33.3562, Calls: Historical Ling, Lang Acquisition, Ling Theories, Morphology, Text/Corpus Ling/Germany

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-3562. Tue Nov 15 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.3562, Calls: Historical Ling, Lang Acquisition, Ling Theories, Morphology, Text/Corpus Ling/Germany

Moderators:

Editor for this issue: Everett Green <everett at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2022 06:57:24
From: Anne Wolfsgruber [anne.wolfsgruber at hu-berlin.de]
Subject: Panel: Causes and effects of salience in language variation, contact and change (XXXVIII. Romanistentag)

 
Full Title: Panel: Causes and effects of salience in language variation, contact and change (XXXVIII. Romanistentag) 

Date: 24-Sep-2023 - 27-Sep-2023
Location: Leipzig, Germany 
Contact Person: Anne Wolfsgruber
Meeting Email: anne.wolfsgruber at hu-berlin.de

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Text/Corpus Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 31-Dec-2022 

Meeting Description:

Salience is widely discussed not only in subdisciplines of linguistics, but
also in other fields interested in cognition. In the broadest sense, salience
is often viewed as the particular prominence of a feature (in comparison to
others). There is, however, no consensus on what exactly is meant by salience,
what types of salience – e.g. cognitive, perceptual, or sociolinguistic – need
to be distinguished and what explanatory value salience contributes to the
explanation of certain phenomena. Furthermore, the term salience is often used
without being defined. If definitions are available, they are sometimes
circular, or invoke other concepts such as (un)expectedness or markedness,
which in turn present their challenges (cf. Boswijk & Coler 2020; Haspelmath
2006).
With this in mind, it seems desirable to re-examine conceptualizations of
salience and to make a distinction between causes and effects of salience (cf.
Auer 2014). Usually, salience is described as a concept related to listeners.
Under this view, elements are not intrinsically salient, but perceived as
such, with perception being conceptualized as a phenomenon shared by a group
of speakers. A feature can be perceived as salient due to phoneme status, high
or low frequency, or areal range. The effects of salience can be seen in
linguistic accommodation and change.
Salience is often associated with multiple causes. Studies show that more
grammaticalized material tends to be perceived as less salient because it
loses phonological weight and material, it can no longer be emphasized by
stress and gestures are no longer used to reinforce it. In turn, stressed
elements often represent lexical material that is known to be acquired and
processed differently from grammaticalized material (cf. Ellis 2017;
Friederici 1982). Prepositions provide an interesting example. While the
highly grammaticalized à and de have not persisted in French-based creoles,
the lexical preposition pour has evolved, functioning as a complementizer,
irrealis, modality, and future marker (cf. Syea 2017).
Low salience is, however, not necessarily the consequence of high frequency
but can also result from low frequency of occurrence. This correlation has
been studied in work on (motion) event lexicalization and the semantic
component manner (cf. Aurnague & Stosic 2019). Talmy’s typological distinction
between verb framed languages and satellite framed languages is often
associated with a continuum of manner salience (cf. Slobin 2006). The Romance
languages are usually considered low manner salient, as they tend to have
comparatively small inventories of manner verbs and only limited ability to
combine manner verbs with Goal constituents. Speakers of Romance languages
often express manner less frequently and retrieve manner verbs more slowly
than speakers of satellite-framed languages (cf. Cardini 2008; Slobin 1996).
Changes can be observed in situations in which manner is contextually salient
(cf. Feist, Rojo López & Cifuentes Férez 2007) or in settings that involve
contact with satellite-framed varieties (cf. Stocker & Berthele 2020).
Salience also plays a central role with respect to semantic and discourse
pragmatic factors that condition clitic doubling and/or differential object
marking (DOM) in many Romance varieties. It is known that arguments that are
particularly salient, or those that have a salient referent, are more likely
to receive differential marking. A recurring question is whether salience
causes differential argument marking and/or whether an argument is perceived
as particularly salient as a consequence of its marking. Research on DOM has
shown that the Romanian marker pe, which has a CV structure, is more likely to
be retained by heritage speakers than sp. a, especially when a follows a 3SG
verb, as in Llama (a) Pedro (cf. Montrul & Bateman 2020).


Call for Papers:

The panel ‘Causes and effects of salience in language variation, contact and
change’ is organized as part of the “XXXVIII. Romanistentag”, which will be
held at the University of Leipzig, from Sep 24 to 27, 2023.

The goal is to bring together studies from different theoretical and empirical
backgrounds to address the causes and effects of salience based on insights
from Romance languages. Research areas that will be addressed include
alignment patterns, argument marking, and lexicalization patterns. We will aim
at clarifying definitions of salience, discuss their relevance for the
respective domain and reflect upon methodological approaches.

Questions to be addressed include the following:
- What are the necessary notions of salience to adequately describe and
explain the above mentioned and other phenomena in Romance languages, and to
what extent is salience a concept with explanatory power at all?
- What exactly is the relationship between salience and frequency? When does
salience correlate with high frequency, when with low frequency?
- Under which circumstances can salience be considered the cause of a given
phenomenon, and in which scenarios does it represent the consequence?
- How can concepts of salience be operationalized? Which empirical methods can
be used to measure different types of salience? How can corpus-based as well
as experimental approaches be fruitfully employed?

We welcome contributions on all Romance varieties. Talks may be held in any
Romance variety, English or German. Please send your anonymized abstract (max.
4000 characters incl. spaces and references) by 2022/12/31 to both workshop
organizers:

Barbara Schirakowski (barbara.schirakowski at fu-berlin.de)
Anne Wolfsgruber (anne.wolfsgruber at hu-berlin.de)




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

***************************    LINGUIST List Support    ***************************
 The 2022 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-33-3562	
----------------------------------------------------------