[Lingtyp] Call for abstracts: SLE 2018 workshop "Attenuated qualities in a cross-linguistic perspective"

Sun Nov 5 18:59:57 UTC 2017

Call for abstracts (Apologies for cross-posting)

Workshop proposal to be submitted to the 51st Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE), 29 August-1st September 2018, U Tallinn, Estonia

http://sle2018.eu

Convenors: Guillaume Segerer and Yvonne Treis (CNRS-LLACAN)

Attenuated qualities in a cross-linguistic perspective

Our smallish-to-middling workshop focusses on the diverse morphological and lexical means of expressing attenuation (reduced degree of a quality) in the languages of the world. Examples (i)-(iii) illustrate the use of derivational morphemes to mark a quality as being attenuated; in (iv) a reduced degree of a quality is marked by reduplication, and in (v) attenuation is expressed by the use of a dedicated ideophone.

(i)              English -ish as in green-ish

(ii)            French ‑âtre as in blanch-âtre ‘whitish’

(iii)          (iii) Kambaata (Afroasiatic, Cushitic) -lab as in biish-lab-á ‘reddish’ (from biishsh-á ‘red’) and qaraar-lab-á ‘a bit bitter’ (from qaraar-á ‘bitter’)

(iv)          Gashua Bade (Afroasiatic, Chadic) ɓuwâ-ɓuwâ ‘reddish’ (from ɓuwâ ‘red’) (Ziegelmeyer 2015)

(v)            Sar (Nilo-Saharan, Central Sudanic) pùtɨ̀-pùtɨ̀ attenuates the basic colour terms ndà ‘white’, kɨ̀rē ‘white’, ndùl ‘red’(Gotengaye & Keegan 2016)

Typological studies of derivational morphology show that attenuation is among the most frequent adjectival derivational categories in the languages world-wide (see e.g. Bauer 2002: 42), and we find attenuative morphology mentioned in descriptions of languages from different families all over the world, see e.g. Czech (Janda & Townsend 2000), K’ichee’ (Mayan) (Polian 2017), Khanty (Finno-Ugric) (Sauer 1967) and Udihe (Nikolaeva & Tolskaya 2001), to name but a few arbitrarily chosen examples. Note that grammatical elements with attenuative meaning are also labelled “moderative”, “approximative”, “diffusive”, “deintensifying” in the literature. 

So far attenuative morphology has attracted much less attention in cross-linguistic studies than, for instance, diminutive morphology. Although attenuation is discussed in the major typological works on “Evaluative morphology”, most notably in the seminal work by Grandi & Körtvélyessy (2015), there are still synchronic and diachronic aspects of attenuative derivation that remain unexplored. To the best of our knowledge, it has so far not yet been investigated systematically which semantic classes of adjectives (or quality lexemes) are most likely to permit attenuative marking (maybe colours?). We also have little knowledge of the diachronic origin of attenuative morphology of non-Indo-European languages. Furthermore, we would like to extend the study of attenuation from purely morphological, mostly derivational attenuative marking, to lexical means of expressing attenuation (see (v) above) and to also study modifying attenuative adverbs and ideophones. Note, for instance, that among African languages – which are well-known for their ideophonic colour intensifiers – there are (at least) 17 languages that possess specialized ideophonic colour attenuators (Segerer & Flavier 2011-2018).

The aim of our workshop is to bring together scholars from different subfields and theoretical frameworks of linguistics and working on a variety of languages world-wide. We do not only focus on languages in which attenuation is grammaticalised, but we would also like to include studies on the lexical means of attenuation. Although the existing literature is mostly concerned with the attenuation of adjectives, we are, of course, also interested in languages that do not have a word class of adjectives and thus mark attenuation on quality nouns, quality verbs, etc. 

We invite abstracts addressing one or more of the following questions from the perspective of language-specific analysis (especially of little known languages), corpus linguistics, typological comparison, areal linguistics, semantics and pragmatics and/or grammaticalisation.

1)     What are the morphological means to mark attenuation on adjectives (or other quality lexemes) in individual languages or language groups? Does the occurrence of attenuative morphology exclude the marking of other grammatical categories (e.g. the comparative *greenisher)? 

2)     How productive is attenuative morphology in individual languages? Which semantic sub-classes of adjectives or other quality lexemes are most likely to permit attenuative derivation, which semantic sub-classes are hardly ever attenuated in individual languages and across languages? Are there languages with several attenuative morphemes that specialise on certain semantic sub-classes (as e.g. the attenuative prefixes pa- and ie- in Latvian, see Kalnača 2015)?

3)     What are dedicated lexical attenuators in individual languages and which (classes of) adjectives (or other quality lexemes) do they modify? What is their degree of semantic specialisation? To which word class do they belong?

4)     What are the precise semantic features of attenuative morphemes in individual languages? Are attenuated adjectives (or other quality lexemes) mostly neutral, pejorative, ameliorative in meaning (see e.g. that many attenuated non-colour adjectives in French are pejorative: douçâtre ‘sweet but not in a nice manner, badly sweet’, bellâtre ‘beautiful (usually for a man) but in a ridiculous way’)? What are frequent discourse-pragmatic contexts in which attenuated adjectives are used in individual languages?

5)     What are possible diachronic sources of attenuative morphology? 

6)     It is known that nominal diminutive morphology can convey attenuative meaning on adjectives (or other quality lexemes), see e.g. the suffix -úluluka in Kikongo (Laman 1936). But what are other attested, little known functional extensions or multifunctionality patterns of attenuative morphology in individual languages, groups and areas? (For a case study of English -ish, see e.g. Morris 2009.)

7)     In which geographical areas and which language (sub-)families is attenuative morphology most common/absent? In which areas/families do we find attenuation by ideophones? In which areas/families do we find (partial or full) reduplication as a means to mark attenuation? 

Potential participants are invited to contact the workshop organisers with an expression of interest *as soon as possible*:

 <mailto:guillaume.segerer at cnrs.fr> guillaume.segerer at cnrs.fr

 <mailto:yvonne.treis at cnrs.fr> yvonne.treis at cnrs.fr

The final date for the submission of an abstract for a 20-minute presentation (max. 300 words, exclusive of references) is Monday, *13 November 2017*. Submission at this stage is non-anonymous. 

Important Dates

-        Submission of abstracts to workshop organisers: 13 November 2017

-        Notification of inclusion of the abstract in the workshop proposal: 15 November 2017

-        Notification of workshop acceptance/rejection of the workshop proposal by the SLE organisers: 15 December 2017

-        If our workshop proposal is accepted, submission of a full abstract to SLE: 15 January 2018 

References

Bauer, Laurie 2002. What you can do with derivational morphology. In: Bendjaballah, S., W.U. Dressler, O.E. Pfeiffer & M.D. Voeikova (eds.). Morphology 2000. Selected Papers from the 9th Morphology Meeting, Vienna, 24-28 February 2000, pp. 37-48. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. 

Gotengaye, Constant & John M. Keegan, 2016. Dictionnaire Sar.  <http://morkegbooks.com/Services/World/Languages/SaraBagirmi/#title> http://morkegbooks.com/Services/World/Languages/SaraBagirmi/#title

Grandi, N. & L. Körtvélyessy (eds.) Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 

Janda, Laura A. & Charles E. Townsend 2000. Czech. Munich: Lincom Europa. 

Kalnača, Andra 2015. Latvian. In: Grandi & Körtvélyessy (eds.) 2015, pp. 253-261.

Laman, Karl Edward 1936. Dictionnaire kikongo-français, avec une étude phonétique décrivant les dialectes les plus importants de la langue dite kikongo. Bruxelles : Librairie Falk fils.

Morris, Lori 2009. A toughish problem: The meaning of ‑ish. LACUS Forum XXIV: 207-215.

Nikolaeva, Irina & Maria Tolskaya 2001. A Grammar of Udihe. Berlin: Mouton.

Polian, Gilles 2017. Morphology. In: Aissen, J., N.C. England, R. Zavala Maldonado (eds.). The Mayan Languages, pp. 201-225. London/New York: Routledge.

Sauer, Gert 1967. Die Nominalbildung im Ostjakischen (Finnisch-Ugrische Studien V.). Berlin: Akademie. 

Segerer Guillaume & Sébastien Flavier 2011-2018. RefLex: Reference Lexicon of Africa, Version 1.1. Paris, Lyon.  <http://reflex.cnrs.fr/> http://reflex.cnrs.fr/

Ziegelmeyer, Georg 2015. On the adjective class in Gashua Bade. Afrikanistik-Aegyptologie-online 2015.

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Yvonne Treis
Chargée de Recherche 
LLACAN - UMR 8135 du CNRS 
Centre Georges Haudricourt, Bât. C 
7, rue Guy Môquet B.P. 8 
94801 Villejuif Cedex
FRANCE
Tél.: +331.49.58.37.03
 <http://cnrs.academia.edu/YvonneTreis> http://cnrs.academia.edu/YvonneTreis 
 <http://llacan.vjf.cnrs.fr/p_treis.php> http://llacan.vjf.cnrs.fr/p_treis.php 

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