CfP: Workshop on Proto-Indo-European Syntax and its Development at ISTAL-20, Thessaloniki, April 1-3, 2011

Mon Nov 8 16:50:04 UTC 2010

Workshop on Proto-Indo-European Syntax and its Development
Keynote speakers: 
Georgios Giannakis (University of Thessaloniki), Giuseppe Longobardi (University of Trieste) 
December 15, 2010: deadline for submitting abstracts 
January 15, 2011: notification of acceptance 
April 1-3, 2011: PIE Syntax and its development 
Call for papers
The last decades are marked with an increasing interest towards the study of archaic syntax of Indo-European languages and, eventually, towards reconstruction of the main features of the Proto-Indo-European syntax. Suffice it to mention, among many others (in chronological order) Lehmann 1974, Kortlandt 1983, Hettrich 1990, Giannakis 1997, Bauer 2000, Boley 2004, Barðdal & Smitherman 2009, Barðdal & Eythórsson 2010, Barðdal 2011, adding much to our knowledge based on such seminal works on the ancient Indo-European syntax as Delbrück 1893-97 or Hirt 1934-37. Although for some scholars the very opportunity of a syntactic reconstruction remains questionable, numerous studies have appeared which reconstruct a variety of basic elements of the Proto-Indo-European syntax, on the basis of evidence available from, above all, ancient and/or archaic Indo-European languages. Such aspects of the proto-language as ergative/active type of alignment, basic word order, subject and object marking and some others have given rise to vivid discussions both between Indo-Europeanists and typologists. Furthermore, the possibility of an efficient lexically blind system of syntactic comparison, precisely the parametric comparison method was first suggested in Longobardi (2003), Guardiano & Longobardi (2005). 
The idea of the conference is to bring together scholars interested in these and related problems and to open new perspectives in the research of the ancient Indo-European syntax. Special attention will be paid to the development of the hypothetical reconstructed features within the documented history of Indo-European languages. The issues to be addressed include: 
*	modern approaches to the analysis of the archaic Indo-European syntax and syntactic reconstruction; 
*	Proto-Indo-European syntactic reconstruction and its contribution to linguistic theory; 
*	is a syntactic reconstruction possible? which syntactic features can be reconstructed? 
*	reconstruction of the alignment type (ergative/active etc.) and its morphological manifestations (cases, verbal morphology); 
*	transitivity, voice, middle, stative and related categories in early/late Proto-Indo-European and ancient Indo-European languages; 
*	can we reconstruct the labile syntactic type for Proto-Indo-European and what are the main types of the evolution of lability attested for Indo-European languages? 
*	reconstruction of PIE moods and their evolution in PIE languages; 
*	IE and PIE tense, aspect and aktionsart (actionalities); 
*	word order and its evolution in PIE and IE; 
*	canonical and non-canonical subject and object marking in PIE and its development in IE languages; 
*	relative clauses and other types of subordinate clauses in PIE and their evolution; 
*	syntax of non-finite forms (infinitives, converbs, etc.). 
The workshop will be part of the 20th International Symposium on Theoretical & Applied Linguistics organized by the Department of Theoretical & Applied Linguistics of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, to be held April 1-3, 2011 in Thessaloniki, Greece. Please send us (nlavidas at enl.auth.gr; L.Kulikov at hum.LeidenUniv.nl) the one-page abstract of your paper no later than December 15, 2010. Please visit http://www.enl.auth.gr/ISTAL20, where you will also find practical information.
Nikolaos Lavidas 
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki 
nlavidas at enl.auth.gr	Leonid Kulikov
Leiden University / Institute of Linguistics, Moscow
L.Kulikov at hum.LeidenUniv.nl 	
REFERENCES
Barðdal, J. 2011. Construction-based historical-comparative reconstruction. To appear in G. Trousdale & T. Hoffmann (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Barðdal, J. & T. Eythórsson. 2010. Reconstructing Syntax: Construction Grammar and the comparative method. To appear in H.C. Boas & I.A. Sag (eds.), Sign-Based Construction Grammar. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Barðdal, J. & T. Smitherman. 2009. Typological changes in the evolution of Indo-European syntax? Diachronica 26/2: 253-263.
Bauer, B.L.M. 2000. Archaic Syntax in Indo-European. The Spread of Transitivity in Latin and French. Berlin: Mouton.
Boley, J. 2004. Tmesis and Proto-Indo-European Syntax. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen.
Delbrück, B. 1893-97. Vergleichende Syntax der indogermanischen Sprachen. Strassburg: Trübner.
Giannakis, G.K. 1997. Studies in the Syntax and Semantics of the Reduplicated Presents of Homeric Greek and Indo-European. Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft.
Guardiano, C. & G. Longobardi. 2005. Parametric comparison and language taxonomy. In M. Batllori, M.L. Hernanz, C. Picallo & F. Roca (eds.), Grammaticalization and Parametric Variation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 149-174.
Hettrich, H. 1990 [1991]. Der Agens in passivischen Sätzen altindogermanischer Sprachen. NAWG, Phil.-hist. Kl. 1990/2. Göttingen.
Hirt, H. 1934-37. Indogermanische Grammatik. Vols. VI-VII: Syntax. Heidelberg: Winter.
Kortlandt, F.H.H. 1983. Proto-Indo-European verbal syntax. JIES 11: 307-324.
Lehmann, W.P. 1974. Proto-Indo-European Syntax. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press. 
Longobardi, G. 2003. Methods in parametric linguistics and cognitive history. Linguistic Variation Yearbook 3, 101-138.

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