25.4419, Calls: Morphology, Phonology, Ling Theories, General Ling, Semantics/Netherlands

Wed Nov 5 22:51:34 UTC 2014

LINGUIST List: Vol-25-4419. Wed Nov 05 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.4419, Calls: Morphology, Phonology, Ling Theories, General Ling, Semantics/Netherlands

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            Malgorzata E. Cavar, Indiana U <gosia at linguistlist.org>

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Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 17:51:16
From: Marko Simonovic [rkicma at gmail.com]
Subject: How Lexical Relatedness is Established and Marked: Prosody, Compositionality and Productivity

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Full Title: How Lexical Relatedness is Established and Marked: Prosody, Compositionality and Productivity 

Date: 02-Sep-2015 - 05-Sep-2015
Location: Leiden, Netherlands 
Contact Person: Marko Simonovic
Meeting Email: sleworkshop at gmail.com

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Phonology; Semantics 

Call Deadline: 20-Nov-2014 

Meeting Description:

There seems to exist a cross-linguistic tendency in languages which have lexical accent that affixes which are usually associated with inflection are far less commonly accented than those associated with derivation. As Revithiadou (1999) notes ''the empirical facts suggest that it is not very common to have morphemes other than inflectional suffixes marked with a weak accent.'' Moreover, within the traditional domain of derivation, accented affixes tend to be characterised by a lesser degree of semantic transparency and a less predictable applicability (in the extreme case, a fully idiosyncratic selection of morphemes they combine with) (Arsenijević & Simonović 2013). In sum, there is a continuum from accentless all-round morphemes with straightforward semantic content, to often accented morphemes with limited productivity.

For instance, in English, Dutch and German, while all inflectional suffixes are unaccented, the native Germanic derivational suffixes, which are more productive and have more transparent meaning are mostly accentless (e.g. the nominalising suffix -ness, -heid and -keit/heit respectively), whereas the Latinate suffixes, which combine with a limited number of bases and have a more lexicalised meaning are mostly accented (e.g. the nominalising -ity, -iteit and -ität respectively). In Serbo-Croatian, this dichotomy has been observed within the native domain: the same suffix can have an unaccented version, which is used more productively and with more transparent semantics, and an accented version, which is used in more unpredictable combinations with lexicalised semantics. 

Base word:			     

pUtovati ''to travel'' 				
Opaasan ''dangerous''

Paradigmatic nominalisation:

pUtovaanje ''travelling''
Opaasnoost ''dangerousness''

Non-paradigmatic nominalisation:

putovAAnjE ''trip''
opAAsnOOst ''danger''

Arsenijević & Simonović (2013) termed the domain of prosodic base-faithfulness, productivity and semantic transparency paradigmatic, while the domain of accented affixes, limited productivity and lexicalised semantics is termed non-paradigmatic. Their concept of paradigmaticity thus establishes relations between the phonology, semantics and productivity of patterns. While quite a few models in morphology (e.g., Haspelmath 1995, Spencer 2013) build on the relations between selectional restrictions, semantics and productivity, instead of the traditional opposition between inflection and derivation, and a number of models tackle the problems of paradigm uniformity in a purely phonological perspective (e.g. Kenstowicz 2005), relatively little attention has been given to the correlation between these three domains. 

Convenors: Boban Arsenijević and Marko Simonović

Call for Papers:

We are inviting abstracts aiming to answer questions comprising, yet not restricted to the following:

What is the status of the observed correlation between phonological base-faithfulness, semantic transparency and productivity? Is it an emergent regularity or encoded in grammars?

Is there empirical ground for, and theoretical gain from placing languages on a scale with respect to the degree to which they display the correlation of these three properties? The upper pole of the scale would include languages in which all the unaccented morphemes are maximally applicable and semantically transparent, all accented and dominant morphemes have limited productivity and induce idiosyncratic semantics and all the other morphemes fall in between, in congruence with their degree of accentedness and dominance.

Lexical Conservatism (Steriade 1997) - the force which imposes the similarity between existing and the newly generated allomorphs predicts that in the diachronic perspective, unstressed affixes should win productivity competitions with stressed affixes. Do languages in which these predictions are confirmed (e.g. Serbo-Croatian) represent a universal tendency, or are there languages in which opposite processes are verified? In the latter case, how can such a direction of change be explained? 

Affix productivity has received many competing definitions and formalisations (Aronoff 1976, Baayen 1992, 2001, Bauer 2001, Plag 1999). How do these formalisations, or perhaps their modifications, match the conceptualisation of productivity viewed as entangled with phonological base-faithfulness and semantic transparency? 

Do patterns where two words built from one and the same stem, combined with the stressed and with.the unstressed version of the same affix differ in respect of compositionality tell us something about the semantic and syntactic information contained in the lexicon, and about the interface of syntax with the lexicon (e.g. in respect of sub-lexical semantic decomposition, or regarding the advantages of (non-)lexicalist views of syntax).

The oral presentations will be 20 min long, followed by 10 min of discussion. 

This call regards the submission of the short, preliminary versions of the abstracts. Submissions will be evaluated by the workshop organizers (Boban Arsenijević and Marko Simonović). After that, 13 abstracts will be selected and submitted together with the workshop proposal to the conference organizers on November 25, 2014. Notification of acceptance/rejection will be given to the workshop organizers by December 15, 2014. If the workshop is accepted, the deadline for the submission of the final version of the abstracts will be January 15, 2015. 

Since this is only the preliminary version of the call, we also invite contributors to suggest modifications of the call and/or references we should be aware of.

Submission Details: 

- Deadline for submission (preliminary abstracts): November 20, 2014
- Abstracts are no longer than 300 words, including examples (full references should not be included in the abstract) 
- Submissions are restricted to one single-authored and one co-authored abstract at most (or two co-authored abstracts) 
- The conference language is English: abstracts and talks will be in English 
- Page format: A4, 2,54 cm (one inch) margins on all sides, 12-point font, simple line spacing 
- File formats: *.pdf and *.docx 
- Submission email: sleworkshop at gmail.com (add 'Preliminary Abstract Submission' in the subject line)

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