Call: Lg contact/areal convergence, Leipzig 2001

[Martin Haspelmath]

Call for papers

LANGUAGE CONTACT AND AREAL CONVERGENCE
(Sprachkontakt und areale Konvergenz),

a workshop as part of the 2001 annual meeting of the DGfS (Deutsche
Gesellschaft fuer Sprachwissenschaft), Leipzig, 28 Feb - 2 Mar 2001

Workshop organizers:
Walter Bisang (Uni Mainz) and
Martin Haspelmath (MPI Leipzig)

Contact is a well-known source of language change. Contact-induced
structural convergence of languages from different families within a
coherent geographic area often results in a linguistic area or
Sprachbund. Finally, Dryer (1989, 1992) discusses large linguistic areas
of continental size in the context of word-order typology. If there
exist large zones of convergence such as those discussed by Dryer, the
next question is to what extent it is possible to draw conclusions about
universals given the actual statistical distribution of the structural
features of the world's languages.
        The workshop deals with the areal distribution of one or more
linguistic phenomena and their interrelations. Moreover, we wish to
discuss the following motivations for structural convergence:
        Sociolinguistics: Which sociolinguistic conditions favour the
propagation of linguistic structures? The following sociolinguistic
motivations are often discussed in the literature: Maxims of linguistic
activities, constellations of political dominance (substrate,
superstrate,
adstrate), social networks. After Thomason & Kaufman (1988) as well as
in recent findings on language intertwining, it has also been shown that
in extreme contact situations language change does not only affect the
lexicon but also central parts of morphosyntax.
        Cognition: Are there structures of particular cognitive
attractiveness which are recurrent in a number of contact areas? If one
understands grammaticalization as part of language change, the
considerable degree of unidirectionality as observed in paths of
grammaticalization may hint at cognitive factors determining language
change.
        Discourse pragmatics: Elements of higher structural levels seem
to be borrowed more easily than those of lower levels. Thus, the
connector 'but' is borrowed more frequently than adverbial subordinators
such as 'because' or 'if'.

Send an abstract of 200 to 400 words to one of the following addresses
(preferably by e-mail) by 15 August 2000:

Walter Bisang
e-mail: wbisang at mail.uni-mainz.de
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Institut für Allgemeine und Vergleichende
Sprachwissenschaft
D-55099 Mainz
Tel./Fax: +49 6131 39-22778/39-23836

Martin Haspelmath
e-mail: haspelmath at eva.mpg.de
Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionaere Anthropologie
Inselstr. 22
D-04103 Leipzig
Tel.: +49 341 9952 307, Fax +49 341 9952 119

(The DGfS annual meeting consists of 12 parallel thematic workshops,
each of which has room for up to 20 30-minute papers. In addition, there
will be plenary talks, this time on the general theme of "language and
cognition".)