Conference on ditransitrive constructions

[Andrej Malchukov]

Conference on Ditransitive Constructions

Leipzig, 23-25 November 2007

organized by Andrej Malchukov and Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig

Invited speakers:

Balthasar Bickel
Bernard Comrie
Bernd Heine & Christa König

=== Theme ===

In recent years, ditransitive constructions (i.e. constructions formed 
by verbs like 'give' that take a Theme and Recipient arguments as well 
as other verbs with similar morphosyntactic behaviour) have been 
increasingly studied from a broadly cross-linguistic perspective, and 
alignment research has broadened its perspective from monotransitives to 
ditransitives (Dryer 1986, Siewierska 2004, Haspelmath 2005a, 2005b, 
Margetts & Austin 2007).

Yet our knowledge of ditransitive constructions is still skewed in favor 
of better known (mostly European) languages. For many of the less known 
languages, detailed descriptions (especially of syntactic properties) 
are still lacking. An ongoing project on the typology of ditransitives 
conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (B. 
Comrie, M. Haspelmath, A. Malchukov) is trying to provide a 
comprehensive cross-linguistic account of ditransitive constructions 
(see project website 
<http://email.eva.mpg.de/%7Ehaspelmt/Ditransitive.html>), with respect 
to coding properties (including issues of differential argument coding; 
cf. Kittilä 2006 on case, Haspelmath 2004 on agreement), syntactic 
properties (which of the objects aligns with the monotransitive Patient 
w.r.t. passivization, relativization and the like), as well as lexical 
splits (different verbs selecting for different constructions). As 
grammars provide at best a partial coverage of these issues, the Leipzig 
Ditransitive Project strives to fill the gaps through the use of the 
Questionnaire on Ditransitive Constructions 
<http://email.eva.mpg.de/%7Ehaspelmt/DitrQuest.pdf>, primarily addressed 
to fieldworkers.

In this context we invite abstracts for a Conference on Ditransitive 
Constructions at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 
23-25 November 2007. We especially encourage contributions providing a 
systematic description of ditransitive constructions in individual, 
little-known languages (perhaps guided by the Questionnaire), based on 
original fieldwork. But papers dealing with ditransitive constructions 
in better known languages, or from a comparative or general theoretical 
perspective, are also welcome. We are hoping to publish an edited volume 
including a position paper and 20-odd selected surveys of ditransitive 
constructions in typologically diverse languages on the basis of 
conference presentations.

References

Comrie, Bernard & Haspelmath, Martin. 2005. Ditransitive Konstruktionen 
in den Sprachen der Welt: Projektbeschreibung. 
http://email.eva.mpg.de/~haspelmt/DitrProjekt.pdf
Dryer, Matthew S. 1986. "Primary object, secondary objects, and 
antidative." Language 62:808-45.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2004. "Explaining the Ditransitive Person-Role 
Constraint: a usage-based account." Constructions 
<http://www.constructions-online.de/articles/> 2/2004, 49 pp.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2005a. "Argument marking in ditransitive alignment 
types", Linguistic Discovery 
<http://linguistic-discovery.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/xmlpage/1/issue> 
3.1: 1-21.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2005b. "Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 
'Give'." In: Martin Haspelmath & Matthew S. Dryer & David Gil & Bernard 
Comrie (eds.) World Atlas of Language Structures. Oxford: Oxford 
University Press, 426-29.
Kittilä, Seppo. 2006. "The woman showed the baby to her sister: On 
resolving humanness-driven ambiguity in ditransitives". In Case, Valency 
and Transitivity, Kulikov, Leonid, Andrej Malchukov and Peter de Swart 
(eds.), 291-308.
Margetts, Anna and Peter K. Austin. 2007. "Three participant events in 
the languages of the world: towards a cross-linguistic typology." To 
appear in Linguistics.
Siewierska, Anna. 2004. Person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

=== Call for Abstracts ===

Send your one-page abstract to Andrej Malchukov at the address below, 
preferably by email (in plain text or in PDF format), to arrive no later 
than April 30th, 2007. Notification of acceptance is by May 15th, 2007.

=== Further information ===

Andrej Malchukov (andrej_malchukov at eva dot mpg dot de)
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva dot mpg dot de)

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
Germany