[Lingtyp] Grammatical Relations in Spoken Language Corpora - SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

grelspoc2023 grelspoc2023 at sciencesconf.org
Fri Jan 27 14:32:01 UTC 2023


Workshop: Grammatical relations in spoken language corpora
15 – 16 June 2023, Paris (France)
 
Scholars with a broadly usage-oriented view on language share the idea that the linguistic structures encountered in human language systems arise from diachronic processes of language evolution that are in turn shaped by considerations of language processing, learning and usage (cf. e.g. Sinnemäki 2014 for an overview). Recent years have seen a steep rise in studies directly addressing issues of processing and learnability in relation to typological distributions of linguistic structures, e.g. in experimental studies from neuro- (Sauppe et al 2021; Bickel et al 2015) and psycholinguistics (Adamou 2017) as well as in artificial language learning experiments (Tal et al 2022; Mansfield et al 2022).
Corpus-based studies (of language usage by adult speakers) related to typological questions have a longer history within the functionalist tradition of linguistics associated with scholars like Wallace Chafe or Talmy Givón (and their associates and successors) as well as Zipf’s (1935) seminal work on frequency distributions and form-frequency correspondences. Larger-scale corpus studies of relevance for typology have examined in particular word order (Greenberg 1963; Dryer 1992; Futrell et al 2015, 2020; Levshina 2019) and marking asymmetries (Greenberg 1966; Levshina 2021; Haspelmath & Karjus 2014), taking efficiency as a core characteristic underlying language use as well as the design of human language systems (cf. Gibson et al 2019 for an overview). Yet, for the most part this work is based on corpora from larger languages (often with a literary tradition and official/standard status in at least one country), and largely on written corpora.
In this workshop we focus on the interrelation of grammatical relations as reflected in the structure of individual languages and their communicative underpinnings in discourse production, and we seek to bring together scholars with a primary focus on corpus-based work. We intend to broaden the perspective on the usage-oriented rationale behind specific structural aspects of grammatical relation systems. We hence seek corpus-based research that includes not only classic discourse-functional factors like topic marking and topic continuity (Givón 1976, 1983; Shibatani 1991) or the converse function of reference establishment (DuBois 1987; cf. Evans & Levinson 2009:440), but also structural (e.g. the interplay of person agreement and pronoun use, cf. Taraldsen 1980; Rosenkvist 2009, 2018; Schnell & Barth 2020), cultural, and social factors (e.g. use of ergative constructions in relation to the social role of speakers in Samoan, cf. Duranti 1994).
We furthermore restrict the purview of this workshop to spoken-language discourse as we see spoken language usage not only as the primary seedbed for the emergence of grammatical relations generally speaking (by way of its primordial form of usage of human languages) and specifically as containing those interactions between prosodic, syntactic and morphological structure that lie behind processes of univerbation and morphologization (Lehmann 2015 [1982]; Bybee 1985).
 
Invited speakers:
Linda Konnerth (University of Bern)
Henrik Rosenkvist (University of Gothenburg)
 
Call for papers:
We invite contributions of corpus-based research that are primarily based on spoken-language production data, and preferably on data from hitherto understudied languages. Possible topics include, but are not restricted to:
Conditioning of differential case marking/flagging, indexing of core argument functions
Alignment splits in regards to core argument encoding, and its reflections in language use
Variation in word order
Structural factors impacting the use of specific structures in grammatical relations
Communicative functions of distinct structural features
Interplay of case, indexing and word order with prosodic chunking and intonation
Role of prosodic principles in linguistic unit formation in grammatical relations
 
Abstracts should be no longer than 700 words including examples, and in PDF format.
Abstract submission deadline: 15 February 2023 
Notification of acceptance: 17 March 2023
To submit an abstract, go to https://grelspoc2023.sciencesconf.org/ and create an account under “Login”. Once you have logged in, go to “My Submissions”, and follow the instructions.
 
Katharina Haude (Sedyl, CNRS)
Eva van Lier (University of Amsterdam)
Sonja Riesberg (LaCiTO, CNRS)
Stefan Schnell (University of Zurich)
grelspoc2023 at sciencesconf.org
 
 
References
Adamou, E. 2017. Subject preference in Ixcatec relative clauses (Otomanguean, Mexico). Studies in Language 41(4), 872–913.
Bickel, B., Witzlack-Makarevich, A., Choudhary, K.K., Schlesewsky, M., & Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, I. 2015. The neurophysiology of language processing shapes the evolution of grammar. Evidence from case marking. PLoS ONE 8(10), DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0132819.
Bybee, J. L. 1985. Morphology: a study of the relation between meaning and form. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Du Bois, J. W. 1987. The discourse basis of ergativity. Language 63, 805–855.
Duranti, A. 1994. From grammar to politics. Linguistic anthropology in a Western Samoan village. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.
Dryer, M. S. 1992. The Greenbergian word order correlations. Language 68(1), 81–138.
Evans, N. & Levinson, S. C. 2009. The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Science 32, 429–492.
Futrell, R., Mahowald, K., & Gibson, E. 2015. Large-scale evidence of dependency length minimization in 37 languages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112(33), 10336–10341.
Futrell, R., Levy, R. P., & Gibson, E. 2020. Dependency locality as an explanatory principle for word order. Language 96(2), 371–412.
Gibson, E., Futrell, R., Piantadosi, S. T., Dautriche, I., Mahowald, K., Bergen, L., Levy, R. 2019. How efficiency shapes human language. Trends in Cognitive Science 23(5), 389—407. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2019.02.003.
Givón, T. 1976. Topic, pronoun, and grammatical agreement. In C. N. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic. 149—188. New York: Academic Press.
Givón, T. 1983. Topic continuity in discourse. An introduction. In T. Givón (Ed.), Topic continuity in discourse. 1—42. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Greenberg, J. H. 1963. Some universals of grammar with particular referent tot he order of meaningful elements. In: J.H. Greenberg (Ed.), Universals of grammar. 73—113. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Greenberg, J. H. 1966. Language universals, with special reference to feature hierarchies. The Hague: Mouton.
Haspelmath, M. & Karjus, A. 2017. Explaining asymmetries in number marking: singulars, plurals, and usage frequencies. Linguistics 55(6), 1213—1235. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling?2017?0026
Lehmann, C. 2015 [1982]. Thoughts on grammaticalization. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.17169/langsci.b88.98 DOI: 10.17169/langsci.b88.99
Levshina, N. 2019. Token-based typology and word order entropy: A study based on Universal Dependencies. Linguistic Typology 23(3), 533–572. DOI: 10.1515/lingty-2019-0025
Levshina, N. 2021. Communicative efficiency and differential case marking: a reverse-engineering approach. Linguistics Vanguard 7(s3).
Mansfield, J.,  Saldaña, C.,  Hurst, P.,  Nordlinger, R.,  Stoll, S.,  Bickel, B.,  Perfors, A. 2022. Category clustering and morphological learning. Cognitive Science 46(2): e13107. DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13107.
Mansfield, J., Stoll, S., Bickel, B. 2020. Category clustering. A probabilistic bias in the morphology of verbal agreement marking. Language 96(2), 255–293. DOI:10.1353/lan.2020.0021.
Rosenkvist, H. 2009. Referential null subjects in Germanic languages–an overview. Working papers in Scandinavian syntax 84, 151–180.
Rosenkvist, H. 2018. Null subjects and distinct agreement in Modern Germanic. In F. Cognola, J. Cassalicchio (Eds.), Nul subjects in generative grammar. A synchronic and diachronic perspective. 285—306. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sauppe, S., Choudhary, K.K.,  Giroud, N.,  Blasi, D.E., Norcliffe, E.,  Bhattamishra, S., Gulati, M.,  Egurtzegi, A., Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, I., Meyer, M., Bickel, B. 2021. Neural signatures of syntactic variation in speech planning. PLoS biology 19(1), e3001038.
Shibatani, M. 1991. Grammaticization of topic into subject. In E. C. Traugott, B. Heine (Eds.), Approaches to grammaticalization. Volume 2. 93-133. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Schnell, S., & Barth, D. 2020. Expression of anaphoric subjects in Vera'a: Functional and structural factors in the choice between pronoun and zero. Language Variation and Change 32(3), 267–291.
Sinnemäki, K. 2014. Cognitive processing, language typology, and variation. Cognitive Science 4(5), 477 – 487. DOI:10.1002/wcs.1294.
Tal, S., Smith, K., Culbertson, J., Grossmann, E., Anon, I. 2022. The impact of information structure on the emergence of differential object marking: An experimental study. Cognitive Science 46, e13119.
Taraldsen, T. 1980. On the NIC, vacuous application and the that-trace filter. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Zipf, G. K. (1935). The psycho-biology of language. Houghton, Mifflin.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20230127/6b1460de/attachment.htm>


More information about the Lingtyp mailing list