[Lingtyp] Call for papers ICHL 25

[GUGLIELMO INGLESE]

Dear colleagues, we would like to share with you the call for paper for a
workshop scheduled at the upcoming International Conference on Historical
Linguistics (apologies for cross-posting).

*Conference*: International Conference on Historical Linguistics 2022 (ICHL
25), Oxford (UK), 2 August, 2022
*Workshop title*: Acting on actuation – Why here, why now?
*Website*: https://ichl.ling-phil.ox.ac.uk/ichl25-workshops
*Convenors*: Hendrik De Smet, Guglielmo Inglese & Malte Rosemeyer
*Contact information*: Guglielmo Inglese, guglielmo.inglese at kuleuven.be

*Workshop description*
For any theory of language change the ultimate challenge is the actuation
problem, as formulated by Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968: 102): “Why do
changes in a structural feature take place in a particular language at a
given time, but not in other languages with the same feature, or in the
same language at other times?”
The actuation problem is a problem of explanation and prediction. Why is
this particular change occurring here and now? Or, given the here and now,
what change is going to occur? A solution to these problems is so difficult
to achieve because of the intrinsic complexities of language and change.
Any specific change may involve a multiplicity of causes. Those causes may
be language-external, reflecting the contiguities of history. On the
internal side, language is a complex-adaptive system that can recruit a
variety of resources to achieve a variety of communicative goals, again
making it hard to predict how such a system will respond to any new
situation.
However, over the past decades, conceptual and empirical developments have
contributed to bringing solutions to the actuation problem within closer
reach.
Conceptually, substantial advances have been made in unifying external and
internal perspectives on language change, typically by focusing on the
process of linguistic selection (Haspelmath 1999; Croft 2000; Schmid 2020).
Theoretical advances also include more accurate models of change in contact
situations (Thomason & Kaufmann 1988; Matras & Sakel 2007; Walkden 2017:
415-417). Moreover, the relevant models embrace probabilistic thinking,
describing speakers’ choices in terms of likelihoods (Plunkett & Marchman
1993; Bod 2015). As such, a probabilistic approach to actuation, informed
by models of the cognitive processes underlying linguistic choices, and of
the dynamics of language contact, comes within reach.
Empirically, efforts in worldwide language documentation and
cross-linguistic comparison have offered a much firmer basis to recognize
regularities of language change, such as grammaticalization (Hopper &
Traugott 2003). Moreover, the discipline has seen a surge in the
availability of usage-data, which allow description of change in much
greater detail (Petré & Anthonissen 2020; De Smet 2016). With an improved
empirical basis to start from, new and better opportunities arise for
testing and fine-tuning our hypotheses of what drives language change.
In light of these hopeful developments, the goal of this workshop is to
persuade historical linguists that the actuation problem is not
unassailable. To that end, we bring together researchers with different
backgrounds and expertise – variationists, typologists, phonologists, and
historical linguists – to jointly tackle the most basic question about
language change.

Confirmed speakers (in alphabetic order):

• Tamsin Blaxter (University of Cambridge): Contact ↔ analogy ↔ innovation:
mapping cascades in the loss of the Middle Norwegian nominative
• John Hawkins (University of Cambridge) & Luna Filipovic (University of
East Anglia): Bilingualism-induced language change: What can change, when
and why?
• Rena Torres Cacoullos (Penn State University) & Catherine Travis
(Australian National University): Changing modals, changing mores:
Obligation in Australian English across real and apparent time.
• Donald Tuten (Emory College, Atlanta): Integrating sociodemographic and
sociocultural factors in contact-based accounts of actuation.
• Anne-France Pinget (University of Utrecht): Sound change in present-day
Dutch: a variationist, synchronic approach to the actuation problem.

*Call for papers*

Deadline: 15 December, 2021

We invite empirically-driven reflections and case studies on the following
topics:

● Longitudinal historical analyses that tackle actuation by comparing
languages/dialects/idiolects etc.
● Typological, interactional, or experimental studies that investigate
change in synchrony
● Studies of extralinguistic factors representing language ecology, e.g.
contact, demographic change, standardization etc.
● Methodological reflections on how to solve the actuation problem: new
types of data and analyses

Please submit abstracts through the general ICHL25 website using EasyChair (
https://ichl.ling-phil.ox.ac.uk/). When you submit your abstract, do not
forget to specify the workshop.

To optimize the coherence of the volume and the quality of the workshop
participants are asked to circulate a draft of their contributions before
the workshop. First drafts and workshop discussions are to form the basis
of chapter contributions to a thematic volume on the actuation problem. Our
proposal for a thematic volume has already been accepted in the open access
series Conceptual Foundations of Language Science (Language Science Press).
The volume is to contain short and accessible yet data-driven contributions
on the actuation problem from different theoretical and methodological
angles. Please contact us for more information.

Best regards,
Guglielmo, Hendrik, and Malte
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