Historical linguistics conference: Abstract deadline approaching

Thu Sep 20 09:48:41 UTC 2007

FINAL CALL: DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS is 1 October 2007.

Conference: Continuity and Change in Grammar

University of Cambridge, 18-20 March 2008

We are pleased to announce an international conference on Continuity  
and Change in Grammar,
which will take place from 18-20 March 2008 at the University of  
Cambridge. The focus will be on
theoretical and methodological aspects of morphosyntactic change and  
conservatism.

The aim of the conference is to bring together researchers working on  
different aspects of
linguistic transmission in order to enhance our understanding of what  
makes languages change
and what in turn prevents them from changing.

Factors that are thought to play a role in the diachronic development  
of languages include first
and (imperfect) second language acquisition, the latter typically  
under conditions of language
contact. The role of language contact and resulting (biased) bi- or  
multilingualism in morpho-
syntactic change, and the question of whether in fact there can be  
any entirely language-internal
change are topics that have gained much interest recently. If  
language contact has a role in
triggering change, can it equally be shown to play a role in  
preventing it? What other factors can
prevent or inhibit a change that might be expected on the basis that  
other languages show a
comparable change under comparable conditions?

A particular focus of the conference will be syntactic continuity,  
that is, cases where syntactic
change fails to happen, or at least is delayed, even though change  
would be expected on the basis
of parallel changes in other languages. An example is Jespersen's  
Cycle, which occurred in a
continuum of languages beginning in early Old Norse in northern  
Europe, and giving the
appearance of spreading south from Scandinavia via German, English,  
Dutch, Welsh, Breton,
French and northern Italian dialects. In Jespersen's Cycle as it is  
found in several European
languages, a preverbal negation marker is first reinforced and later  
replaced by a postverbal one.
As Jespersen's Cycle seems to have spread geographically (essentially  
from north to south) in the
course of the last millennium and to affect languages from different  
subgroups of Indo-European,
it has been suggested that this might be a contact phenomenon or even  
a manifestation of a more
general western European convergence area (Ramat and Bernini 1990,  
Bernini and Ramat 1996,
Haspelmath 1998, 2001). However, Polish and especially Czech, which  
have been in very close
contact with German (and Yiddish) for centuries, have never undergone  
a change of this sort in
their negation systems, even though their preverbal negation markers  
have undergone
considerable weakening (in Czech, for example, ne behaves like a  
verbal prefix). Such resistance
to change appears to cast doubt on the role of contact in the spread  
of postverbal adverbial
negation. A topic that belongs to this general field of syntactic  
changes that are expected, but fail
to happen, are changes which occur in some dialects of a given  
language but are delayed in
others. The conference aims at encouraging discussion on what might  
cause syntactic continuity
in general. This is an entirely novel perspective, as previous  
research has exclusively focused on
explaining linguistic change.

Topics addressed at the conference may be from a range of  
perspectives, theoretical linguistic as
well as a language acquisitional, contact linguistic and  
sociolinguistic, and the conference aims at
creating discussion and exchange between researchers with generative  
and non-generative
backgrounds and also beyond (historical) linguistics itself.  
Longstanding points of dispute have
been the perceived directionality and the gradualness of syntactic  
change. Directionality seems to
conflict with generative models of linguistic change, which localise  
abrupt reanalyses or parameter
resetting in individual speakers. However, long-term pathways and  
cycles do seem to be
observable as well. How can this clash be reconciled? Much research  
has been devoted to
accommodating gradualness within a generative conception of syntactic  
change, such as the
grammar competition approach (Kroch 1989 etc.). However, problems  
with grammar competition
approaches have not remained unnoticed, and invite reconsideration.

We particularly invite submissions addressing the following questions:

- contact-induced language change

- first language acquisition and syntactic change

- bilingualism and syntactic change

- directionality, gradualness and long-term developments

- absence of syntactic change / syntactic conservatism

- general theoretical models of syntactic change and continuity,  
theoretical or computational

- empirical case studies discussing instances of continuity and/or  
change in grammar

- change in the expression of negation

- linguistic and cultural contact in the Middle Ages

We invite anonymous submissions for 20+10 minute presentations, which  
will be reviewed by an
international committee of referees. Abstracts should be submitted  
in .pdf format via EasyChair.
Go to http://www.easychair.org/CCG08/, create an account if you do  
not yet have one and login
as an author. The text of the abstract itself must be anonymous; you  
will be asked to fill in your
name, affiliation and email address when you create your EasyChair  
account. This ensures a fair
and unbiased review procedure. Abstracts should not exceed one page  
of A4, with one-inch
margins on all sides, with the possibility of one additional page for  
graphs, figures, examples and
references. Deadline for submissions is 1 October 2007. Notification  
of acceptance is around 1
November 2007.

Invited Speakers:

Jan-Terje Faarlund (Oslo)

Richard Ingham (Birmingham)

John Sundquist (Purdue)

Sarah Grey Thomason (Michigan)

Organising committee: David Willis, Anne Breitbarth, Chris Lucas,  
Sheila Watts
Web Site: http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/ab667/negproject/continuity- 
change-conf.html

---
David Willis
dwew2 at cam.ac.uk
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/dwew2/

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