LEXICON IN CONTACT: contact induced structural isomorphism in the lexicon

Tue Oct 23 13:31:20 UTC 2012

Dear colleagues and friends!

We would like to propose a workshop "LEXICON IN CONTACT: contact induced 
structural isomorphism in the lexicon" for the 46th meeting of SLE 
(Societas Linguistica Europaea), September 18-21, 2013, Split (Croatia), 
http://www.sle2013.eu. Workshops ideally contain 8--13 papers. The 
deadline for the workshop proposals, including short (300 words) 
abstracts is November 15, 2012.

We invite you to submit an abstract for the workshop by November 10th, 
sent as both PDF and either Word or Open Office documents, to Maria 
Koptjevskaja Tamm (tamm at ling.su.se) and Henrik Liljegren 
(henrik at ling.su.se). Please state "SLE 2013: Lexicon" in the subject line.

Please feel free to forward this to anyone who might be interested in 
the topic.

We are looking forward to exciting abstracts!

A proposal for SLE 2013 workshop

*LEXICON IN CONTACT: contact induced structural isomorphism in the lexicon*

Workshop organizers: Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm (tamm at ling.su.se), Henrik 
Liljegren (henrik at ling.su.se), Maarten Mous (M.Mous at hum.leidenuniv.nl), 
Matthias Urban (urbanm at staff.uni-marburg.de)

The workshop will focus on different structural outcomes of prolonged 
language contact in the realm of the lexicon. Lexical phenomena have of 
course a long standing record in research on language contact; however, 
the recent developments in areal linguistics and areal typology have, 
with a few exceptions, mainly concerned grammatical phenomena. This is 
not at all surprising given the central place of research on grammar in 
the modern linguistics of all denominations, including typology.

The two traditionally distinguished groups of contact phenomena in the 
lexicon are loanwords and calques, or semantic loans -- the distinction 
paralleled by contact phenomena at other levels ('replication of matter' 
vs. 'pattern replication' in Matras and Sakel 2007). Loanwords have been 
studied from a more systematic cross-linguistic perspective, where the 
core issue has been different borrowability of different words, seen as 
belonging to different parts of speech and/or coming from different 
semantic domains (cf. Haspelmath and Tadmor eds. 2009). These are good 
examples of questions where research on language contact shares common 
interests with lexical typology, by which we mean the cross-linguistic 
and typological branch of lexicology. The interesting research angles 
here, as elsewhere in research on contact phenomena and in 
(areal-)typological research (cf. Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2011), are possible 
outcomes of language contact in the realm of the lexicon, on the one 
hand, and a possibility of using lexical phenomena for reconstructing 
contact, on the other.

But a lexical-typological contribution to contact linguistics has an 
even greater potential when it comes to pattern replication rather than 
to replication of matter. Hayward (1991, 2000, cf. also Treis 2010) 
points out many shared lexicalization patterns in the three Ethiopian 
languages Amharic (Semitic), Oromo (Cushitic) and Gamo (Omotic), which 
add to the cumulative evidence in favour of the Ethiopian linguistic 
area and fall into four categories: (i) shared semantic specializations, 
e.g. 'die without ritual slaughter (of cattle)';(ii) shared polysemy, 
e.g. 'draw water' -- 'copy'; (iii) shared derivational pathways, e.g. 
'need' = causative of 'want': (iv) shared ideophones and idioms, e.g., 
'I caught a cold' being expressed via 'a cold caught me'. François 
(2011) describes the pervasive "structural isomorphism" in the lexicon 
of the closely related northern Vanuatu languages whereby many words, 
formally not related to each other, "display the same properties across 
languages: the same semantic range (polysemy, polyfunctionality), the 
same combinatorics,

and parallel usage in phraseology", and the challenge this situation 
offers for historical linguistics. Enfield (2011) suggests that the 
lexical semantic domain of taste in the genetically unrelated SEA 
languages Lao (Tai) and Kri (Austronesian) show striking similarities in 
their conceptual organization, which might perhaps be accounted for by 
convergence. Matisoff (2004), Vanhove (ed. 2008), Zalizniak et al. 
(2012) and Urban (2012) give numerous examples of cross-linguistically 
recurrent patterns of polysemy (e.g., 'eat' --> 'suffer') and lexical 
motivation ('wind-faeces' for 'cloud' in New Guinea), some of which are 
clearly areally restricted and witness of language contact, whereas 
others rather reflect universal tendencies.

We invite contributions dealing with different kinds of contact induced 
structural isomorphism in the lexicon, as manifested in the general 
organization of a lexical field, polysemy patterns and lexical 
motivation, collocational patterns etc. We are particularly interested 
in contributions that have a scope of an area or a larger number of 
languages and make an attempt at generalizations, where the major 
concern would be separating contact induced convergence from inheritance 
and/or more universal tendencies. However we also welcome contributions 
dealing with detailed studies of two languages in contact (e.g. if they 
look attentively at a particular lexical field and show how it is 
organized), especially if these are situated within a broader linguistic 
context, such as comparison with other genetically related languages, 
and/or relate to findings in lexical-typological research.

*References:*

Ameka, F. & D. Wilkins 1996. Semantics. In Goebl, H., P. Nelde, Z. Starý 
& W. Wölck (eds.), /Contact linguistics/(HSK). Berlin / New York: Walter 
de Gruyter, 130-138.

Enfield, N. 2011, Taste in two tongues: a Southeast Asian study of 
semantic convergence. In Majid, A. & S. Levinson (eds.), The senses in 
language and culture, a spec. issue of /The senses & Society/, 06, 01, 
30--37.

François, Alexandre. 2011. Social ecology and language history in the 
northern Vanuatu linkage: A tale of divergence and convergence. /Journal 
of Historical Linguistics/1 (2), 175-246. Nov 2011.

Haspelmath, M. & U. Tadmor (eds.) 2009. /Loanwords in the World's 
Languages: A Comparative Handbook. /Berlin://Mouton de Gruyter.

Hayward Richard J. 2000. Is There a Metric for Convergence." In Renfrew, 
C., A. McMahon and L. Trask (eds.), /Time Depth in Historical 
Linguistics Vol 2 (Papers in the Prehistory of Languages)/, 621-640. 
Cambrdige: The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

Hayward, Richard J. 1991. A propos patterns of lexicalization in the 
Ethiopian Language Area. In Mendel, D. and U. Claudi (eds.), /Ägypten im 
afroorientalischen Kontext.//Special issue of Afrikanistische 
Arbeitspapiere./Cologne: Institute of African Studies, pp. 139-56.

Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. 2011. Linguistic typology and language contact. In 
Song, J.J. (ed.), /The Oxford//Handbook of Linguistic Typology/. Oxford: 
OUP, 568--590.

Matisoff, James A. 2004. Areal semantics: is there such a thing? In: 
Saxena, A. (ed.): Himalayan languages, past and present, 347-393. 
Berlin: De Gruyter.

Matras, Y., and Sakel, J. 2007. 'Investigating the mechanisms of pattern 
replication in language convergence', /Studies in Language, /31, 829--865/.

/

Treis, Yvonne. 2010. Perception verbs and taste adjectives in Kambaata 
and beyond. In Anne Storch, (ed.), /Perception of the Invisible. 
Religion, Historical Semantics and the Role of Perceptive Verbs/(SUGIA - 
Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, 21) Cologne: Köppe. Pp. 313-346.

Urban, Matthias 2012. /Analyzability and semantic associations in 
referring expressions/. PhD diss., Leiden university.

Vanhove, M. (ed.). 2008. /From polysemy to semantic change/. Amsterdam & 
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Zalizniak, A., M. Bulakh, D. Ganenkov, I. Gruntov, T. Maisak & M. Russo 
2012. The catalogue of semantic shifts as a database for lexical 
semantic typology. In Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. & M. Vanhove (eds.), /New 
directions in lexical//typology/. A special issue of /Linguistics, 50, 3/.

-- 
Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm
Office: Dept. of linguistics, Stockholm university, 106 91, Stockholm, Sweden
Home: Västerled 166, 167 72, Bromma, Sweden
tamm at ling.su.se, http://www.ling.su.se/tamm
tel.: +46-8-16 26 20 (office), +46-8-26 90 91 (home)

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