Call for papers - two workshops on Uralic syntax, ICFUS12, Oulu, Finland, 15-21 August 2015

[Larisa Leisi ö]

--Apologies for cross-posting--

Two joint workshops on the syntax of Uralic languages at the XII  
International Congress for Finno-Ugric Studies (ICFUS12) in Oulu,  
Finland, 15-21 August 2015.
1.	Syntactic structure of Uralic languages
Organisers: Anders Holmberg (Newcastle University), Balazs Surányi  
(HAS-RIL & Pázmány University), Orsolya Tánczos (HAS-RIL & Pázmány  
University, contact orsolyatan at gmail.com
2.	The syntax of Samoyedic and Ob-Ugric languages
Organisers: Larisa Leisiö (Kone Foundation) and Irina Nikolaeva (SOAS,  
London), contact larisa.leisio at uta.fi

Despite the fact that there has been an increase in the number of  
studies and the amount of
research on the syntax of Uralic languages in the past few years,  
syntactic phenomena in the
small Uralic languages still remain understudied (e.g. the interaction  
between intonation,
word order and information structure, syntactic function of  
possessors, etc). Based on recent papers on Uralic we can discover  
very close relations among some of the languages, very distant  
relations among others, but even the distant relatives still display  
common, family-specific characteristics. What are the common syntactic  
properties of the Uralic Languages? Can we talk about ‘Uralic syntax’?  
Can we say that these properties are further evidence of the Uralic  
languages belonging to one language family? Formal analyses of  
syntactic phenomena in Uralic languages may extend our knowledge of  
human language and may lead to a better understanding of the complex  
relationships among languages or language contact.

Workshop 1 aims to be a forum to present and discuss current issues  
concerning the
syntax of Uralic languages based on any kind of theoretical approach.  
The purpose is to
examine the Uralic languages both from a synchronic and from a  
diachronic perspective, and
both within one language and cross-linguistically.
Workshop 2 focuses on the syntax of Samoyedic and Ob-Ugric languages.  
Spoken in Western and Central Siberia, the Ob-Ugric and Samoyedic  
languages are geographically close and demonstrate a number of common  
features at all levels of linguistic structure. It has even been  
suggested in the literature  that at some stage they formed a kind of  
genetic grouping, a hypothetical Eastern Uralic, which was the first  
to diverge from the Uralic proto-language. The symposium will focus on  
the syntax of Ob-Ugric and Samoyedic languages with the aim of  
investigating the variations in their syntactic structure, the  
contact-induced phenomena in the domain of syntax, as well as the  
potential common genetic heritage.
We welcome contributions that either introduce the new data on the  
syntax of Uralic languages, or present a new theoretical analysis of  
the available data. The topics may include
- constituent order
- argument structure and the syntactic properties of core arguments
- interaction between word order and information structure
- differential object marking
- possessive suffixes as definiteness markers
- predication in Uralic
- subject agreement in non-finite constructions
- valence-changing processes
- anaphora
- language contact inside and outside of the Uralic language family
- syntactic change in Uralic Languages
Selected papers may be published in the journal Finno-Ugric Languages  
and Linguistics.

Abstracts should be submitted by the deadline September 30th, 2014 via  
EasyChair system. See instructions at  
http://www.oulu.fi/suomenkieli/fuxii/abstraktit. Abstracts should not  
exceed 500 words excluding possible examples and references.  
Notification of acceptance will be sent by the end of October, 2014.