SLE
member.
See the FAQ section (expecially point 2 on ''General rules'')
http://www.sle2021.eu/faq
There are reduced fees for students and participants from certain countries.
Deadline: 15 Jan
You can be first author of one submission (paper, worshop proposal etc.) but
you may be co-author of more than one submission. See the FAQ section, point
14, on the SLE page.
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