27.837, Calls: Historical Linguistics, Text/Corpus Linguistics/Poland

Mon Feb 15 16:16:47 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-837. Mon Feb 15 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.837, Calls: Historical Linguistics, Text/Corpus Linguistics/Poland

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Date: Mon, 15 Feb 2016 11:16:39
From: Kristin Bech [kristin.bech at ilos.uio.no]
Subject: Grammar, Discourse, Context: Widening the Horizon for a Theory of Grammatical Change

Full Title: Grammar, Discourse, Context: Widening the Horizon for a Theory of Grammatical Change 

Date: 18-Sep-2016 - 21-Sep-2016
Location: Poznan, Poland 
Contact Person: Ruth Möhlig-Falke
Meeting Email: ruth.moehlig at as.uni-heidelberg.de
Web Site: http://wa.amu.edu.pl/isle4/ 

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

Call Deadline: 15-Mar-2016 

Meeting Description:

This workshop welcomes linguists working in different theoretical and
methodological frameworks on diachronic language change, who specifically look
at processes of grammatical change in context. From a pragmatic and
discourse-analytic perspective, context may comprise the following:

On the micro-level (van Dijk 2008)
1) the immediate surrounding text of the communicative event in question, i.e.
what has also been called co-text (Halliday & Hasan 1985);
2 a) the intertextual and interdiscursive relationship between utterances,
texts, genres, and discourses;
b) the intertextual and interdiscursive relationship between spoken and/or
written texts and other modes of communication (e.g. pictures, colours, fonts,
scripts);
c) the intertextual and interdiscursive relationship between different
varieties and languages that are part of the “world of discourse”.
3) the structural context provided by the language system, i.e. the system of
interdepencies between lexemes (semantic fields, cognitive domains,
collocations, etc.) and grammatical patterns and constructions (Fischer 2007:
116; Möhlig-Falke 2012: 24) which form the linguistic input and underlying
cognitive structures (mental grammars) of speakers at any historical stage of
the language.

On the macro-level (van Dijk 2008)
1) the extralinguistic social, environmental variables and institutional
frames of a specific ‘context of situation’; and
2) the broader sociopolitical and historical context that discursive practices
are embedded in and related to.

We invite contributions focusing on one or more of the following central
questions:

- What is the influence of (selected levels of) context on processes of
grammatical change?
- Does a “contextual” approach add to our knowledge and understanding of
causes and mechanisms of grammatical change (e.g. analogy, redundancy and the
principle of economy (Los 2012), transparency and simplification,
subjectification)?
- In which phase do contextual factors influence a process of grammatical
change, in the actuation or implementation phase? (MacMahon 1994)
- What triggers language change? Does cultural (contextual) change precede
processes of grammatical change, or does grammatical change happen
independently of this? 
- What is the relationship between text and context? Text is what we have
available for the analysis of historical stages of a language and of
diachronic processes of language change. Context needs to be reconstructed and
may be up to different interpretations.
- Is it possible to model the influence of context on processes of grammatical
change and how can this be done?

It is further possible to focus on the stability of a part of the grammatical
system, i.e. its resilience to change, and the role which contextual factors
may play in this, e.g:

- Why are some patterns stable over time while others change?
- Why are some languages more stable than others and retain, for instance,
complex and non-transparent grammatical constructions, while other languages
undergo radical grammatical restructurings? (e.g. German, Icelandic as opposed
to Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, English)
- Why are some languages more stable than others and retain, for instance,
complex and non-transparent grammatical constructions, while other languages
undergo radical grammatical restructurings? 
- Which role does context play in the retention of, for instance,
non-transparent patterns and constructions?

Call for Papers:

This workshop will be held during ISLE4 (18-21 September 2016, Poznan, day of
the workshop TBC). Papers in the workshop will be allotted 20 minutes for
presentation and 10 minutes for discussion, in keeping with the format of the
conference. Please submit your abstract (300-500 words, excluding the title,
linguistic examples and references) through the EasyChair system on the
conference website (http://wa.amu.edu.pl/isle4/). The deadline for submissions
is 15 March 2016. Notification of acceptance of papers is 25 April 2016.

Convenors: Ruth Möhlig-Falke (Heidelberg University) and Kristin Bech
(University of Oslo)

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