21.2729, Calls: Syntax, Historical Linguistics, Pragmatics, Typology/Germany

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LINGUIST List: Vol-21-2729. Sat Jun 26 2010. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 21.2729, Calls: Syntax, Historical Linguistics, Pragmatics, Typology/Germany

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1)
Date: 24-Jun-2010
From: Augustin Speyer < speyer at staff.uni-marburg.de >
Subject: The German Middle Field: Comparative and Diachronic
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2010 21:53:06
From: Augustin Speyer [speyer at staff.uni-marburg.de]
Subject: The German Middle Field: Comparative and Diachronic

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Full Title: The German Middle Field: Comparative and Diachronic 

Date: 23-Feb-2011 - 25-Feb-2011
Location: Goettingen, Germany 
Contact Person: Augustin Speyer
Meeting Email: speyer at staff.uni-marburg.de

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Pragmatics; Syntax; Typology 

Language Family(ies): Germanic; Slavic Subgroup 

Call Deadline: 15-Aug-2010 

Meeting Description:

This workshop is part of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Deutsche 
Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS). Organizers: Kristine Bentzen 
(Tromsø), Roland Hinterhölzl (HU Berlin/Venice), Augustin Speyer (Marburg), 
Luka Szucsich (HU Berlin). 

We will focus on pragmatically/semantically triggered word order variation 
(WOV) in the middle field (MF) in German (= scrambling) from a comparative 
and diachronic perspective, addressing the issue of how scrambling in 
German is similar to and different from related phenomena in other 
languages. 

In this respect, some of the most urgent questions are the following:

According to Haider & Rosengren (1998), scrambling should be restricted to 
OV-languages with verb-class specific base orders.

A) What is the nature of word order variation in Slavic and Scandinavian 
languages, which are generally analysed as VO-languages?

In Mainland Scandinavian, object shift is dependent on verb movement, 
restricting WOV to the postverbal field. Yiddish, which has preserved mixed 
OV/VO word orders, allows for WOV only in the preverbal field.

B) What triggers object shift? Which factors decide whether object shift is 
restricted to pronouns as in Mainland Scandinavian or may also target full 
DPs as in Icelandic?

C) Do the Slavic languages show WOV only in the preverbal field or also in 
the postverbal field? Is word order freedom in Slavic similar to word order 
freedom in German or is it of a different nature?

D) Is there a connection between the side of WOV and the head complement 
parameter or which other factors, including prosody could be held responsible 
for this property?

Like in modern Yiddish, in OHG and OE (languages with mixed OV/VO order) 
discourse-given constituents moved to the top of the MF. Except for OE (cf. 
Pintzuk & Taylor 2006), little is known about how indefinite NPs 
quantificational phrases are ordered with respect to each other and with 
respect to the verb in older Germanic.

E) Are indefinite pronouns and indefinite NPs placed differently in OHG as
definites are?

In modern German genitive objects and dative objects of Acc-Dat-verbs may 
not be scrambled.

F) How behave genitive objects in OHG and MHG? How do the different case 
arguments in Slavic fit in? 

G) Is there a connection between scrambling of NPs and the aspect type of 
the verb in Slavic as there is a connection between scrambling and the 
(in)definiteness of argument NPs in German?

Invited speakers include Hubert Haider (Salzburg) and Helmut Weiß 
(Frankfurt). 

Call for Papers

We welcome abstracts for 20-minute papers (plus 10 minutes for discussion) 
which address one or more of the various properties of scrambling in German 
and similar phenomena in other languages, most prominently other Germanic 
languages and Slavic languages, from a diachronic or synchronic comparative 
perspective, as expressed in (but not confined to) the leading questions in the 
conference description. 

Abstracts (1 page, Times New Roman 12 dpi, plus 1 page for tables, figures, 
references) should be sent to speyer at staff.uni-marburg.de, preferably in pdf-
format (alternatively: doc).

Deadline: August 15, 2010
Notification of acceptance/rejection: September 15, 2010




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