CfP: The Diachronic Typology of Differential Argument Marking / University of Konstanz, April 5-6, 2014
Ilja Serzants
ilja.serzants at uni-konstanz.de
Thu Jul 4 16:37:38 UTC 2013
- apologizes for multiple posting -
*CALL FOR PAPERS*
/E-mail:/ DAM.2014 at uni-konstanz.de.
/URL:/ http://www.uni-konstanz.de/serzants/DAM_2014/
Workshop/Conference: *The Diachronic Typology of Differential Argument
Marking, *University of Konstanz, April 5-6, 2014
Differential marking of grammatical relations has been the topic of a
number of investigations. However, no large-scale, comprehensive study
of the historical development of the differential case-marking
strategies has been carried out yet. The present workshop aims at
filling this gap. Its task is to uncover the multi-factorial mechanisms
leading to the rise of the differential argument marking, more
specifically, to the Differential Subject- (DSM) and the Differential
Object Marking (DOM).
The phenomenon of the DOM/DSM is typically conditioned various factors
such as definiteness and/or specificity, or discourse prominence, cf.
Aissen (2003), Bossong (1998), von Heusinger and Kaiser (2007), Kittilä
(2006), Kittilä et al. (2011), Leonetti (2004), just to mention some.
Cross-linguistically, it may be differently realized formally and
triggered by a variety of conditions (cf. de Hoop and de Swart 2008).
Beside DOM/DSM based on formal or semantic properties of the respective
NP, it may also be governed by the tense or aspectual properties of the
verb phrase or the clause type (de Hoop, forthc.). The DSM/DOM phenomena
are also sensitive to the thematic roles of the respective arguments
(e.g., rather to agents and less to experiencers), and their inherent
properties. Thus DSM often involves the marking of highly agentive
subjects rather than atypical ones (cf. de Hoop and Malchukov 2007, de
Hoop and de Swart 2008), in order to contrast both arguments of a
transitive clause.
Striking about the DOM/DSM phenomena is the fact that the aforementioned
distinctions are often morphologically expressed by assigning distinct
cases, quasi-allomorph case affixes or prepositions to encode these
contrasts. From the typological research we know, however, that the
primary function of case is to encode relations among constituents of a
clause (Blake 2001), including the thematic roles, whereas such NP
properties as definiteness/specificity/non-referentiality, animacy, and
discursive prominence are typically encoded by other means, e.g., by
determiners primarily. We ask how this atypical functional extension of
the case-related morphological inventory emerges historically.
We are not only interested in the functional history of the phenomenon;
syntactic changes that lead to syntactically uniform behaviour of both
alternating markings is equally interesting and unstudied. Thus, at an
early developmental stage, the assignment of different cases may have
impact on the syntactic properties of that argument, cf. (1) from Russian:
(1) / Ja vypil sok / sok-a/
I:NOM drink:PAST juice:ACC(=NOM) / juice-GEN
'I drank up the jouce / I drank (some) juice.'
The clause in (1), if uttered with the object NP sok, can be passivized,
while with the (partitive) genitive-marked NP sok-a the passivization
and thereby the promotion of the object NP into the subject is not
available.
Essentially, while our knowledge on functional semantics of DOM/DSM and
its possible integration into different approaches to grammar has
considerably increased in the last decades, there has not been done much
research on how DOM/DSM arise across languages and what are the
triggering mechanisms for it. The whole process involving a non-trivial
shift in the domain of application from the functional domain of a
"typical" case, i.e. from encoding relations among constituents, into,
e.g., the domain of definiteness or specificity, ontological classes or
aspectually relevant opposition (e.g., partitive vs. total in Finnic),
has not been extensively studied yet.
We invite contributions relating to any aspect of the DSM/DOM diachrony
from any perspective. We emphasize that diachrony does not necessarily
imply reconstructions of proto-stages of a language or involvement of
ancient texts. Diachronic changes can be observed on a quasi-synchronic
level, e.g., between the conservative and colloquial style of a present
day language. Moreover, such quasi-synchronic changes can often be
described and analyzed even at a more fine-grained level and, hence,
provide for more insights on what kind of diachronic processes DAM
systems typically undergo.
We welcome studies dealing with macro-changes (e.g., with the rise or
demise of DAM) as well as studies treating micro-changes (e.g., changes
in the functional semantics of a particular DAM system).
Possible questions that might be addressed includes (but are not
confined to) the following:
- What is the etymology of the morphological markers that gave rise to
DOM/DSM?
- How to model the functional shift of a prototypical case marker into a
DSM/DOM marker with the respective (e.g., determiner-like) semantics in
the particular case?
- How to model the morphosyntactic development from a solid,
valence-driven case frame of a predicate into a sort of labile predicate
with a DSM/DOM-driven case frame?
- What kinds of morphosyntactic processes enable overriding or loosening
the case frame?
- What kind of syntactic changes accompany rise, development and demise
of DAM?
- Are the animacy-driven, definiteness-driven,
information-structure-driven DOM/DSM phenomena diachronically
interrelated with regard to their relative chronology? Which function is
typically acquired first?
- What is the relative chronology of the lexical input restrictions in
the rise of DOM/DSM? Which NP types acquire DOM/DSM first and which last?
- How can DOM/DSM phenomena be transferred or copied via language contact?
- How do DOM/DSM disappear in favor of a straightforward government?
- Can DOM/DSM be regarded as just transitional stages in a development,
whereby some new, productive case-marking pattern replaces the old one
(or the lack thereof) and develops into a canonical object or subject
case-marking, respectively, gradually affecting more and more NP types?
References
Aissen, Judith (2003): Differential Object marking: Iconicity vs.
Economy. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21, 435-448.
Blake, Barry J. (2001): Case. Cambridge textbooks in linguistics. 2nd
edition. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bossong, G. (1998): Le marquage différentiel de l'objet dans les langues
d'Europe. In: Feuillet, J. (ed.): Actance et Valence dans les Language
de l'Europe. Berlin, New York : Mouton de Gryuter, 193-258.
de Hoop, Helen, forthc.: The rise of animacy based differential subject
marking in Dutch. In: Seržant, I. A. and L. Kulikov (eds.), The The
Diachronic Typology of Non-canonical Subjects. SLCS.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia. John Benjamins.
de Hoop, Helen and Malchukov, Andrej (2007): On fluid differential case
marking: a bidirectional OT account. Lingua 117, 1636-1656.
de Hoop, Helen and Peter de Swart eds., (2008): Differential subject
marking. Dordrecht: Springer.
von Heusinger, Klaus and Georg A. Kaiser (2007): Differential Object
Marking and the lexical semantics of verbs in Spanish. In: Kaiser, G.A.
and M. Leonetti (eds.): Proceedings of the Workshop "Definiteness,
Specificity and Animacy in Ibero-Romance Languages". Universität
Constance (Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft. Arbeitspapier 122), 85-110.
Kittilä, Seppo T. (2006): Object-, animacy- and role-based strategies: A
typology of object marking, Studies in Language 32/1, 1-32.
Kittilä, Seppo, Jussi Ylikoski, Katja Västi, eds., (2011): Case Animacy
and Semantic Roles. Typological Studies in Language 99.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia. John Benjamins.
Leonetti, Manuel (2004): Specificity and differential object marking in
Spanish. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 3, 75-114 [revised version of:
Specificity and object marking: the case of Spanish a. In: K. von
Heusinger & G.A. Kaiser (eds.). Proceedings of the Workshop "Semantic
and Syntactic Aspects of Specificity in Romance Languages".
Arbeitspapier 113. Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Constance
2003, 67-101].
*Invited speakers* (alphabetically):
Miriam Butt
Eleanor Coghill
Dmitriy Ganenkov
Alice Harris
Klaus von Heusinger
Axel Holvoet
Peter Hook
Tuomas Huumo
Giorgio Iemmolo
Seppo Kittilä and Jussi Ylikoski
Marian Klamer
Andrej Malchukov
Chantal Melis
Sergey Say
*Abstracts*
Abstracts are invited for the workshop session. Each presentation has 20
minutes followed by 10 minutes of discussion. Only one paper per
participant is admitted.
Abstracts should be anonymous, maximally of one page in length,
excluding references and examples (in .doc, .pdf or .docx).
Abstracts should be submitted per e-mail at DAM.2014 at uni-konstanz.de.
The URL of the workshop is: http://www.uni-konstanz.de/serzants/DAM_2014/
*The deadline for the submission of the abstract is: November 10, 2013.**
**Applicants will be notified of abstract acceptance by: November 20,
2013.**
*
All contributors will be invited to submit a version of their paper to
be published in a peer-reviewed conference follow-up volume.
Further details may be found on the webpage:
http://www.uni-konstanz.de/serzants/DAM_2014/.
Workshop organizers,
Ilja Ser ž ant & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
--
Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc
University of Konstanz
Department of Linguistics
Zukunftskolleg, Box 216
D-78457 KONSTANZ
URL: http://www.uni-konstanz.de/serzants/
Tel.: +49 753 188 5672
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