27.3362, Calls: Germanic, Romance, Historical Ling, Text/Corpus Ling/USA

Tue Aug 23 19:02:56 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-3362. Tue Aug 23 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.3362, Calls: Germanic, Romance, Historical Ling, Text/Corpus Ling/USA

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Anthony Aristar, Helen Aristar-Dry,
                                   Robert Coté, Michael Czerniakowski)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
                       Fund Drive 2016
                   25 years of LINGUIST List!
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Kenneth Steimel <ken at linguistlist.org>
================================================================

Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 15:02:42
From: Christine Meklenborg Salvesen [c.m.salvesen at ilos.uio.no]
Subject: Germanic and Romance. Probing the Similarities and Differences

Full Title: Germanic and Romance. Probing the Similarities and Differences 

Date: 31-Jul-2017 - 04-Aug-2017
Location: San Antonio, Texas, USA 
Contact Person: Christine Meklenborg Salvesen
Meeting Email: c.m.salvesen at ilos.uio.no
Web Site: http://ichl23.utsa.edu/cfp/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics 

Language Family(ies): Germanic; Romance 

Call Deadline: 01-Dec-2016 

Meeting Description:

There is a large literature in the field of comparative and historical syntax
of drawing comparison between Germanic and Romance varieties. This includes a
particular tradition which argues that the earlier languages were more alike
than their present day counterparts (see in particular Adams 1989; Fontana
1993; Mathieu 2007 and Franco 2009). The most prominent example of this
similarity is the Verb Second constraint, which is characteristic of many
early and contemporary Germanic languages (see Vikner 1995 and Walkden 2014)
and argued to be operative in Medieval Romance (Thurneysen 1892 et seq.). The
workshop will aim to develop a more nuanced understanding of both the
parallels and points of contrast between these two families, through
synchronic comparison of phenomena in previous historical stages and
diachronic consideration of the relevant pathways of change.

The time is right for such an exercise on several grounds. First, research in
recent decades has equipped the historical linguist with a range of
large-scale corpora for both Germanic and Romance (see, for example, in the
case of Romance the Tycho Brahe Parsed Corpus of Historical Portuguese, the
Base de Français Médiéval and the Opera del Vocabolario Italiano alongside the
Penn Parsed Corpus of Historical English, the Icelandic Parsed Historical
Corpus and the Corpus of Historical Low German for Germanic). This affords a
methodologically more robust basis for comparison than has previously been
possible empirically. Second, a more nuanced understanding has been reached in
recent years of previously little-reported variation amongst the early
Germanic and Romance varieties (see Walkden 2014 and Wolfe 2015), which has so
far not been extensively exploited for comparison between Germanic and
Romance. Third, much controversy has been generated over whether reported
Romance and Germanic parallels are genuine (see Mathieu 2006 vs. Labelle 2007
on Stylistic Fronting and Benincà 2013 vs. Kaiser 2002 on Verb second). We
therefore set out to evaluate the relevant arguments in more depth, by
considering a wider body of empirical evidence.

By probing in more depth than has previously been the case, we seek to
establish just how similar two well-studied branches of the Indo-European
family are, what role language contact has played in generating possible
resemblances and whether systematic comparison of Germanic and Romance
varieties can help us identify new cycles of linguistic change (on which see
Van Gelderen 2011).

Against this backdrop we welcome comparative treatments of Germanic and
Romance data which present new perspectives on the phenomena in question and
theories of linguistic change. Contributions of both a historical-synchronic
and diachronic nature are welcome on, but not limited to, the following
phenomena:

- The C-system
- Hypotaxis and parataxis
- Null arguments
- OV and VO
- Pronominal system
- Resumptive structures
- Stylistic Fronting
- Subject positions
- V2

We hope the workshop would lead us to a better understanding of the processes
of change at play in the Germanic and Romance languages, and relatedly, the
structure of historical variation for the phenomena in question.

Call for Papers:

Presentations should be scheduled for 20 minutes + 10 minutes for comments and
questions. 

Abstracts should be a maximum of two pages in length, including references.

Abstracts should be submitted via the conference Easy Chair link. (If you have
problems using Easy Chair, please contact ichl23 at utsa.edu.). Authors may
present a maximum of two papers, whether single authored or co-authored.
Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by at least three members of the
Scientific Committee.

Abstracts submitted for a workshop but not accepted there will be
automatically considered for inclusion in the general session.

For more information, including the full call for papers, please visit the
ICHL23 website: http://ichl23.utsa.edu/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
                       Fund Drive 2016
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

        Thank you very much for your support of LINGUIST!

----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-27-3362	
----------------------------------------------------------
Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated
from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:
          http://multitree.org/