[Lingtyp] Workshop on the Loss of Inflection: Call for papers

[Oliver Bond]

*Workshop on the Loss of Inflection*


*Call for papers*

Abstracts are invited for participation in a Workshop on the Loss of
Inflection
<http://www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/projects/loss-of-inflection/workshop/> to be
held as part of the 23rd International Conference on Historical Linguistics
<http://ichl23.utsa.edu/> (ICHL) in San Antonio, Texas (31 July - 4 August
2017).


*Background*

During its recorded history English has lost most of its inflection,
including the morphological marking of mood, case and gender, and almost
all of its person and number marking. English is far from unique in this
regard: the loss of inflection has been observed in the history of a vast
number of languages, representing disparate genealogical and geographical
classes. At first glance this may appear to be just a matter of decay:
words have got shorter, categories reduced, and meaning simplified. But
closer inspection reveals that this reduction typically comes about through
the interaction of innovations at all levels of grammar. At one level the
result is simplification, but the processes that lead to it involve a
complex series of systemic changes and the adoption of new organizing
principles. Far from being just a matter of decay, the evidence so far
shows that the loss of inflection follows along lines determined by
paradigmatic structure, and so reveals properties of the organization of
inflectional systems that might otherwise remain hidden.

The overarching research question of the workshop will thus be: what are
the possible pathways of inflectional loss, and what do they reveal about
the nature of inflectional systems? We particularly encourage submissions
approaching this question from the following five angles:

1. What role do the morphosyntactic features themselves play? That is, are
certain types of function more likely to be lost than others?

2. What is the influence of the type of morphological form? For example,
are suffixes particularly prone to loss because of the particular
susceptibility of word-final position to phonological weakening?

3. Could the complexity of the inflectional system itself bring about its
demise?

4. Since the loss of morphological marking often goes hand-in-hand with
changes in syntax, what is the relationship between the two? Does syntactic
change motivate the loss of inflection, or vice versa?

5. Is the 'natural' loss of inflection different from contact-induced
change?



*Workshop organisers: *

Helen Sims-Williams, Matthew Baerman, Oliver Bond and Greville G. Corbett
(University of Surrey)


*Deadline for abstracts:*

1 December 2016


*ICHL abstract submission guidelines:*

Abstracts are invited for papers for the General Session and Workshops.
Abstracts should be a maximum of two pages in length, including references,
and may focus on any aspect of historical linguistics.

Abstracts should be submitted via the conference Easy Chair link (
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ichl23). (If you have problems
using Easy Chair, please contact us at ichl23 at utsa.edu.).

Authors may present a maximum of two papers, whether single-authored or
co-authored. Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by at least three
members of the Scientific Committee.

Abstracts may be submitted for the General Session or for one of the
Workshops listed below. Abstracts submitted for a workshop but not accepted
there will be automatically considered for inclusion in the general session.

For further details on abstract submission see http://ichl23.utsa.edu/cfp/



Dr. Oliver Bond

Senior Lecturer in Linguistics

Surrey Morphology Group
School of English and Languages
University of Surrey
Guildford
GU2 7XH
UK

Telephone: +44 (0)1483 689957
Email: o.bond at surrey.ac.uk
Room: 01AC05, AC Building, fifth floor

www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/bond


Recent publications:

Bond, Oliver, Greville G. Corbett, Marina Chumakina and Dunstan Brown
(eds.). 2016. *Archi: Complexities of agreement in cross-theoretical
perspectives*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Available now from OUP
<https://global.oup.com/academic/product/archi-9780198747291?cc=gb&lang=en&>

Bond, Oliver. 2016. Negation through reduplication and tone: Implications
for the Lexical Functional Grammar/Paradigm Function Morphology
interface. *Journal
of Linguistics*, 52, 2: 277-310.
doi: 10.1017/S002222671500013 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022226715000134>

Bond, Oliver and Gregory D. S. Anderson. 2014. Aspectual and focal
functions of Cognate-Head-Dependent Constructions: Evidence from
Africa. *Linguistic
Typology*, 18, 2: 215-250.
doi: 10.1515/lingty-2014-0010 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2014-0010>
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