31.3010, Confs: Cog Sci, Hist Ling, Lang Acq, Psycholing, Syntax/Greece

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-31-3010. Mon Oct 05 2020. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 31.3010, Confs: Cog Sci, Hist Ling, Lang Acq, Psycholing, Syntax/Greece

Moderator: Malgorzata E. Cavar (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Student Moderator: Jeremy Coburn
Managing Editor: Becca Morris
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Everett Green, Sarah Robinson, Lauren Perkins, Nils Hjortnaes, Yiwen Zhang, Joshua Sims
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Lauren Perkins <lauren at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2020 15:48:59
From: Michael Percillier [percillier at uni-mannheim.de]
Subject: Cognitive mechanisms driving contact-induced language change

 
Cognitive mechanisms driving contact-induced language change 

Date: 31-Aug-2021 - 03-Sep-2021 
Location: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece 
Contact: Michael Percillier 
Contact Email: percillier at uni-mannheim.de 

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; Historical Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Psycholinguistics; Syntax 

Meeting Description: 

The workshop focuses on contact-induced change on the level of syntax or at
the interface of syntax with other levels (e.g. argument structure, aspect,
word formation, information structure etc). This orientation comes from the
research project ''Borrowing of argument structure in contact situations''
(BASICS, http://tinyurl.com/dfgbasics) where we have been investigating the
extent to which Old French had an influence on the grammar of Middle English.
In this workshop we would like to extend our focus to the cognitive factors
relevant for language change and acquisition, such as, for example, frequency,
structural priming, level of awareness, salience, analogy, ambiguity, chunking
(see the contributions in Hundt et al. 2017). These factors originate from
mental ''capacities as memory, pattern recognition, abstraction,
generalization, and routinization of repeated tasks'' (Mithun 2003, 552).

Recent research has only started investigating how these mechanisms relate to
historical language change. Frequency and especially the frequency of
contextualized variants might allow inferences about language change in the
past (Hilpert 2017, 67). Chunking entails changes in the analysability and
compositionality of the given expression, and might therefore be intimately
related to language change, especially in terms of grammaticalization (Bybee
2010; Bybee & Moder 2017). A low degree of salience of certain linguistic
elements has been observed to favour morpho-syntactic change, whereas high
salience has been judged implausible as a trigger (Traugott 2017, 102; 108).
Also, it is not entirely clear whether (and how) the concept can be applied /
adapted to historical periods (Traugott 2017, 96). Priming has been
demonstrated to provoke ungrammatical utterances even in monolingual adults
(Fernández et al. 2017). It seems highly plausible that repeated priming may
have long term effects, especially via alignment and routinisation effects
(Pickering & Garrod 2017, 175; 189). Analogy-induced phenomena
(overgeneralizations), from an emergentist perspective, resemble the outcome
of historical change (Behrens 2017, 235). In the same vein, structural
ambiguity resulting from current variation can be taken as synchronic
projection of language change, as the old and new interpretation of a given
morpho-syntactic unit may coexist for some time in ‘critical contexts’
(Diewald 2002).      
              
With this workshop we seek to encourage interaction between the two
disciplines to gain new insights into the nature of (contact-induced) language
change. Since we are aware that language change is not a primary question in
psycholinguistics (yet) we also welcome conceptual papers addressing e.g.
long-term and historically potentially relevant measurable effects, and in
more general terms, the compatibility and complementarity of data in both
fields (e.g. Holler & Weskott 2018; Bader & Koukoulioti 2018).
 

Call for Papers: 

We invite papers addressing these and related questions (in addition to the
linguistic focus on syntactic phenomena):
1. Which cognitive mechanisms play a significant role in contact-induced
structural change?
2. How can cognitive mechanisms be evidenced in historical data?
3. At what level can historical and psycholinguistic evidence be mapped, or at
least be related to each other? 
4. Who is the agent of change (monolinguals, (late) bilinguals, imperfect
learners etc.)?
5. Which experimental methods are used to identify cross-linguistic effects
and how can they be implemented in studies of contact-induced change?
6. How can contact-induced change be theoretically modelled in terms of
cognitive mechanisms?

For the full call for papers, please consult:
http://www.sle2021.eu/downloads/workshops/Cognitive%20mechanisms%20driving.pdf

Important dates: 
 - November 1, 2020: deadline for submission of short abstracts to the
convenors of the
workshop (300 words without references)
 - November 20, 2020: deadline for submission of workshop proposals by the
convenors
 - December 15, 2020: notification of acceptance/rejection of the workshop
proposal
 - January 15, 2021: deadline for submission of individual “long” abstracts by
the
participants (500 words without references)
 - March 31, 2021: notification of acceptance/rejection of individual “long”
abstracts.





------------------------------------------------------------------------------

***************************    LINGUIST List Support    ***************************
 The 2020 Fund Drive is under way! Please visit https://funddrive.linguistlist.org
  to find out how to donate and check how your university, country or discipline
     ranks in the fund drive challenges. Or go directly to the donation site:
                   https://crowdfunding.iu.edu/the-linguist-list

                        Let's make this a short fund drive!
                Please feel free to share the link to our campaign:
                    https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-31-3010	
----------------------------------------------------------