[Lingtyp] CfP: Extended deadline Workshop "Future directions in Word and Paradigm morphology" (Paris, 9-11 September 2024)

[Sacha Beniamine]

Workshop Future directions in Word and Paradigm morphology

Extended Deadline: 30 avril
Workshop organizers: Sacha Beniamine & Erich Round (University of Surrey, Surrey Morphology Group)
Conference: Langues & Langage à la croisée des Disciplines; 1ère Rencontre annuelle LLcD; 9-14 septembre 2024, Sorbonne Université - Paris, France
More information: https://llcd2024.sciencesconf.org/
Submissions at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=llcd2024
Abstract guidelines: Abstracts must be anonymous and should not exceed 500 words (including examples, but excluding bibliographical references).


Workshop description:


Word and paradigm (WP) morphology has witnessed rapid progress over the past fifteen years, following a coalescence of theoretical interest around the Paradigm Cell Filling Problem (Ackerman et al. 2009), i.e., the challenge of explaining how speakers can produce and comprehend wordforms they have not encountered before, based on knowledge of related wordforms. This workshop aims to renew the program of WP morphology by drawing attention to problems that remain to be solved and to new opportunities that have opened up thanks to recent advancements. We welcome a broad diversity of approaches and methodologies.

By the turn of the millennium, a revived focus on the paradigm within morphological theory had led to new insights into the paradigmatic distribution of stem allomorphs (e.g. Maiden, 1992; Aronoff, 1994; Stump, 2001) and the predictive structure of inflection classes (e.g. Wurzel, 1984; Carstairs McCarthy, 1994). Ackerman, Blevins, and Malouf (2009) then focussed attention on the centrality of predictive structure: how is existing knowledge used to predict and comprehend hitherto unseen wordforms, and what makes this feasible? Ackerman et al.’s argument, that inflectional systems are structured in terms of implications between surface forms arranged within paradigms, led to a new focus on the sources and reliability of such implications, and in many cases, their quantitative investigation.

Ackerman & Malouf (2013) argued that paradigmatic organisation reveals an “implicative” dimension of morphological complexity, which is orthogonal to “enumerative” indicators such as Greenberg’s (1954) indices of synthesis and agglutination, and is more comparable across languages.  Stump and Finkel (2013) demonstrated the feasibility of evaluating implicative structure at scale using computational methods. Blevins (2016) further outlined the perimeter of contemporary Word and Paradigm morphology.

These advances led to a flourishing literature discussing empirical and computational refinements to the assessment of implicative structure (e.g. Corbett 2015; Sims, 2015; Bonami & Beniamine, 2016; Blevins et al. 2017; Baayen et al., 2019; Boyé & Schalchli, 2019; Cotterell et al., 2019; Beniamine & Carroll 2023), the empirical nature of implicative structure in various systems (e.g. Bonami & Boyé 2014 on French; Bonami & Luı́s 2014 on European Portuguese; Mansfield 2016 on Murrinhpatha; Sims 2015 on Modern Greek; Baerman 2015 on Seri; Guzmán Naranjo 2020 on Russian; Feist & Palancar 2021 on Chichimec; Pellegrini 2021 on Latin; Wilmoth and Mansfield 2021 on Pitjantjatjara), and its potential roles in analogy and language change (e.g. Ackerman & Malouf 2015; Sims-Williams 2021; Esher 2022; Round et al. 2022).

As these insights accumulate, new questions are now arising. For instance, do the many, formal characterisations of implicative structure differ only superficially, or might they reflect distinct dimensions of predictability which are as-yet poorly understood? What new theoretical puzzles have been posed by the results of recent empirical and modelling studies? And with recent advances in analytic concepts, large digital datasets and computational workflows (e.g. Sims 2020; Beniamine et al. 2023), what new opportunities are now within reach?

We seek forward-looking contributions that highlight current problems and new directions for word and paradigm morphology, including but not limited to:

- Empirical descriptions of phenomena or language data which present specific puzzles to a WP approach;

- Overviews which take stock of a strand of WP morphology;

- Open questions and challenges for WP morphology, including and not limited to models, analogy, implicative relations, formal representations thereof, variation and change;

- Descriptions of novel WP research programs and the questions they may address;

- WP morphology applied to derivation;

- Position papers regarding methodologies and/or formalisms;

- Current state of data and documentation; consequences of missing data; discussions of priorities in terms of data documentation;

- Theoretical papers advancing our understanding of WP morphology;

- Pilot studies showcasing new methodologies or investigating new models;

- WP morphology in relation to language acquisition, change and typology

- New takes on classic phenomena such as syncretism, suppletion, defectiveness; and classic concepts such as default inheritance, rules of referral, content and form paradigms.
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