26.2665, Confs: Historical Linguistics, Morphology, Semantics, Syntax/UK

Thu May 28 17:26:19 UTC 2015

LINGUIST List: Vol-26-2665. Thu May 28 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.2665, Confs: Historical Linguistics, Morphology, Semantics, Syntax/UK

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Date: Thu, 28 May 2015 13:25:56
From: Maria J. Arche [m.j.arche at gre.ac.uk]
Subject: Copulas Across Languages

Copulas Across Languages 

Date: 18-Jun-2015 - 19-Jun-2015 
Location: London, United Kingdom 
Contact: Maria J. Arche 
Contact Email: copulas2015 at gre.ac.uk 
Meeting URL: http://www.gre.ac.uk/copulas 

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Morphology; Semantics; Syntax 

Meeting Description: 

Meeting Title: Copulas Across Languages
Dates: 18-19 June 2015 
Venue: University of Greenwich, London (UK)

Organizers:

María J. Arche (University of Greenwich)
Edward Garrett (SOAS)
Antonio Fábregas (University of Tromsø)
Rafael Marín (CNRS-University of Lille 3)

Contact Person: María J. Arche, m.j.arche at greenwich.ac.uk

Meeting description: This workshop is about the semantic, syntactic and morphological properties of copulas across languages

Invited Speakers: 

Ely van Gelderen (University of Arizona)
Lisa Green (University of Massachusetts at Amherst)
Tonjes Veenstra (ZAS)

Conference website for (free) registration and further information: www.gre.ac.uk/copulas

Copulas are an area of the grammar where languages exhibit large variation. Some languages show no copula whatsoever in some instances, while other languages have four or five different copular forms. The type of variation is also diverse; in some languages the variation consists of contrasts between inflected/non-inflected forms (e.g., African American English, Green 2000), and others between different lexical copulas (e.g., Spanish, Arche 2006, Fábregas 2012; Irish, Doherty 1996; Bambara, Koopman 2003; Tibetan, Garrett 2001; Odia, Mahapatra 2002; Saramaccan, Veenstra 2012). The rules determining variation also differ. In some languages variation depends on the tense on the clause (Hebrew, Rapoport 1987; Arabic, Benmamoun 2000; Russian, Turkish, Wetzer 1996, Stassen 1997, Baker 2003; or Sakha, Baker & Vinokurova 2012); in others on the predicate type. As for their morphology, some copulas are verbal while others are described as pronominal (Rapoport 1991; van Gelderen 2011), and ot
 hers have prepositions at their source (Pustet 2003).

Aims of the Workshop: 

- To discuss the syntax and semantics of copular variation across languages. What do copulas combine with and what do they mean?
- To discuss the relation of the copulas to TAME (tense, aspect, mood and evidentiality). Why absent in some tenses? What are the evidential readings?
- To discuss the morphological incarnation of the copulas: what is involved in the morphology of the copulas and what does it tell us about what a copula is? 

Illumination for these questions can come from:

1) The description of the morphology, semantics and syntactic distribution of different copulas in different languages and dialects and different acquisitional stages of languages.
2) The description of the diachronic development of the morphology, semantics and syntactic distribution of the copulas in different languages.
3) Qualitative or quantitative analysis of copula realisation and variation using corpus-based methods. 

Programme:

Thursday, 18 June 2015
9:00–9:45
Registration

9:45–10:00
Welcome 

10:00–11:00
Opening Plenary by Tonjes Veenstra (ZAS, Berlin)
Copulas as Last Resort Roots

11:00–11:30 Coffee break		

11:30–12:05
Denis Creissels (University of Lyon) and Catherine Taine-Cheikh (LACITO, CNRS, Paris)
>From ‘see’ verbs to copulas: a little-known grammaticalization path

12:05–12:40
Nelia Alexandre and Anabela Gonçalves (Centre of Linguistics, University of Lisbon)
Copular constructions in Portuguese as a second language (PL2) by Chinese learners: Do typological differences matter?

12:40–13:15
Kwang-sup Kim (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)
Copula as a Nominative Case Marker

13:15–15:00
Lunch and poster session	

15:00–15:35
Jitka Bartošová and Ivona Kučerová (McMaster University, Hamilton, ON)
On Person, animacy, and copular agreement in Czech

15:35–16:10
Isabelle Roy (Univ. Paris 8 / CNRS) and Ur Shlonsky (U. Geneva)
On predicative copular sentences, event interpretation and (the absence of) agreement

16:10-16:45
David Willis (University of Cambridge)
Two predicate-phrase heads in Welsh copular clauses

16:45–17:00 Break		

17:00–18:00
First Day Closing Plenary by Elly van Gelderen (Arizona State University)
Problems of Projection and the Copula Cycle

19:30 Conference dinner

Friday, 19 June 2015

9:30–10:05
Nicoletta Loccioni (University of California Los Angeles)
Specificational copular constructions as inverse clauses: evidence from Maragoli 

10:05-10:40
Luis Sáez (Complutense University of Madrid)
About the copula of certain Caribbean Spanish focus constructions

10:40-11:15
Olga Borik (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
The role of copula in periphrastic passives in Russian

11:15–11:45 Coffee break 

11:45–12:05
Anna Bondaruk (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin)
Agreement with the post-verbal DP in Polish dual copula clauses 

12:05-12:40
Susana Béjar, Arsalan Kahnemuyipour, Jessica Mathie and Tomohiro Yokoyama (University of Toronto)
Number Matching in Copular Clauses

12:40-13:15
Silja Hlín Guðbjörnsdóttir, Rannveig Sverrisdóttir, Kristín Lena Þorvaldsdóttir, Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson.
A sign language copula

13:15–14:30 Lunch

14:30–15:05
Devyani Sharma (Queen Mary, University of London)
English-based copula variation in Britain: Past, present, and future 

15:05–15:40
Tracy Conner (University of Massachusetts at Amherst)
Ellipsis Licensing and Constraints on Copula Optionality in African American English

15:40–16:00 Coffee break

16:00–17:00
Closing plenary, Lisa Green (University of Massachusetts at Amherst)
The Copula, Aspect, and Variation in African American English

Alternates:

Teresa O'Neill (CUNY Graduate Centre)
Separating Finiteness from Tense in copular sentences 

Posters:

Hannah Gibson and Lutz Marten (SOAS, University of London)
Copulas in existential constructions in Swahili

Eugenia Mangialavori Rasia (National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET))
P incorporation and Spanish copulas: it may be not so different from dancing a jig  

Teresa O'Neill (CUNY Graduate Centre)
Separating Finiteness from Tense in copular sentences

Nicholas Welch (University of Toronto)
Copulas and light verbs as a unified category

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