34.3312, Calls: Expanding the Research Horizons of the P-demotion Domain: The Crosslinguistic Variation, Diversity, and Boundaries

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-34-3312. Mon Nov 06 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 34.3312, Calls: Expanding the Research Horizons of the P-demotion Domain: The Crosslinguistic Variation, Diversity, and Boundaries

Moderators: Malgorzata E. Cavar, Francis Tyers (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Justin Fuller
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Steven Franks, Everett Green, Daniel Swanson, Maria Lucero Guillen Puon, Zackary Leech, Lynzie Coburn, Natasha Singh, Erin Steitz
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: Zackary Leech <zleech at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: 04-Nov-2023
From: Katarzyna Janic [katarzyna.janic at amu.edu.pl]
Subject: Expanding the Research Horizons of the P-demotion Domain: The Crosslinguistic Variation, Diversity, and Boundaries


Full Title: Expanding the research horizons of the P-demotion domain:
The crosslinguistic variation, diversity, and boundaries
Short Title: ERHOP

Date: 12-Sep-2024 - 13-Sep-2024
Location: Poznan, Poland
Contact Person: Katarzyna Janic
Meeting Email: katarzyna.janic at amu.edu.pl
Web Site: https://katjan21.web.amu.edu.pl/

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics;
Syntax; Typology

Call Deadline: 08-Jan-2024

Meeting Description:

Crosslinguistic studies show that many languages have valency and
voice alternations that share two defining characteristics: (i) they
demote the P-argument syntactically, (ii) they do not affect the verb
argument structure. The so-called P-demotion alternations thus display
a formal and semantic overlap and may include but are not limited to
antipassive, conative, noun incorporation, and A-labile alternations.
The fact that there is a family of P-demotion constructions sharing
formal and semantic features (i-ii) has never been explicitly stated
in the literature. Nevertheless, some recognize more or less the scope
of the P-demotion domain (Zúñiga & Kittilä 2019; Janic &
Witzlack-Makarevich 2021b). However, P-demotion constructions are more
often described as individual alternation types crosslinguistically.
This contrasts with a mirror image of impersonal alternations that
also demote the core argument (A/S), yielding various impersonal
construction types. Importantly, they have been recognized as a
grammatical domain (Creissels 2008; Malchukov & Siewierska 2011). Even
if there is an apparent parallel between P-demotion and impersonal
alternations, the former has never been acknowledged as a grammatical
domain in its own right. The workshop seeks to describe the P-demotion
domain and define its previously understudied boundaries.

Syntactic studies define the concept of demotion differently. In the
seminal research on voice structure in Relational Grammar, demotion is
defined as a theoretical primitive (Perlmutter 1980; Blake 1990). Many
linguists, however, follow the Givónian tradition and define demotion
in terms of the hierarchy of syntactic functions (e.g., Lehmann 2015).
Regarding the syntactic P-demotion, it traditionally refers to the
antipassive, implying that P loses the core argument coding
properties. While some scholars view P-demotion as a gradient process,
where P is suppressed or represented by an expression lower on the
grammatical hierarchy (subject > object > non-core argument >
non-argument) (Polinsky 2017), others consider P-demotion as coming in
two guises: oblique expression or P suppression (Mithun 2021 Janic
2021). However, more often than not, comparative linguists limit the
P-demotion mechanism to a change from core to oblique (Næss 2007;
Malchukov 2015; Vigus 2018).

It is commonly accepted that grammatical properties of a construction
like voice marking triggers P-demotion. Most of the time, this
mechanism is limited to antipassive alternations alone. Consequently,
other voice alternations meeting a definition of P-demotion are
excluded from consideration. For instance, it is crosslinguistically
not uncommon that P-incorporation that involves P-demotion is
consistent with extra marking on the verb. However, such alternations
are treated outside of the voice domain as a distinct language
phenomenon. On the other hand, if we limit P-demotion to the voice
domain, various valency alternations like agent-preserving
flexivalency alternations will be excluded from the P-demotion domain,
even if they involve a P-demotion mechanism (Haspelmath 2022,
Creissels 2023). Such alternations either involves a change of P from
core to oblique or P-omission with an indefinite reading.

1. To what extent are P-demotion constructions alike and differ in
their form and function?
2. How can we capture their overlap of P-demotion alternations without
losing language-specific particularities?
3. What crosslinguistic generalizations can be made based on
P-demotion domain?
4. Since P-demotion constructions result from the same P-demotion
operation, we can speculate that they are diachronically related. Like
other detransitivized constructions, they may develop from a
regrammaticalization of some functionally related clauses, where the
functional extension is influenced by functional resemblance of
syntactic constructions (Givón 2001). What is the diachronic link
between different functional varieties of P-demotion clauses?

Call for Papers:

Submission link for ICL abstracts:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icl2024poznan

Each abstract will be reviewed anonymously by two reviewers.
Notification of acceptance will be 15 April 2024.

For more information, please consult:
https://icl2024poznan.pl/?id=2
https://ciplnet.com/

The workshop proposal with examples and references can also be
consulted on:
https://katjan21.web.amu.edu.pl/

Convenors: Katarzyna Janic, Krzysztof Stroński, and Mohammad Tavakoli
(Adam Mickiewicz University)



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

Please consider donating to the Linguist List https://give.myiu.org/iu-bloomington/I320011968.html


LINGUIST List is supported by the following publishers:

American Dialect Society/Duke University Press http://dukeupress.edu

Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group) http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/

Brill http://www.brill.com

Cambridge Scholars Publishing http://www.cambridgescholars.com/

Cambridge University Press http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics

Cascadilla Press http://www.cascadilla.com/

De Gruyter Mouton https://cloud.newsletter.degruyter.com/mouton

Dictionary Society of North America http://dictionarysociety.com/

Edinburgh University Press www.edinburghuniversitypress.com

Elsevier Ltd http://www.elsevier.com/linguistics

Equinox Publishing Ltd http://www.equinoxpub.com/

European Language Resources Association (ELRA) http://www.elra.info

Georgetown University Press http://www.press.georgetown.edu

John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/

Lincom GmbH https://lincom-shop.eu/

Linguistic Association of Finland http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/

MIT Press http://mitpress.mit.edu/

Multilingual Matters http://www.multilingual-matters.com/

Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG http://www.narr.de/

Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT) http://www.lotpublications.nl/

Oxford University Press http://www.oup.com/us

SIL International Publications http://www.sil.org/resources/publications

Springer Nature http://www.springer.com

Wiley http://www.wiley.com


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-34-3312
----------------------------------------------------------