symposium on syntactic complexity

[Brian MacWhinney]

           THE GENESIS OF SYNTACTIC COMPLEXITY:
             AN INTERDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIUM

The 12th Biennial Rice University Symposium on Language,
co-organized by Matt Shibatani (Rice University) and T. Givón
(University of Oregon), will be held in the Farnsworth Pavilion
of the Ley Student Center on March 27th-29th, 2008. The
topic-"The genesis of syntactic complexity"-in part builds on the
success of the 11th biennial symposium on complex verb constructions
and explores the genesis and nature of syntactic complexity from
an interdisciplinary perspective. Structural complexity may be
defined broadly as the "chunking" of linear-sequential structure
into hierarchic one (cf. Herbert A. Simon 1962 "The architecture
of complexity"). The creation of such hierarchic structure is a
common process language shares with motor control, vision, memory,
and music. It is often associated with the move from attended to
automated processing. Our symposium will focus on one particular
type of syntactic complexity, that of clauses ('propositions')
embedded inside other clauses-under a unified intonation contour.
We examine two syntactic domains in which such embedding
structures are generally found to cluster: (i) in the verb phrase
(complex predicates, clause-union, verb complementation), and (ii)
in the noun phrase (relative clauses and noun complementation).
The symposium will concern itself primarily with the genesis of
these complex structures, comparing the three main developmental
trends of language: Diachrony, child language development, and
evolution. For all three, we will explore the linguistic,
cognitive, neurological and biological aspects of the genesis and
development of complex syntax. The symposium is open to the
public. Further information will be posted shortly in the
webpage: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~eivs/sympo/


Contributors:
1. Diachronic development:
      B. Heine (Koeln) & T. Kouteva (Duesseldorf)
      A. Pawley (Canberra)
      O. Dahl (Stockholm)
      G. Deutscher (Leiden)
      M. Mithun (Santa Barbara)
      C. Bowern (Rice)
      M. Hilpert & C. Koops (Rice)
      M. Shibatani (Rice)
      T. Givón (Oregon)
2. Child development:
      H. Diessel (Jena)
      C. Rojas (UNAM)
      T. Givón (Oregon)
3. Cognitive and & neurological aspects:
      B. MacWhinney (CMU)
      D. Fernandez-Duque (Villanova)
      F. Pulvermuller (Cambridge)
      E. Pederson & M. Barker (Oregon)
      D. Tucker (Oregon)
4. Biology and evolution:
      D. Bickerton (Hawaii)
      N. Tublitz (Oregon)