[Lingtyp] SLE2020 workshop "New perspectives on word order flexibility"

[Natalia Levshina]

Apologies for cross-posting!


CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

53rd Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea

26 – 29th August 2020

University of Bucharest


Workshop "New perspectives on word order flexibility"

*Convenors: *
Savithry Namboodiripad (University of Michigan), Natalia Levshina (MPI for
Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen) and Alex Kramer (University of Michigan)

*Description:*

As a wider set of empirical tools is applied to persistent questions in
syntactic typology, it is possible to revisit typological distinctions that
were previously treated as categorical. Recent work using corpus-based
entropy (Levshina 2019) and acceptability judgment experiments
(Namboodiripad 2017, 2019) has argued for a gradient approach to word
(constituent) order flexibility that moves beyond categorical definitions
such as “free” or “rigid.” Such approaches aim to describe word order data
more precisely, avoiding data reduction and a bias towards bimodally
distributed patterns of preferred word order (cf. Wälchli 2009). They also
enable us to model correlations between word order and other
language-internal and language-external variables, as well as to understand
functional pressures that are responsible for the emergence of
probabilistic constraints.

In this workshop, we seek to bring together novel research on variation in
word and constituent order, asking about the range of cross-linguistic
variation, the sources of this variation, and the methods that might be
most appropriate to capture it. We are also interested in contributions
dealing with variation of word order patterns in languages of the world,
and with the ways how the cross-linguistic distribution of word orders with
“hard” constraints mirror (or possibly diverge) from “soft” constraints in
individual languages.

The questions that we would like to address include, but are not limited
to, the following:

   -

   What are the advantages and disadvantages of using different types of
   data to describe word order flexibility?
   -

   Where do different methods converge? Where do they diverge?
   -

   What is the appropriate level of lexical and syntactic granularity for
   measuring flexibility?
   -

   How do communicative and cognitive constraints affect flexibility?
   -

   What changes to theoretical approaches are necessary in order to capture
   flexibility?
   -

   What is the relationship between flexibility and processing/production
   pressures?
   -

   What contributes to group-level differences in word order flexibility?
   -

   Are there discernable patterns in how flexibility changes due to
   language contact?
   -

   How might a more granular approach to flexibility help to explain
   historical changes in word/constituent order?


If approved, the workshop will be part of the 53rd Annual Meeting of the
Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE) in Bucharest, August 26th - 29th. We
are soliciting abstracts of 300 words which consider variation in word
order or constituent order, with a special interest in comparative or
typological approaches and work which includes understudied languages or
varieties.

We encourage contributions from students and junior scholars.

300-word abstracts (excluding references) should be emailed to
savithry at umich.edu, natalevs at gmail.com, or arkram at umich.edu by November 15th
in pdf format. The organizers will contact the authors of the chosen
abstracts by November 19th, which will then be submitted as part of the
workshop proposal. If approved, the authors must submit revised 500-word
abstracts according to the SLE guidelines
<http://www.sle2020.eu/call-for-papers> before January 15th, 2020.


-- 
Natalia Levshina
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Wundtlaan 1, 6525 XD Nijmegen
The Netherlands
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