[Lingtyp] Summer school adjacent to LLcD 2024: `The emergence and cognitive status of language universals' - Sorbonne Université, Paris, September 12-14th, 2024

[Sonia CRISTOFARO]

Summer school on ` The emergence and cognitive status of language universals ' 

to be held at Sorbonne Université, Paris, on September 12-14th, 2024, in conjunction with the first edition of the international conference `Langues et langage à la croisée des disciplines/ Language & Languages 
at the crossroads of Disciplines' (LLcD): https://llcd2024.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/11) 

School website: https://llcd2024.sciencesconf.org/resource/page?id=8&forward-action=page&forward-controller=resource&lang=en 

Organizing committee : Anne Carlier (Sorbonne Université), Sonia Cristofaro (Sorbonne Université), Pascal Denis (Inria, Lille), Maia Duguine (IKER, Bayonne), Eva Soroli (Université de Lille) 

Local organisers : Sonia Cristofaro (Sorbonne Université), Anne Carlier (Sorbonne Université) 


In the functional-typological approach that originated from the work of Joseph Greenberg, language universals are empirically observed cross-linguistic patterns, which emerge as a result of diachronic processes that repeat from one language to another. A variety of neurocognitive mechanisms, manifested at the level of speech production and processing, lead individual speakers to create novel grammatical structures from pre-existing ones. These structures are then selected, propagated and maintained in the language as a result of the dynamics of social interaction between adult speakers, as well as the dynamics of language acquisition (the vertical process of language transmission from one generation of speakers to another). To the extent that the same structures are recurrently created, propagated and maintained in different languages, an overall pattern will emerge. 

This evolutionary view, which is generally shared by typologists, is in contrast with the generative framework, where language universals are a result of static inbuilt constraints in a speaker’s mind. The consequences of this view for empirical research on language universals and explanations thereof are, however, still relatively under-explored. What is the exact nature of the neurocognitive mechanisms that lead speakers to recurrently create the same structures in different languages? How do mechanisms of social interaction lead to the propagation of individual structures? What is the role of language acquisition in shaping particular universal patterns? How can we disentangle and accurately model the effects of different mechanisms of creation, propagation and maintainance of particular structures? How can we extract evidence about these effects from the ever growing body of available data on the grammatical structure of different, unrelated languages all over the world? 
different, unrelated languages all over the world? 

The objective of the school is to bring together specialists working on language universals and related issues from different theoretical perspectives to take stock of the state of the art and outline prospects for future research. 


Courses on offer include 

Theresa Biberauer (University of Cambridge) 
Language variation and change: 21st century generative perspectives 

This class aims to give participants an overview of current generative perspectives on language variation and change, and a sense of how these have developed from the classic Principles and Parameters model. Topics to be discussed include: 

the shift from the classic two- to the current three-factors approach; 
the conceptualisation and significance of parameters then and now; 
the deepening understanding of the nature and significance of linguistic input; 
the role of general-cognitive (‘third’) factors, neo-emergentist generativism, and convergence with insights from other cognitively oriented research traditions; 
new perspectives on and predictions for acquisition (first and further), diachrony, contact and typology. 

John A. Hawkins (University of California Davis & Cambridge University) 
Processing Efficiency in Language Universals and in Contact-induced Language Change 

This course will introduce students to an interdisciplinary research program on language universals and change that I have been pursuing for some years. Its basic premise is that major patterns of variation that we see in the grammars of the world’s languages today have been structured by general principles of efficiency in language use and communication. Evidence for these principles comes from languages permitting structural options from which selections are made in performance, e.g. between competing word orders and between relative clauses with a resumptive pronoun versus a gap. The preferences and patterns of performance within languages are reflected in the fixed conventions and patterns across grammars, leading to a “Performance-Grammar Correspondence Hypothesis”. This work provides a more empirical and grammar-external alternative to the explanation of language universals than the grammar-internal and UG approach of traditional generative linguistics, and it offers a long-standing foundation for the so-called “third factors” of more recent generative theorizing. The course will illustrate three major principles of processing efficiency that are clearly visible within and across languages, Minimize Domains, Minimize Forms and Maximize Online Processing, and give illustrative supporting data, including recent extensions of these principles and their applications in both psycho-linguistics and language typology. The course will also explore how language change occurs from this efficiency perspective. The preferences visible in language use can provide, on the one hand, a “language-internal” motivation for grammatical change, but an increasingly important determinant of change can be seen in language contact and bilingualism and the course will provide an efficiency-based approach to explaining when changes occur in these circumstances and when they do not. This will incorporate both psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic considerations, and a key efficiency principle of Maximize Common Ground in bilingual learning and use will be proposed. 

Martin Haspelmath (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig) 
Universals of grammar and cultural evolution 
There are three main types of grammatical universals: word order universals, universals of coexpression (or polysemy), and universals of asymmetric grammatical coding. In this course, I will discuss a range of universals of coexpression and of coding (leaving aside word order) and and I will propose explanations in terms of cultural evolution. The latter is a fashionable term for what used to be called “diachrony”, but I will show how the analogy with biological evolution and adaptation provides additional insight. I will argue for the efficiency theory of asymmetric coding that I have been working on over many years, providing a range of examples from different languages. This theory relies on the idea of diachronic change as cultural evolution and adaptation. In addition, I will also highlight the importance of distinguishing between natural-kind concepts (as in generative grammar) and comparative concepts for cultural-evolutionary explanations. 

Practicalities 

The School can accommodate up to 60 participants. We welcome applications from PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. 

Registration fee : 100 Euros (student), 120 Euros (other). This fee covers all lectures, course materials, lunches, and coffee breaks. 

Deadline for application : June 25th, 2024 

Notification of acceptance : July 30th, 2024 

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