32.3042, Calls: Historical Ling, Lang Acquisition, Ling Theories, Psycholing, Syntax/Romania

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-32-3042. Tue Sep 28 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.3042, Calls: Historical Ling, Lang Acquisition, Ling Theories, Psycholing, Syntax/Romania

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Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2021 19:33:27
From: Ankelien Schippers [ankelien.schippers at uol.de]
Subject: The Mirror Asymmetry: Long-distance subject/object asymmetries from a theoretical and empirical perspective

 
Full Title: The Mirror Asymmetry: Long-distance subject/object asymmetries from a theoretical and empirical perspective 

Date: 24-Aug-2022 - 27-Aug-2022
Location: Bucharest, Romania 
Contact Person: Ankelien Schippers
Meeting Email: ankelien.schippers at uol.de

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

Call Deadline: 12-Nov-2021 

Meeting Description:

It is a well-known fact that clause-bound (short-distance) A’-dependencies
(wh-questions, relatives) are typically less marked than object
A’-dependencies. Somewhat surprisingly, a reverse asymmetry seems to hold for
long-distance (LD) A’-dependencies: Crosslinguistically speaking, subjects are
harder to extract from embedded clauses than non-subjects. Many languages
therefore employ some sort of alternative strategy to form LD subject
dependencies, such as complementizer deletion or alternation, clausal
pied-piping, resumptive prolepsis and scope marking (cf. Rizzi & Shlonsky,
2007). The reverse asymmetry is furthermore visible in L1 (Roeper & De
Villiers, 2011) and L2 acquisition (Jordens, 1991; Juffs & Rodríguez, 2014),
in diachronic change (Schippers & Hoeksema, 2021) in acceptability judgment
data (Featherston, 2005; Kiziak, 2010) and sentence processing (Schippers et
al., 2020).
The problem with LD subject extraction is perhaps best known because of the
that-trace or COMP-trace effect in English, for which different explanations
have been given, including syntactic (Rizzi, 1990), informational-structural
(Bennis, 1986; Bayer, 2005), processing-related (Hawkins, 2003),
production-related (McDaniel et al., 2015) and prosodic explanations
(Kandybowicz, 2008). Rizzi & Shlonsky (2007) propose the COMP-trace effect in
English is due to a universal ban on LD subject extraction (criterial subject
freezing). This is meant to account for the fact that crosslinguistically, LD
subject extraction appears banned almost without exception, although here do
appear to be exceptions (e.g. German, Dutch). Even in English, there is
speaker variation (Sobin, 1987, Cowart, 2003().

The difficulties associated with LD subject/object asymmetries have been the
topic of extensive research and debate in formal frameworks, with the issue
far from being settled (Pesetsky, 2017).  Up to now, the topic has received
relatively little attention from more empirically driven lines of research,
such as psycholinguistics, language acquisition and diachronic and synchronic
variation. linguistics. This workshop therefore has as its goal to bring
together researchers that work on LD subject/non-subject asymmetries from
different fields of research and frameworks. The overarching research question
that this workshop aims to answer (and which all presentations should address)
is: Which factor causes the LD subject/object asymmetry? Relevant subquestions
related to this central question are (amongst others):

- Is there a general, universal constraint on LD subject movement or are there
exemptional languages/contexts?
- Which alternative strategies are employed to form LD subject dependencies,
what is their syntactic and semantic structure, and how do they relate to LD
movement proper?
- Are there LD subject/object asymmetries in language processing, production
and comprehension? What kind of conclusions can be drawn from this (i.e. can
LD subject/object asymmetries be reduced to processing and/or production
considerations)?
- Are there LD subject/object asymmetries in L1 and L2 acquisition and what
can be learned from this?
- What kind of diachronic and synchronic (e.g. dialectal) variation in LD
subject/object asymmetries effects can be observed?
In addition to empirically grounded work (research on language production and
processing, first and second language acquisition, corpus linguistics, etc.),
we also welcome (novel) formal explanations for LD subject non/subject
asymmetries. Furthermore, we particularly welcome research on lesser-known
languages and varieties.


Call for Papers:

A non-anonymous, 300-word abstract can be send to ankelien.schippers at uol.de
before 12 November, 2021. You will be notified of your acceptance to be
included in the workshop proposal by November 19th, 2021.




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LINGUIST List: Vol-32-3042	
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