33.931, Calls: English; Text/Corpus Linguistics/United Kingdom

Thu Mar 10 23:47:38 UTC 2022

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-931. Thu Mar 10 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.931, Calls: English; Text/Corpus Linguistics/United Kingdom

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Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2022 18:46:28
From: Jenny Ström Herold [jenny.strom.herold at lnu.se]
Subject: Comparing Cross-linguistic Complexity

Full Title: Comparing Cross-linguistic Complexity 

Date: 27-Jul-2022 - 27-Jul-2022
Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom 
Contact Person: Jenny Ström Herold
Meeting Email: jenny.strom.herold at lnu.se

Linguistic Field(s): Text/Corpus Linguistics 

Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Call Deadline: 01-Apr-2022 

Meeting Description:

This is a pre-conference contrastive workshop to be held Wednesday, 27 July,
2022. In this workshop we welcome contributions exploring structural
differences and degrees of complexity on both micro- and macro-levels of
texts. Papers should compare English with at least one other language based on
parallel (translation) or comparable corpora.

Call for Papers:

ICAME 43, Cambridge, 2022 (https://www.icame43.com/)
Pre-conference contrastive workshop to be held Wednesday, 27 July, 2022

Comparing cross-linguistic complexity
Convenors: Magnus Levin,1 Jenny Ström Herold,1 Markéta Janebová2 & Thomas
Egan3
1 Linnaeus University, Sweden. 2 Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic. 3
Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway

Denken heiβt Vergleichen / Thinking means comparing
Walther Rathenau

When contrasting two or more languages, we often notice language-specific
preferences that would otherwise go under the radar. In this sense, the German
author and politician Walther Rathenau had a point: Comparison is central to
our thinking but also, from our perspective, to the understanding of
languages. In this vein, we invite contributions to a contrastive
pre-conference workshop at ICAME43 in Cambridge focusing on differences in
complexity across languages.

One example of what may surface when comparing languages is how information is
packaged in terms of structural complexity (cf. Biber & Gray 2016: 60–65).
Complexity features may be reflected on the phrase, clause and text levels,
where restrictions and preferences can be highly language-dependent (see,
e.g., Fischer 2013; Dirdal 2014). Regarding the phrase level, the German noun
phrase, for example, is characterized by its elaborate, information-dense
structure (Magnusson 2002), the prime example being extended participial
premodifiers, such as in dem heterogenen und von seinen Wachstumsexplosionen
erschütterten China (lit. ‘in the heterogenous and by its growth-explosions
shaken China’). In English, which interestingly also seems to be moving
towards increased premodification in noun phrases (Biber, Grieve & Iberri-Shea
2009), such constructions are ungrammatical or marginal at best (cf.
Fabricius-Hansen 2010). Considering the sentence level, English, has a strong
preference for using non-finite clauses, a rarer option in German and Swedish,
which instead rely more heavily on finite main clauses (Ström Herold & Levin
2018). On the text level, patterns of discourse marking would be another case
in point. Languages may differ in the range and complexity of discourse
marking, but also in the degree of their explicitness. For example, Altenberg
(2007) links the greater frequency of zero translations of resultive
connectors in English translations from Swedish with the overall higher
frequency of such connectors in Swedish. Similarly, Lewis (2017) argues that
unlike in French political speeches, additive relations are more often left
implicit in English, which results in different discourse patterns. 

In this workshop we welcome contributions exploring structural differences and
degrees of complexity on both micro- and macro-levels of texts. Papers should
compare English with at least one other language based on parallel
(translation) or comparable corpora.

We envisage a full-day workshop with onsite participation, but most likely
with the option of remote participation. We invite submissions that address
the topic of cross-linguistic complexity. The workshop will include both full
papers (20+10 mins) and work-in-progress reports (10+5 mins). Abstracts should
contain approximately 500 words (excluding references). When submitting,
clearly indicate both the format (full paper/w-i-p) and whether you intend to
participate onsite or online. Abstracts should be submitted via email to both
magnus.levin at lnu.se and jenny.strom.herold at lnu.se. The deadline for abstract
submission is April 1 noon CET. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by
mid-April 2022.

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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-931	
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