[Lingtyp] Call for papers - Towards a diachronic typology of the middle voice - SLE 2020, Bucharest

[Andrea Sansò]

+++ APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTING +++

Call for papers

*Towards a diachronic typology of the middle voice*

Convenors: Guglielmo Inglese (University of Pavia/KU Leuven), Andrea Sansò
(University of
Insubria)

Keywords: diachronic typology, valency, middle voice, reflexivity, verbal
voice

*DESCRIPTION AND AIMS*
The middle voice is a grammatical domain whose complexity has long puzzled
scholars, as it lies at the cross-roads between the grammatical domain of
voice phenomena and the structure of the lexicon. In spite of the existing
typological work on the topic, there is no systematic diachronic typology
of this domain, so that we only have an impressionistic understanding of
how middle voice systems emerge and develop in the world’s languages. This
workshop aims at filling in this gap, by combining the study of individual
languages with a cross-linguistic view on middle voice systems, both in a
synchronic and diachronic perspective (see below for the specific research
questions and possible topics).
Cross-linguistic research on the middle voice has shown that from a
synchronic standpoint middle voice systems (MVSs) typically feature a split
distribution, to the extent that in individual languages middle markers
(MMs) can act as valency changing markers with some verbs but also display
an obligatory lexically specific distribution with others (see e.g. Kemmer
1993, Manney 2000, Kazenin 2001, Kaufmann 2007, Calude 2017, Zúñiga &
Kittilä 2019, Inglese forthc.). These two classes of verbs can be referred
to as oppositional and non-oppositional middles. Typical functions of
oppositional middles include valency changing operations like
anticausative, passive, reflexive, reciprocal, impersonal, and involuntary
agent constructions (cf. Dixon & Aikhenvald 2000, Kulikov 2010, Zúñiga &
Kittilä 2019). Non-oppositional middles show a consistent distribution
across languages, as they tend to occur with a specific cluster of
situation types: grooming verbs, verbs of position and of change in body
posture, verbs of (non-)translational motions, verbs of speech, cognition,
and emotion, and spontaneous events (cf. Kemmer 1993).
Kemmer (1993) was among the first scholars to suggest that this
distribution across grammatical functions and lexical classes is not
random. Generalizing over the situation types covered by language-specific
MMs, Kemmer reached the conclusion that the middle domain can be cross-
linguistically characterized as a “coherent but relatively diffused
category that comprises a set of loosely linked semantic subdomains”
(ibid.: 238). She further argues that the reason why languages group all
these situations under the same coding is that they all share the common
functional property of low degree of elaboration of events, whereby middle
situations feature participants and sub-events that are not fully
distinguishable.
In spite of the existing synchronic typology, diachronic studies of the
middle remain few, to the effect that nowadays there is no comprehensive
diachronic typology of MVSs. Existing studies focus almost exclusively on
the diachrony of individual valency changing functions (e.g. passives
[Haspelmath 1990, Wiemer 2011], anticausative [Haspelmath 1993], reflexives
[König & Siemund 2000, Schladt 2000], reciprocals [Heine & Miyashita 2008],
antipassives [Sansò 2017]). What is lacking in most of these studies,
however, is a careful consideration of how oppositional, i.e. grammatical,
functions of MMs historically relate to non-oppositional, i.e. lexical
ones. The mainstream view on the development of MMs maintains that there is
a unidirectional path from oppositional to non-oppositional functions, with
reflexive markers constituting one of the more frequent source
constructions of MMs (cf. Kemmer 1993, König & Siemund 2000, Heine & Kuteva
2002, Haspelmath 2003, Kaufmann 2007). However, the reverse scenario has
also been found, i.e. MMs that start from a lexical distribution and only
later develop oppositional functions, including the reflexive, has been
proposed for a few cases (cf. Dom et al. 2016 on Bantu, Luraghi forthc. and
Inglese forthc. on Hittite and the Proto-Indo-European).
These and other findings call for a rethinking of the diachronic typology
of the middle voice domain, in order to explore the full range of possible
sources and mechanisms of language change that may give rise to MVSs in the
first place, and to understand the extent to which the synchronic variation
that one observes among MVSs cross-linguistically is determined by the
history of these systems in the first place.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together scholars working on the middle
voice and related phenomena in a typological and diachronic perspective in
(1) languages (language families) with well-documented history (e.g.
Semitic, Indo-European) and (2) languages for which little historical
evidence is available, but which can still provide us with some valuable
data on the basis of comparative evidence (e.g. Bantu, Oceanic). We welcome
abstracts dealing both with language-specific middle voice systems as well
as those dealing with more general typological questions or relevant
implications for the theory of language change.
We welcome contributions that address the following TOPICS (the list is not
exhaustive):

- documentation of previously undescribed MVSs, especially in language
families other than the ones represented in Kemmer (1993);
- the possible inventory of situation types associated with MMs
cross-linguistically, with a focus on non-oppositional middles;
- the development of individual MMs, either in individual languages or in
language families, with a focus on the historical relationship between
oppositional and non-oppositional functions;
- corpus studies on the historical spread and development of MMs in
specific languages;
- the synchronic and diachronic relationship between MMs and competing
constructions (e.g. dedicated markers for oppositional functions, such as
reflexive or passive markers) in individual languages;
- the role of phylogenetic vs. areal biases in the development of MVSs;
- comparative studies on the reconstruction of the original function of MMs;
- possible sources and processes of language change that may give rise to
MMs;
- the role and interplay of grammaticalization and lexicalization processes
in the emergence of MVSs;
- synchronic vs. diachronic explanations of the configuration of MVSs in
individual languages;


*CALL FOR ABSTRACTS*We invite submission of abstracts up to 300 words
(references not included) describing original, unpublished research related
to the topics of the workshop. We kindly ask you to send abstracts in an
editable format (e.g. .doc or .docx; please avoid .pdf files) to the
workshop organizers:

guglielmo.inglese01 at universitadipavia.it

andrea.sanso at uninsubria.it

The *DEADLINE FOR THE SUBMISSION *of the short abstract is *NOVEMBER 15th,
2019*.

Abstracts will be evaluated by the convenors, and selected abstracts will
accompany the workshop proposal. We will notify you of inclusion in the
workshop proposal when we submit it on November 20th. Note that if the
workshop will be accepted, you will also have to prepare a full abstract
and submit it to be reviewed by the SLE scientific committee. The deadline
for the submission of full abstracts is January 15, 2020.

*References*
Calude, Andreea S. 2017. Testing the boundaries of the middle voice.
Observations from English and Romanian. Cognitive Linguistics 28 (4):
599-629.
Dixon, R. M. W. & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. 2000. Introduction. In Changing
valency. Case studies in transitivity, R. M. W. Dixon & Alexandra Y.
Aikhenvald (eds.), 1-28. Cambridge: CUP.
Dom, Sebastian, Leonid Kulikov & Koen Bostoen. 2016. The middle as a voice
category in Bantu: setting the stage for further research. Lingua
Posnaniensis 58 (2): 129-149.
Haspelmath, Martin. 1990. The grammaticization of passive morphology.
Studies in Language 14 (1): 25-71.
Haspelmath, Martin. 1993. More on the typology of the inchoative/causative
verb alternations. In Causatives and Transitivity, Bernard Comrie & Maria
Polinsky (eds.), 87-120. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2003. The geometry of grammatical meaning: semantic
maps and cross-linguistic comparison. In The new psychology of language:
Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Language Structure, Vol. 2, Michael
Tomasello (ed.), 211-242. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva. 2002. World lexicon of grammaticalization.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heine, Bernd & Hiroyuki Miyashita. 2008. The intersection between
reflexives and reciprocals: A grammaticalization perspective. In
Reciprocals and reflexives: Theoretical and cross-linguistic explorations,
Ekkehard König & Volker Gast (eds.), 169-224. Berlin/New York: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Inglese, Guglielmo. Forthcoming. The Hittite Middle Voice. Synchrony,
Diachrony, Typology. Leiden: Brill.
Kaufmann, Ingrid. 2007. Middle Voice. Lingua 117: 1677-1714.
Kazenin, Konstantin I. 2001. Verbal reflexives and the middle voice. In
Typology and Language Universals. An International Handbook. Vol 2, Martin
Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds.),
916-928. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
Kemmer, Susanne. 1993. The middle voice. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
König, Ekkehard & Peter Siemund. 2000. Intensifiers and reflexives: a
typological perspective. In Reflexives: Forms and functions, Zygmunt
Frajzyngier & Traci S. Curl (eds.), 41-74. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Kulikov, Leonid. 2010. Voice typology. In The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic
Typology, Song J.J. (ed.), 368-398. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Luraghi, Silvia. Forthcoming. Basic valency orientation, the anticausative
alternation, and voice in PIE. To appear in the Proceedings of the 15.
Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft. Wien (Austria), 13-16
September 2016.
Manney, Linda Joyce. 2000. Middle Voice in Modern Greek.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Sansò, Andrea. 2017. Where do antipassives constructions come from? A study
in diachronic typology. Diachronica 34 (2): 175-218.
Schladt, Mathias. 2000. The typology and grammaticalization of reflexives.
In Reflexives: Forms and functions, Zygmunt Frajzyngier & Traci S. Curl
(eds.), 103-124. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Wiemer, Björn. 2011. The grammaticalization of passives. In The Oxford
Handbook of Grammaticalization, Bernd Heine & Heiko Narrog (eds.), 536-546.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zúñiga, Fernando & Seppo Kittilä. 2019. Grammatical Voice. Cambridge: CUP.
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