Call for Paper: Workshop on 'Comparing Diachronies', Bamberg Feb 2008

[Horst Simon]

Comparing Diachronies (Workshop at DGfS 2008) 

Date: 27-Feb-2008 - 29-Feb-2008 
Location: Bamberg, Germany 
Meeting Email: germlingconf at kcl.ac.uk 

Call Deadline: 20-Aug-2007 

Meeting Description: 
Workshop as part of the 29th Annual Meeting of the German Society for 
Linguistics (DGfS) at the University of Bamberg, Germany (27th-29th February, 
2008) 

Comparing Diachronies 

Organizers: 
Jürg Fleischer (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) 
Horst Simon (King's College London) 

Keynote Speakers: 
Bernd Heine (University of Cologne) 
Giuseppe Longobardi (University of Trieste) 


Assessing the relative importance of internal and external factors is of 
paramount importance for any theory of language change. While it is the aim of 
the study of internal factors to identify correlations between diachronic 
developments belonging to different subsystems (e.g., loss of case morphology 
entails fixation of word order), in studying external factors one tries to 
establish the influence of language contact, normative settings, etc. However, 
explanations of actual language change phenomena often stick to their particular 
problems. Only rarely do researchers attempt at generalizations that go beyond 
individual cases. Thus, in our view one central question for any theory of 
language change is: 

Couldn't things have developed in an entirely different way? 

Our workshop ''Comparing Diachronies'' tries to fill a gap: By comparing various 
diachronic developments we hope to identify differences and divergences that 
allow for generalizable insights with respect to the functioning and 
implementation of linguistic change. 
In this perspective, research topics such as the following become interesting: 
- In the history of English (similar in French), older tendencies to use 
verb-second were given up, whereas in German the original tendency eventually 
led to the generalization of verb-second in main clauses. 
- In High German the tense system was reduced, whereas Low German reduced its 
mood system. 
- Only in High German do we find affricates, a class of phonemes foreign to 
other West Germanic languages. 
- In some Romance languages (e.g. Spanish), animate direct objects are marked 
with the preposition normally used with indirect objects, a development which is 
completely unknown in other Romance languages (e.g. French). 
- Punjabi and Marathi have reduced the original Indo-Aryan ergative marking on 
some personal pronouns (Bengali and Sinhala have done so completely), while in 
other languages (e.g. Hindi/Urdu and Nepali) these pronouns have retained their 
ergative morphology. 
- Some Nakh-Dagestan languages have a phoneme system with only three vowels 
(e.g. Avar dialects), whereas others display as many as 33 vowels (e.g. Chechen). 

We invite contributions discussing language change phenomena of all linguistic 
subsystems in a comparative perspective. Papers relating to different dialects 
of a single language or to different languages of a larger genetic entity are as 
welcome as work comparing developments in unrelated languages. Contributions 
focusing on theoretical accounts or on modeling language change are especially 
encouraged. 

There will be talks in 30 and 60 minute slots, including discussion time. Note 
that contributors can present only one paper at the DGfS Annual Meeting as a 
whole. Conference languages are English and German. Please send an 
anonymous 
abstract of max. 500 words, as a Word- or pdf- file, to 

germlingconf at kcl.ac.uk 

by Aug 20th, 2007. 

Notification of acceptance or rejection will be sent by email in September. 

For further information please contact: 
Jürg Fleischer <jfleisch at staff.hu-berlin.de> or 
Horst Simon <horst.simon at kcl.ac.uk> 


--------------------
Dr Horst Simon
Department of German
King’s College London
Strand
London, WC2R 2LS
United Kingdom

phone: +44 (0) 20 7848 2127
fax:  +44 (0) 20 7848 2089
email: horst.simon at kcl.ac.uk

www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/german/staff/horstsimon.html