GCES: Call for participation

[Roland Meyer]

*** Call for participation: Grammatical Change and the Expression of  
Subjects ***


The conference "Grammatical Change and the Expression of  
Subjects" (GCES) will take place on Dec 3 and 4, 2010, at the  
University of Regensburg, Germany. Online registration is now open!


Meeting URL: http://www-slavistik.uni-r.de/gces


Invited speakers:

Elly van Gelderen (Arizona State University)
Anthony Kroch (University of Pennsylvania)
Ian Roberts (University of Cambridge)
David Willis (University of Cambridge)


Conference topic:

Diachronic grammatical change in the realm of subject expressions  
involves phenomena like the loss of pro-drop, alternations in thematic  
alignment, and the rise of various new passive and impersonal  
constructions. The conference seeks to bring together researchers  
working on these and closely related topics. Attention shall also be  
devoted to annotated historical corpora which facilitate the treatment  
of these issues. Topics to be discussed at GCES include

- Diachronic development of null subjects
- Changes in subject expletives
- Diachrony of oblique and quirky subjects
- History of impersonal constructions
- Development of diatheses affecting the external argument
- Change in unaccusatives
- History of subjects in root infinitives and modal constructions
- Empirical methodology in diachronic syntax
- Historical and diachronic corpora annotated for syntactic structure  
and syntactic relations


Preliminary program:

Friday, 3 December:

Keynote lecture: Anthony Kroch (Philadelphia)

Carola Trips (Mannheim), Eric Fuss (Frankfurt): Why different types of  
subjects can have an effect on agreement marking: a case study on  
Northern Middle English varieties

Susann Fischer (Hamburg): A diachronic comparative approach of  
expletives (and the definiteness effect)

Anna Volodina, Helmut Weiss (Frankfurt): Zur Diachronie pronominaler  
Null-Subjekte im Deutschen
Henrik Rosenkvist (Lund): Referential null subjects in Old and Modern  
Germanic – typological observations

Keynote lecture: Elly van Gelderen (Tucson): Pro-drop, pronouns, and  
demonstratives: reanalyzing features in the history of English

Jóhanna Barðdal (Bergen), Carlee Arnet (Davis), Tonya Kim Dewey  
(Berkeley), Thorhallur Eythorsson (Rejkyavik): Verbal semantics and  
subject case marking in Early Germanic

Silvia Luraghi (Pavia): The extension of unaccusativity in Hittite

Christine Grillborzer (Regensburg): Dative Subjects In Russian Modal  
Constructions – Synchronic and diachronic account


Saturday, 4 December:

Keynote lecture: Ian Roberts

Charlotte Galves, Maria Clara Paixão de Sousa, Silvia Regina de  
Oliveira Cavalcante (Campinas): Topics, Subjects and Grammatical  
Change: From Classical to Modern European Portuguese

Javier Elvira González (Madrid): Old Spanish impersonal sentences:  
demise and revival of an ancient construction

Rossana  di Gennaro (Pisa): Impersonal verbs in Latin: variations in  
subject detection and expression in the shift from active-stative to  
transitive syntax

Pavel Grashchenkov (Moscow): Emergence of Functional Categories  
through Argument Suppression

Keynote lecture: David Willis (Cambridge)

Irina Monich (Storrs): Comparing subjects in Chichewa and Sesotho

Nerea Madariaga (Vitoria-Gasteiz): Dative subjects in control clauses  
in the history of Russian

Artemij Keidan (Rome): Development of Subject in Indo-Aryan: what  
Indian grammarians tell us about it

Roland Meyer (Regensburg): The connection between null subject  
impersonals and pro-drop in the history of Slavic languages


Local organisers:

Roland Meyer (University of Regensburg)
Björn Hansen (University of Regensburg)




---
Dr. Roland Meyer
Institut für Slavistik, Universität Regensburg, D-93040 Regensburg
tel. +49(0)941-943 5303




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