ALT News No. 28
Johan van der Auwera
auwera at uia.ua.ac.be
Mon Mar 5 13:29:59 UTC 2001
ALT News No. 28
February 2001
Given the existence of funding deadlines for participants at ALT IV
(Santa Barbara, Thursday, 19 July to Sunday - 22 July 2001), we hasten
to compose a Bulletin which talks about one thing only, viz. ALT IV.
1. The provisional program
2. Three ALT workshops
3. Two pre-ALT workshops
4. ALT IV Registration Form
5. Travel and accommodation
1. The provisional program
The program committee, which consisted of Casper de Groot (chair),
Zlatka Guentcheva, Maria Polinsky, Oesten Dahl, Walter Bisang and Vera
Podlesskaya, has done its job and has composed a program. Associated
with the 'Main Program' and in a way an integral part of it are three
workshops (§ 2). There are two more workshops one day before before ALT
IV (§ 3).
Many of the papers of the Main Program will be presented in two parallel
sessions, called 'Session A' and 'Session B'. The two workshops on
Thursday 19 July are also in parallel.
Thursday 19 July 2001
Registration (from 10.00)
9.00-12.00
A. Workshop: Sign Language Typology
Organizer: Ulrike Zeshan
B. Workshop: South American Language Families
Co-organizers: Pilar Valenzuela, Verónica Grondona, and
Sergio Meira.
BREAK
13.00-13.30
Opening ALT IV
13.30-14.00
Mithun, Marianne
Overview of the genetic and areal relations in California, and
typological thrills
14.00-14.30
Kinkade, Dale
The areal question: Northwest coast and California
14.30-15.00
Golla, Victor
Typological highpoints of two distinct California types: Yana (northern
California, classified as Hokan) and Yokuts (central-eastern California,
classified as Penutian)
15.00-15.30
Wash, Suzanne
Typological highpoints of a third type: Barbareno Chumash
BREAK
16.00-16.30
Session A:
Knight, Emily
Transitivity is disrespectful: Antipassivisation as a
deagentivising/object defocussing strategy in the avoidance register of
Bunuba
Session B:
Kibrik, Andrej
A Typologically oriented portrait of the Athabaskan Language Family
16.30-17.00
Session A:
Kittilä, Seppo
A typology of involuntary agent constructions
Session B:
Fedorova, Olga V.
Deictic features of demonstratives in Daghestanian languages
Friday 20 July 2001
8.30-9.00
Corbett, G.Greville, Brown, Dunstan & Tiberius, Carole
Agreement: towards a typology
9.00-9.30
Session A:
Schmidt, Peter
Agreement Domain Universals: Semantically-Based Proposals and Their
Problems
Session B:
Pustet, Regina
Copulas worldwide
9.30-10.00
Session A:
Siewierska, Anna & Bakker, Dik
Semantic parameters of the grammaticalization of person agreement
Session B:
Schultze-Berndt, Eva
Competing relations: depictive secondary predicates and adverbials in
crosslinguistic perspective
10.00-10.30
Session A:
Cysouw, Michael
The (a)symmetry of inflectional person marking
Session B:
Uehara, Satoshi & Thepkanjana, Kingkarn
Towards a typology of resultative constructions: a case study of some
languages of Pacific Rim Asia
BREAK
11.00-11.30
Session A:
Haspelmath, Martin
Basic Argument marking in ditransitive alignment types
Session B:
Asatiani, Rusudan
The Semantics and Typology of Yes/No Particles: A Cross-Linguistic Study
11.30-12.00
Session A:
Schulze, Wolfgang
Towards a Cognitive Typology of personal inflection in the Eastern
Caucasus
Session B:
van der Auwera,J. & Dobrushina, N
Towards a typology of imperatives and hortatives: categories and systems
12.00-12.30
Session A:
Plank, Frans
Competing Motivations for Gender Distinctions Relative to Numbers in
Pronominal Paradigms: Markedness, Conflict Resolution, Retention of
Recent Inheritance
Session B:
Curnow, Timothy
Evidentiality and first person: An initial examination
BREAK
13.30-14.00
Session A:
Simon, Horst
Only you? On the alleged inclusive-exclusive-distinction in the second
person plural
Session B:
Pinto, Manuella & Monachesi, Paola
Developing a metalanguage for a 'Typological Database System'
14.00-14.30
Daniel, Michael A.
Two ways of pronominal number categorization
14.30-15.00
Schellinger, Wolfgang
One + many = two: Indirect number marking
BREAK
15.30-16.00
Baerman, Matthew
The interpretation of person syncretism
16.00-16.30
Ourioupina, Olga
Number Agreement and Verbal Distributive Plurality in Oceanic languages
16.30-17.00
Helmbrecht, Johannes
On the Typology of Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns
14.00-17.00
Workshop: Cross-linguistic databases
Organizers: Balthasar Bickel and Johanna Nichols
19.00
Banquet
Saturday, 21 July 2001
8.30-9.00
Session A:
Sai, Sergei
On the universality of the notion "head"
Session B:
Dahl, Östen & Velupillai, Viveka
Areality in tense-aspect systems
9.00-9.30
Session A:
Hsiu-chuan Liao
The Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy Revisited: A View from Ergative
Languages
Session B:
Tatevosov, Sergei
The parameter of actionality: towards a typology of aspectual classes
9.30-10.00
Session A:
Cristofaro, Sonia & Giacalone Ramat, Anna
Case relativization strategies and the relativization of circumstantials
Session B:
Reid, Nicholas
Sitting right at the back: serialised posture/stance verbs in Northern
Australian languages
10.00-10.30
Session A:
Diessel, Holger
The postional patterns of subordinate clauses in cross-linguistic
perspective
Session B:
Veselinova, Ljuba
Suppletion in tense-aspect categories
BREAK
11.00-11.30
Session A:
Aske, Jon
Ancillary Changes in the Shift from OV to VO: Evidence from Basque
Session B:
Comrie, Bernard
Recipient person suppletion in the verb give: a preliminary typological
study
11.30-12.00
Session A:
Fortescue, Michael & Mackenzie, J.Lachlan
A two-tiered typological approach to disharmonic word-order/affixation
pairings
Session B:
Saulwick, Adam
Towards an intragenetic typology of benefactives in Gunwinyguan: with
particular reference to Rembarrnga
12.00-12.30
Session A:
Sumbatova, Nina
Focusing and Sentence Structure: the Daghestanian Case and a Typological
Sketch
Session B:
Luraghi, Silvia
Separating Instruments from Companions
BREAK
13.30-14.00
Session A:
Whaley, Lindsay
A Cross-linguistic Examination of Quantifier Float
Session B:
Shuafan Huang
Seediq: spatial representations in a language without prepositions
14.00-14.30
Session A:
Kazenin, Konstantin
Towards the typology of predicate ellipsis
Session B:
Bohnemeyer, Jürgen
Linguistic principles of motion event segmentation
14.30-15.00
Session A:
Gast, Volker
Innovation versus Renovation in the Grammaticalization of Reflexive
Markers
Session B:
Nichols, Johanna. & Peterson, David & Barnes, Jonathan
Which verbs form causatives?
BREAK
15.30-17.00
Business meeting
17.30
Reception Mouton de Gruyter
Sunday 22 July 2001
8.30-9.00
Myung-Hee Kim, Stirling, Lesley & Evans, Nicholas
Narrative Structure and Referring Expressions in Australian Languages
9.00-9.30
Bickel, Balthasar
How important are referents? Syntactic typology and discourse
9.30-10.00
Childs, G. Tucker
Language contact, language typology, and language death: the case of
Mmani
BREAK
10.30-11.00
Peterson, David A.
Typological evidence for the origin and motivation of applicative
constructions
11.00-11.30
Gerdts, Donna & Hukari, Thomas
Stacking Antipassives in Halkomelem Salish
11.30-12.00
Polinsky, Maria
Towards a Typology of Control Structures
2. Three ALT workshops
A. Workshop: Sign Language Typology
Organizer: Ulrike Zeshan
This workshop/symposium is intended to familiarize typologically-minded
linguists with the newly emerging linguistic sub-discipline of sign
language typology. The results of sign language research are still not
being sufficiently integrated into typological linguistics, despite
their obvious potential for opening new perspectives in the field. Sign
language typology seeks to apply typological considerations to the
cross-linguistic study of signed languages and to integrate results from
sign languages research into linguistic typology. I propose to provide a
comprehensive introduction to this field of study in three sections.
(i) Relevant background in sign language research: Sociolinguistic
issues (sign language communities, types of signed communication
systems); development and main current trends in sign language research;
current stage of sign language documentation around the world.
(ii) Aims and methods of sign language typology: The cross-linguistic
comparison of signed languages (description of individual sign
languages, typological studies across a sample of sign languages); a
theory of variation across sign languages (what ranges of typological
variation do we find in various domains of grammar and why, what
characterizes sign language as a linguistic type); the importance of
empirical/descriptive work; comparing signed and spoken languages.
(iii) A case study in sign language typology: summary of my first
large-scale typological study on interrogatives and negatives across
some 30 sign languages around the world; design of the project and
analysis of some of the results, demonstrating the range and kind of
typological variation found across sign languages, with videotaped
examples from various sign languages.
The workshop/symposium should include time for questions and discussion.
The following schedule is proposed:
Section 1:presentation: 20 minutes
questions/discussion 10 minutes
Section 2:presentation: 40 minutes
questions/discussion: 15 minutes
Section 3:presentation: 40 minutes
video data: 10 minutes
questions/discussion: 15 minutes
B. Workshop: South American Language Families
Co-organizers: Pilar Valenzuela, Verónica Grondona, and
Sergio Meira.
The focus of this proposed session will be on typologically salient
features of indigenous language families spoken in South America, the
area located between Panama in the North, and Tierra del Fuego in the
South. Ecologically, this area is characterized by a variety of
features, from high humidity, huge river systems, dense tropical
rainforest and relatively low elevations in the “Amazonia” on the East,
North and Central areas, to the high altitudes, arid terrain, and dry
climate of the Andes.
There are approximately 500 languages currently spoken in South America;
their exact classification is still, in many cases, controversial.
Established South American language families include (a) Arawakan,
spoken all over the Amazonia area; (b) Tupian, spoken south of the
Amazon; (c) Cariban, spoken all over the Guianas region, with some
members also in Colombia and Central Brazil; (d) Ge, or Je, spoken in
Central Brazil, (e) Panoan, spoken in Perú, Brazil and Bolivia; (f)
Tucanoan, spoken mainly in Colombia and Northwestern Brazil; (g)
Chibchan, spoken mostly in Central America but also in Colombia and
Venezuela; (h) Quechumaran, spoken in Perú, Bolivia, Ecuador,
Argentina, Chile, and Colombia; (i) Waikuruan, spoken in Northeastern
Argentina and Southwestern Brazil; (j) Chapakuran, spoken in the
Brazil-Bolivia area; (k) Puinavean, spoken in Brazil, Colombia and
Venezuela; and (l) Arawá, spoken in Brazil and Perú.
There are various typological features that, although not universal,
frequently characterize members of the different linguistic families in
South America. Among those are (a) the active-stative (agent-patient,
split-S) systems; (b) nominal classifiers; (c) complex evidentiality
systems; (d) nasality and related phenomena (e.g. spreading). A lot of
variety can also be observed: in terms of morphological complexity, for
instance, South American languages can vary from highly complex (e.g.
Arawakan, Waikuruan) to isolating (e.g. Ge, Chapakuran).
A session in which typologically salient characteristics of South
American Indigenous language families are described would be extremely
useful primarily because linguistic features of language families in
this area are among the lesser known to linguists outside South
America. Knowledge of these features can enrich our understanding of
language as a cognitive system. It can be used to test linguistic
theories that deal with properties of language in general, and will
provide data on typological characteristics of these languages that can
then be compared to those of other languages and language families
around the world. These data can also be used to revise and/or confirm
claims previously made about typological characteristics of South
American Indigenous languages. By focusing on how a given phenomenon is
realized in different genetically-related languages, we aim at analyzing
how the relevant feature varies and interacts with other parts of
grammar; also, we aim at proposing how the phenomenon in question might
have arisen thus contributing towards the reconstruction of the
Proto-languages. Finally, the dissemination of this knowledge can
hopefully attract the attention of the linguistic community to a group
of languages in great need of study, as well as promote a comparative
approach from the part of field linguists.
This session is expected to take four hours, not including breaks. Each
presentation is proposed to last thirty minutes, with ten minutes for
discussion.
Below is a list of participants who have committed themselves to present
a paper in this proposed session. These are all linguists who have
carried out fieldwork on languages that belong to the language family
they will be describing, and who can be considered as leading
researchers on that particular language family.
Elsa Gomez-Imbert
Nasal Harmony in Eastern Tukanoan Systems
Sergio Meira
A Typological Overview of the Cariban family, with Special Attention to
Valency
Sidney Da Silva Facundes
Nominal (Un)Possession in Arawak Languages and the Typology of
Possession Marking
Pilar Valenzuela
Adverbial Transitivity Agreement in Panoan Languages
Verónica Grondona
Location and Direction in Waikuruan Languages
Eduardo Ribeiro
Descriptive Predicates in Macro-Jê
C. Workshop: Cross-linguistic databases
Co-organizers: Balthasar Bickel and Johanna Nichols
Advances in computer technology over the last decade have stimulated an
unprecedented growth in large-scale typological databases. This workshop
aims at taking stock of current developments and research projects and
will provide a forum for discussing problems of design and
implementation that are common to current projects, specifically:
- database relationality
- software and cross-platform compatability
- fonts and character sets, Unicode compliability
- mapmaking tools and GIS integration
- internet readiness
Meanwhile, equally important recent advances and initiatives on
archiving, language resource database structure, and the like make
virtually no provision for typological databasing (e.g. the Language
Archive initiative: http://www.language-archives.org). The symposium
aims to respond to this gap by initiating discussion of ways in which
typological database construction could move in the direction of child
language research, with its regulated paths of data exchange, database
design standards, and metadata standards. To this end, representatives
of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI; http://www.ecai.org)
and the International Standard for Language Engineering Initiative
(ISLE; http://www.mpi.nl/ISLE/index.html) will present current
initiatives that address these concerns and what they can do for us.
After reviewing various pros and cons we will survey opinion among ALT
database owners and managers as to preferences for alternative
standardization and data-exchange formats such as: a decentralized
consortium; a centralized consortium; a standing committee of ALT; a
monopoly such as CHILDES; no action; etc.
Committed so far:
Martin Haspelmath or other representative of WALS
Pieter Muysken or other representative of his project
Balthasar Bickel or Johanna Nichols on AUTOTYP
Peter Wittenburg or other representative of ISLE
ECAI representative
Planned:
Other participants (invited, interested, not yet committed)
3. Two pre-ALT workshops (July 18, 2001)
A. Workshop on Functional Grammar and Language Typology
Co-organizers: Anna Siewierska,Kees Hengeveld, Dik Bakker
On 18th July, the day before the ALT IV conference in Santa
Barbara, we have planned a workshop with the title 'Functional Grammar
and Language Typology'. This workshop will consist of several
presentations by typologists who also work on the theory of Functional
Grammar (FG). The general idea is to show that typology can profit from
the availability of an encompassing linguistic theory, in our case FG,
in order to generate interesting typological questions, to fit
typological observations into a broader framework, and to try and find
more general explanations for typologies. We would appreciate it very
much if our typological friends, present in Santa Barbara, would discuss
our ideas and share their thoughts with us, in the wake of ALT IV
itself.
A more detailed programme will be made available in due time.
For more details please mail us ... and check the ALT web site!
B. Workshop on the WORLD ATLAS OF LANGUAGE STRUCTURES (WALS)
Co-organizers: Bernard Comrie, Matthew Dryer, David Gil,
Martin Haspelmath
On the afternoon of July 18th, the WALS project will hold a general
meeting, to which the public is invited.
>From 1 PM to 2 PM, David Gil and Martin Haspelmath will present an
overview of the WALS project, for the general public.
>From 2 PM to 5 PM, a meeting of WALS contributors will take place, which
will also be open to interested members of the public.
These two meetings will be held at the UCen, on the UCSB campus, under
the aegis of the LSA Summer Institute.
4. ALT IV REGISTRATION FORM
NAME: __________________________________________
AFFILIATION: _________________________________________
MAILING ADDRESS: __________________________________________
__________________________________________
_________________________________________
EMAIL ADDRESS: __________________________________________
PRE-REGISTRATION (due by May 15, 2001):
Members: Non-Members:
NON-STUDENT ______ $75 NON-STUDENT ______ $100
STUDENT ______ $55 STUDENT ______ $80
BANQUET: ______ $38
TOTAL AMOUNT: ____________
METHOD OF PAYMENT:
CHECK (US Currency only)* ____________
(Only checks drawn on US Dollars
can be accepted.)
INTERNATIONAL BANK TRANSFER** ____________
*Please send registration form and check made payable to 'UC Regents' by
May 15, 2001 to:
ALT IV Conference
Department of Linguistics, UCSB
3607 South Hall
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
USA
fax: 1-805-563-1948
**For participants paying by way of international bank transfers, please
transfer funds into the account below and send or fax a copy of the
transfer receipt with a copy of the registration form to the address
above:
Payee: Regents of the University of California, Santa Barbara
Bank: Bank of America
GPO Account Administration 5693
San Francisco, California
Account Number: 07805-00030
Reference Number: ALT2001
Again the deadline is May 15, 2001.
*** It will also be possible to pay on arrival, but then the higher
rates ($100 and $80) will be charged. Advance notification is much
appreciated.
WILL YOU BE ATTENDING THE LSA 2001 LINGUISTICS INSTITUTE?
______________________________
IF NOT, WILL YOU BE STAYING IN SANTA BARBARA, GOLETA, OR ON-CAMPUS?
______________________________
WILL YOU NEED TRANSPORTATION TO AND FROM THE CONFERENCE?
Transportation may be provided if there is sufficient need.)
________________________________
IF IT IS OFFERED, WOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN PARTICIPATING IN A
WINE-TASTING EXCURSION ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON? (Guests will pay their own
way.)
________________________________
5. Travel and accommodation
All the relevant information can be found in ALT News No. 27 or at
http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/alt/alt4conf.htm
For any further information contact either Marianne Mithun
mithun at humanitas.ucsb.edu) or Jennifer van Vorst (jav at umail.ucsb.edu).
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Marianne Mithun [President]
Department of Linguistics UCSB
University of California tel: + 1-805-893-4058
Santa Barbara, California 93106 + 1-805-563-1152
USA fax: + 1-805-563-1948
E-mail: mithun at humanitas.ucsb.edu
Frans Plank [Editor-in-chief, Linguistic Typology]
Sprachwissenschaft
Universitaet Konstanz
D-78457 Konstanz tel + 49 7531 88 26 56
Germany fax + 49 7531 88 27 41
E-mail: frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de
Johan van der Auwera [Secretary-Treasurer]
Linguistiek (GER)
Universiteit Antwerpen (UIA)
B-2610 Antwerpen tel + 32 3 820 27 76
Belgium fax + 32 3 820 27 62
E-mail: auwera at uia.ua.ac.be
ALT on the WEB: http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/alt
Webmaster : Peter Kahrel p.kahrel at lancaster.ac.uk
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