CfP WS Category change from a constructional perspective (ICCG8)

Fri Nov 22 19:25:40 UTC 2013

Call for papers: Workshop “Category change from a constructional
perspective”

Call deadline: December 9, 2013

Workshop convenors:

*	Muriel Norde (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin) :
muriel.norde at hu-berlin.de
*	Kristel Van Goethem (F.R.S.-FNRS, Université catholique de Louvain)
: kristel.vangoethem at uclouvain.be 

Workshop discussant: Graeme Trousdale (University of Edinburgh)

Call for papers

This is a workshop proposal to be submitted to the 8th International
Conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG8), which will be held at the
University of Osnabrueck, 3-6 September, 2014.

If you are interested in participating in this workshop, please send both of
us a title by December 9, 2013, so we can submit our proposal (including a
provisional list of participants and titles) to the ICCG8 conference
organizers. If our proposal is accepted, participants will be invited to
submit a full abstract (400 words) by February 1, 2014. 

Conference website:  <http://www.blogs.uni-osnabrueck.de/iccg8/>
http://www.blogs.uni-osnabrueck.de/iccg8/

Workshop description

Category change, i.e. the shift from one word class to another or from free
categories to bound categories, is inherent to many different types of
change, yet it is usually not given much consideration. The aim of this
workshop, therefore, will be to bring category change itself to the fore, as
a phenomenon worthy of study in its own right. Adopting a rather broad
definition of “category”, which includes both single words and multi-word
units, we will explore how categories change and why some shifts are more
frequent than others. In particular, we want to examine whether a
constructional perspective enhances our understanding of category change. In
our workshop, focus will be on three topics: (i) types of category change,
(ii) degrees of gradualness and context-sensitivity, and (iii)
directionality.

Types of category change

Category change may result from different processes. The first process is
commonly termed “non-affixal derivation” or “conversion”, as in the
following examples from French (Kerleroux 1996) and English (Denison 2010).

(1)    calmeA ‘calm’ > calmeN ‘calmness’

(2)    dailyA newspaper > dailyN

The second process is category change determined by a specific syntactic
context, or “distorsion catégorielle” (Kerleroux 1996), as in (3), likewise
from French:

(3)    Elle est d’un courageux! ‘(lit. She is of a brave) She is very brave’

However, there is no strict boundary between the processes exemplified in
(1-2) and (3), as suggested by cases such as Elle est d’un calme!  ‘lit. She
is of a calm; She is very calm’. In this example, the nominal use of calme
can be accounted for both as conversion and as context-internal category
change. 

Third, category change can be linked to processes of univerbation with
structural change (Denison 2010), e.g. the use of English far from as an
adverbial downtoner in (4) (De Smet 2012), or the development of the German
pronoun neizwer out of a Middle High German sentence (5) (Haspelmath 1997:
131). 

(4)    The life of a “beauty queen” is far from beautiful. (web)

(5)    ne weiz wer ‘I don´t know who’ > neizwer ‘somebody’

A fourth type is one in which an item shifts category in the wake of the
category shift of another item, e.g. the shift of Swedish adverbs in –vis to
adjectives when the head of a VP is nominalized:

(6)    Samhället förandras gradvisADV. ‘Society changes gradually’

(7)    Den gradvisaADJ förändringen av samhället. ‘The gradual change of
society’

Finally, category change may be part of a grammaticalization change, i.e.
“the change whereby lexical items and constructions come in certain
linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions and, once
grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammatical functions” (Hopper &
Traugott 2003: 18), such as the grammaticalization of English to be going to
from main verb to future auxiliary in (8-9). Such gradual grammaticalization
processes may account for synchronic gradience (Traugott & Trousdale 2010).

(8)    I [am going to]MAIN V the train station.

(9)    I [am going to]AUX be a star.

Degrees of gradualness and context-sensitivity

The different types of category shift mentioned above can be arranged on a
continuum, from abrupt to gradual and from context-independent to
context-sensitive. While the A > N conversions in (1-2) are abrupt and
context-independent processes, shifts from N > A are often gradual and
determined by the syntactic environment, as in the case of keyN > keyA in
English (10a) and French (10b) (Amiot & Van Goethem 2012; Denison 2001,
2010; De Smet 2012; Van Goethem & De Smet (forthc.)). 

(10)a. This is a really key point.

b. Ceci est un point vraiment clé.

However, similar developments in related languages may be characterized
differently, as suggested by a contrastive case study on the adjectival uses
of Dutch top and German spitze ‘top’ (Van Goethem & Hüning 2013). The
category change in Dutch (11) seems abrupt, but the German (12) spelling of
S/spitze and inflection of the preceding adjective/adverb is suggestive of a
gradual development. 

(11) het was (de) absolute topN / het was absoluut topA ‘lit. it was
absolute(ly) top’

(12) das war absolute SpitzeN / das war absolute spitzeN/A / das war absolut
SpitzeN/A / das war absolut spitzeA ‘lit. it was absolute(ly) top’

Directionality

Whereas in earlier work (e.g. Lehmann 1995 [1982], Haspelmath 2004) the view
prevailed that only changes from major to minor categories are possible,
research on degrammaticalization (Norde 2009) has shown that changes from
minor to major word classes, albeit less frequently attested, are possible
as well. In addition, specific items have been shown to change categories
more than once in the course of their histories, in alternating stages of
grammaticalization and degrammaticalization. One example is
degrammaticalization of the Dutch numeral suffix -tig ‘-ty’ into an
indefinite quantifier meaning “dozens”, followed by grammaticalization into
an intensifier meaning “very” (Norde 2006). Another example is the
autonomous (adjectival/adverbial) use of Dutch intensifying prefixoids
(Booij 2010: 60-61), such as Dutch reuze ‘giant’, which underwent multiple
category changes (Van Goethem & Hiligsmann, forthc.; Norde & Van Goethem, in
prep.), first from noun to intensifying affixoid (13) (grammaticalization)
and later on into an adjective/adverb (14-15) (degrammaticalization):

(13) Verder kunnen we reuzegoed met elkaar opschieten ‘Besides we get along
very well (lit. giant-well)’ (COW2012)

(14) Ik zou het gewoon weg reuze vinden als je eens langs kwam. ‘I really
think it would be great (lit. giant) if you came by once.’ (COW 2012)

(15) Reuze bedankt! ‘Thanks a lot’ 

Finally, category shift may be “non-directional”, in the sense that the
input and output categories are of the same level, e.g. in shifts from one
major word class to the other (examples (1-2)), or the transference of
nominal case markers to verbal tense – aspect markers, such as the shift, in
Kala Lagau Ya, from dative marker –pa to (verbal) completive marker (Blake
2001; examples (16-17)). 

(16) Nuy      ay-pa                    amal-pa

                he          food-dat             mother-dat

‘He [went] for food for mother’

(17)Ngoeba               uzar-am-pa

                1dual.inclusive  go-dual.incompletive

‘We two will go (are endeavouring to go)’

The constructional perspective

The central aim of the workshop will be to investigate whether category
change can be explained more accurately by analyzing it as an instance of
“constructionalization” (Bergs & Diewald 2008; Traugott & Trousdale 2013
(forthc.)), which involves “a sequence of changes in the form and meaning
poles of a construction, whereby new formal configurations come to serve
particular functions, and to encode new meanings” (Trousdale & Norde 2013:
36). 

In this workshop, we welcome both theoretically and empirically oriented
papers that account for category change from a constructional perspective.
Research questions include, but are not limited to, the following:

1: What is the status of category change in a diachronic construction
grammar framework (e.g. Traugott & Trousdale 2013) and how can the different
types outlined above be accounted for? Are categories grammatical
primitives, or the epiphenomenal result of constructions in the sense of
Croft 2001?

2: How can the notions of gradualness and context-sensitivity be modelled in
a constructional framework? Does the gradualness of some category shifts
imply that categories synchronically form a “continuous spectrum” (Langacker
1987: 18) or does it merely mean that a given item may belong to two or more
categories whereas “the categories in question can nevertheless be clearly
delimited” (Aarts 2007: 242)?

3: Is category change a change in form which together with a change in
meaning constitutes a constructionalization change and if so, is it the
shift itself or changes in morphosyntactic properties (e.g.
decategorialization) that are associated with it? 

4: How does the distinction between lexical and grammatical
constructionalization link in to the different types of category change
(abrupt vs gradual, morphological vs syntactic, context-independent vs
context-sensitive, word-level vs construction-level)?  

5: Which role can be assigned to the notion of “category” in constructional
networks? 

References

Aarts, B. 2007. Syntactic Gradience. The Nature of Grammatical
Indeterminacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Amiot, D. & K. Van Goethem 2012. A constructional account of French -clé
'key' and Dutch sleutel- 'key' as in mot-clé / sleutelwoord 'keyword'.
Morphology 22. 347-364.

Bergs, A. & G. Diewald (Eds). 2008. Constructions and Language Change.
Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Booij, G. 2010. Construction Morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Blake, B. J. 2001. Case. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

COW (Corpora from the web)   <http://hpsg.fu-berlin.de/cow/colibri/>
http://hpsg.fu-berlin.de/cow/colibri/ [
<http://hpsg.fu-berlin.de/cow/files/SchaeferBildhauer_BuildingLargeCorpora_L
REC2012.pdf> Schäfer, R. & F.  Bildhauer. 2012. Building large corpora from
the web using a new effcient tool chain. In N. Calzolari et al. (eds),
Proceedings of the Eight International Conference on Language Resources and
Evaluation, Istanbul, ELRA, 486–493.]

Croft, W. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar. Syntactic theory in
typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

De Smet, H. 2012. The course of actualization. Language 88.3. 601-633.

Denison, D. 2001. Gradience and linguistic change. In L. J. Brinton (ed.),
Historical linguistics 1999: Selected papers from the 14th International
Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, 9-13 August 1999 (Current
Issues in Linguistic Theory 215), 119-44. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.

Denison, D. 2010. Category change in English with and without structural
change. In E.C. Traugott & G. Trousdale (eds), Gradience, gradualness and
grammaticalization (Typological Studies in Language 90), 105-128. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.

Haspelmath, M. 1997. Indefinite pronouns. Oxford : Oxford University Press. 

Haspelmath, M. 2004. On directionality in language change with particular
reference to grammaticalization. In O. Fischer, M. Norde & H. Perridon (eds)
Up and down the cline ¾ the nature of grammaticalization, 17-44. Amsterdam /
Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 

Hopper, P. J. & E. C. Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. Second edition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kerleroux, F. 1996. La coupure invisible. Études de syntaxe et de
morphologie. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

Langacker, R.W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar I : Theoretical
Prerequisites. Stanford CA : Stanford University Press.

Lehmann, Chr. 1995 [1982]. Thoughts on grammaticalization. Munich: Lincom
Europa.

Norde, M. 2006. Van suffix tot telwoord tot bijwoord: degrammaticalisering
en (re)grammaticalisering van tig. Tabu 35. 33-60.

Norde, M. 2009. Degrammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Norde, M. & K. Van Goethem. in prep. Emancipatie van affixen en affixoïden:
degrammaticalisatie of lexicalisatie? Submitted.

Traugott, E.C. & G. Trousdale. 2010. Gradience, Gradualness and
Grammaticalization. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Traugott, E. C. & G. Trousdale. 2013 (Forthc.). Constructionalization and
Constructional Changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Trousdale G. & M. Norde. 2013. Degrammaticalization and
constructionalization: two case studies. Language Sciences 36. 32-46.

Van Goethem, K. & H. De Smet. Forthc. How nouns turn into adjectives. The
emergence of new adjectives in French, English and Dutch through debonding
processes. Languages in Contrast.

Van Goethem, K. & Ph. Hiligsmann. Forthc. When two paths converge: debonding
and clipping of Dutch reuze ‘giant; great’. Journal of Germanic Linguistics.

Van Goethem, K. & M. Hüning. 2013. Debonding of Dutch and German compounds.
Paper presented at the Germanic Sandwich Conference, Leuven, Jan. 2013.

Kristel Van Goethem

Chercheuse qualifiée F.R.S.-FNRS

Université catholique de Louvain

Institut Langage et Communication/Pôle Linguistique

Collège Erasme

Place Blaise Pascal 1, bte L3.03.33

1348 Louvain-la-Neuve

bureau c.383

Tél. (0032) 10 47 48 42

 <mailto:kristel.vangoethem at uclouvain.be> kristel.vangoethem at uclouvain.be

 <http://uclouvain.academia.edu/KVanGoethem>
http://uclouvain.academia.edu/KVanGoethem

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