[Lingtyp] Call for abstracts - EDAP2023

Daria Alfimova daria.alfimova at uni-potsdam.de
Thu Aug 4 19:15:22 UTC 2022


Explaining cross-linguistic distribution of argument-coding patterns 
(EDAP2023)
March 21-24, 2023

University of Potsdam
https://sites.google.com/view/edap2023/home

Dear colleagues,
We welcome abstracts for the conference on Explaining cross-linguistic 
Distribution of Argument-coding Patterns (EDAP2023) which will be held in 
Potsdam (Potsdam University, Campus Am Neuen Palais) on March 21-24, 2023. 
Please find the call for abstracts below or visit our website 
<https://sites.google.com/view/edap2023/call-for-abstracts> .

Submission guidelines
Abstracts (maximally 1 page plus references and figures) should be submitted 
to the conference email orgteampotsdam at gmail.com by October, 20, 2022. The 
language of the conference is English. Acceptance notifications will be sent 
no later than November, 1, 2022.

Invited speaker
Martin Haspelmath (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History)

Call for abstracts
Argument coding patterns consist of bound markers indicating the semantic 
and syntactic dependency of the arguments from their verb and are either 
argument-bound (flagging or dependent-marking) or verb-bound (indexing or 
head-marking), see Haspelmath (2019). Much scholarly attention has been 
devoted to the variation in the productivity degrees of the transitive 
pattern across languages. The semantic core of the verbs that typically 
assign the transitive coding to their arguments is generally stable across 
languages (Tsunoda 1985; Haspelmath 2015). This is also true of one-place 
intransitive verbs. The features that are responsible for both classes are 
well understood (Hopper & Thompson 1980; Tsunoda 1985; Næss 2007). 
Transitive and intransitive verbs are also relatively stable 
cross-linguistically in terms of their alignment options (ergative, 
accusative or a mixture of the two). It is
nevertheless known that languages significantly differ in their 
‘transitivity prominence’, that is, in the lexical extent of the transitive 
class (Haspelmath 2015).
By contrast, non-transitive bivalent patterns show much more versatility in 
coding frames they represent across and within languages. Although 
language-specific non-transitive bivalent patterns display relatively low 
type and token frequencies compared to the transitive pattern, collectively, 
they can be even more frequent than transitive verbs both in the lexicon 
(type frequency) and in the corpus (token frequency). However, they are 
often analyzed merely in terms of “deviations” from the transitive prototype 
(Kittilä 2011) and, generally speaking, remain quite understudied by 
typologists and linguists exploring areal phenomena. For example, so far no 
universal trends have been detected with respect to these patterns.
High degrees of both intralinguistic and cross-linguistic versatility of 
non-transitive bivalent patterns make it difficult to find strong universal 
trends in this domain. By the same token, this variability accounts for 
strong local and areal skewings in the cross-linguistic distributions and 
thus presents an excellent testing ground for various approaches within the 
variationist paradigm. In particular, non-transitive bivalent patterns lend 
themselves to exploring various areal pressures and specific contact 
situations (see the collection of papers in Grossman et al., eds., 2019). 
However, the difficulty here is to establish a cross-linguistically 
applicable set of comparative concepts for the non-transitive codings. 
Various solutions to this problem have been suggested (Say 2014; Bickel et 
al. 2016; Hartmann et al. 2016; Seržant et al., forthc.), but none of them 
seems to have gained
general acceptance to date. Available studies focusing on areality in 
valency patterns are mainly limited to unearthing contact-induced phenomena 
in individual languages (Grosmann 2019) or areal effects in medium-size 
areas (inter alia, Seržant 2015a, 2015b; Gaszewski 2020; Widmer et al. 
2019), while attempts to trace large-scale effects are generally lacking.
We invite contributions that explore variation, language contact and/or 
areal effects, diachronic changes or typological distribution of 
argument-coding patterns. The workshop topics include but are not limited 
to:
* methodology of cross-linguistic studies on valency patterns, including 
ways to identify a tertium comparationis;
* calques and other types of PAT-borrowings and their effect on the 
development of valency patterns in individual languages;
* areal effects in the distribution of valency patterns associated with 
specific verb types, such as, e.g., perception verbs, interaction verbs, 
pursuit verbs, etc.;
* areal distribution of valency patterns in synchrony and/or diachrony;
* interaction of genealogical and areal effects in the development of 
valency patterns;
* cross-linguistic corpus-based analysis of valency patterns, their 
frequency and productivity;
* diachronic changes and diachronic (in)stability of the bivalent patterns.

References
Bickel, Balthasar, Taras Zakharko, Lennart Bierkandt, & Alena 
Witzlack-Makarevich. 2016. Semantic role clustering: An empirical assessment 
of semantic role types in non-default case assignment. In Seppo Kittila & 
Fernando Zúñiga (eds.). Advances in research on semantic roles, 51–78.
Gaszewski, Jerzy. 2020. Does Verb Valency Pattern Areally in Central Europe? 
A First Look. In Szucsich, Luka, Agnes Kim, & Uliana Yazhinova (eds.). Areal 
convergence in Eastern Central European languages and beyond. Berlin et al. 
Peter Lang, 13–53.
Grossman, Eitan. 2019. Language-Specific Transitivities in Contact: The Case 
of Coptic. Journal of language contact 12 (1). 89-115.
Grossman, Eitan, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich & Ilja Seržant, eds., 2019. 
Valency and transitivity in contact: theoretical and empirical issues. 
Journal of Language Contact 12(1). Special issue.
Hartmann, Iren, Martin Haspelmath & Michael Cysouw. 2016. Identifying 
semantic role clusters and alignment types via microrole coexpression 
tendencies. In Seppo Kittila & Fernando Zúñiga (eds.). Advances in research 
on semantic roles, 27–49.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2015. Transitivity prominence. In Andrej L. Malchukov & 
Bernard Comrie (eds.), Valency classes in the world’s languages, vol. 1: 
Introducing the framework, and case studies from Africa and Eurasia 
(Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics 1/1), 131-147. Berlin: de Gruyter 
Mouton.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2019. Indexing and flagging, and head and dependent 
marking. Te Reo, the Journal of the Linguistic Society of New Zealand 62(1), 
93-115.
Haspelmath, Martin & Iren Hartmann. 2015. Comparing verbal valency across 
languages. In Andrej L. Malchukov & Bernard Comrie (eds.), Valency classes 
in the world’s languages: A comparative handbook, vol. 1, 41–71. Berlin: De 
Gruyter Mouton.
Hopper, Paul J. & Sandra A. Thompson. 1980. Transitivity in Grammar and 
Discourse. Language 56(2), 251-299.
Kittilä, Seppo. 2011. Transitivity typology. In Jae Jung Song (ed.), The 
Oxford handbook of linguistic typology, 346–367. Oxford: Oxford University 
Press.
Næss, Åshild. 2007. Prototypical Transitivity (Typological studies in 
language 72). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Say, Sergey. 2014. Bivalent Verb Classes in the Languages of Europe. A 
Quantitative Typological Study, Language Dynamics and Change 4(1), 116–166.
Seržant, Ilja A. 2015a: Dative experiencer constructions as a Circum-Baltic 
isogloss. In: P. Arkadiev, A. Holvoet, B. Wiemer (eds.), Contemporary 
Approaches to Baltic Linguistics. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter. 325-348.
Seržant, Ilja A. 2015b: Independent partitive as a Circum-Baltic isogloss, 
Journal Language Contact 8, 341-418.
Seržant, Ilja A., Björn Wiemer, Eleni Bužarovska, Martina Ivanová, Maxim 
Makartsev, Stefan Savić, Dmitri Sitchinava, Karolína Skwarska, Mladen Uhlik, 
Areal and diachronic trends in argument flagging across Slavic. In: Eystein 
Dahl (ed.), Alignment and Alignment Change in the Indo-European Family. 
Oxford: OUP. (accepted)
Tsunoda, Tasaku. 1985. Remarks on transitivity. Journal of Linguistics 21. 
385–396.
Widmer, Paul, Stefan Dedio, Lea Gafner, & Barbara Sonnenhauser. 2019. 
Comparing the multi-faceted morphosyntax of microrole selection. Paper 
presented at the 13th ALT conference, Pavia. 06.09.2019.

Yours sincerely,

Organizing team
Daria Alfimova 
<https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/slavische-linguistik/team/daria-alfimova> 
 (University of Potsdam)
Cem Keskin 
<https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/daf/personal/doktorandinnen/cem-keskin> 
 (University of Potsdam)
Maxim Makartsev 
<https://uol.de/slavistik/forschung/sprachwissenschaft/hybridisierung-von-zwei-seiten-1> 
 (University of Oldenburg)
Sergey S. Say 
<https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/slavische-linguistik/team/dr-sergey-say> 
 (University of Potsdam)
Christoph Schroeder 
<https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/daf/personal/christoph-schroeder> 
 (University of Potsdam)
Ilja A. Seržant 
<https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/slavische-linguistik/team/serzant> 
 (University of Potsdam)




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