27.4365, Calls: Indo-European, Gen Ling, Genetic Classification, Historical Ling, Typology/Greece

Thu Oct 27 19:36:13 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4365. Thu Oct 27 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.4365, Calls: Indo-European, Gen Ling, Genetic Classification, Historical Ling, Typology/Greece

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Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2016 15:36:06
From: Artemij Keidan [artemij.keidan at uniroma1.it]
Subject: Morpho-syntactic Isoglosses in Indo-European: Diachrony, Typology and Linguistic Areas

Full Title: Morpho-syntactic Isoglosses in Indo-European: Diachrony, Typology and Linguistic Areas 

Date: 31-Mar-2017 - 02-Apr-2017
Location: Thessaloniki, Greece 
Contact Person: Nikos Lavidas
Meeting Email: nlavidas at auth.gr
Web Site: https://sites.google.com/a/uniroma1.it/ie-isoglosses/ 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Genetic Classification; Historical Linguistics; Typology 

Language Family(ies): Indo-European 

Call Deadline: 15-Dec-2016 

Meeting Description:

The last decades are marked with an increasing interest towards the study of
isoglosses shared by some branches of the Indo-European language family. As is
well-known, next to well-established branches such as Germanic, Greek or
Indo-Iranian, there are larger subdivisions within Indo-European, grouping
together several branches, in accordance with a number of features,
traditionally called isoglosses, shared by more than one group, or by several
languages not belonging to the same group (branch-crossing isoglosses). Such
isoglosses were always in the spotlight of vivid Indo-Europeanist discussions,
giving rise to numerous hypotheses on early splits within Proto-Indo-European
or, on the contrary, later contacts among historically attested languages.

Next to a few notorious isoglosses, such as the kentum/satəm division, or the
'ruki' division (retraction of the sibilant s), which have been known for a
century or so, there are a few less studied morphosyntactic features, often of
a much vaguer nature, that equally group together a number of branches and/or
languages. These include, for instance, the presence of augment (prefix
*(H)e-) (in Indo-Iranian, Armenian, Greek and Frygian), several isoglosses in
the evolution of the PIE case system (such as the development of the
agglutinating cases in Indo-Iranian and Tocharian), the emergence of the
infinitive form of the verb, several types of evolution of constructions with
non-canonical subjects or the two types of evolution of transitivity
oppositions (syncretic vs. antisyncretic type, roughly corresponding to the
West/East division within Indo-European branches), the emergence of a separate
lexical class of adjectives. 

There are three possible types of isoglosses, as far as their origin and
nature are concerned.

1) A common innovation within a genetic group of languages; such innovations
correspond to the divergent isoglosses, allowing the creation of phylogenetic
trees;

2) Mutual contacts between (and borrowings from) separate branches and
daughter-languages; these are the convergent isoglosses, originating from
either direct contacts among sister languages, or common borrowing from a
common ''substrate'' language.

3) Random coincidences and common drifts. Some convergent developments can
arise thanks to the general principles of natural morphology. In terms of
markedness degree, it can be observed that unmarked outcomes are more
widespread than the opposite.

Moreover, while in the 19th and most of the 20th centuries Indo-European
studies predominantly focused on historical, comparative and reconstructional
aspects of the Indo-European linguistic family, thus entirely remaining within
a descriptive and genetic framework, from the end of the 20th century onwards
Indo-European linguistics increasingly concentrates on the typological and
explicative evaluation of the reconstructed proto-language and its historical
evolution/development(s) towards its reflexes actually attested in the
daughter languages. In this perspective, the convergent isoglosses represent
one of the most reliable tools for the analysis of the structure of
Proto-Indo-European, its dialectal split and its further evolution towards
actually attested Indo-European languages.

Call for Papers:

The idea of the workshop is to bring together scholars interested in a
systematic study of Indo-European isoglosses, with special focus on the domain
of morphology and syntax, and related problems, and thus, to open new
perspectives in the research of the ancient Indo-European morphosyntax. The
issues to be addressed include: 

- Modern approaches to the analysis of the archaic Indo-European morphosyntax
and morphosyntactic reconstruction
- Main Indo-European isoglosses, particularly in the domain of morphology and
syntax
- The origins and mechanisms of the rise/emergence of isoglosses
- Indo-European isoglosses and the early splits within Indo-European
- Isoglosses in nominal morphology
- Isoglosses in verbal morphology
- Isoglosses in syntax and constructional features of Indo-European branches
- IE and PIE tense, aspect and actionalities
- Word order and its evolution in PIE and IE
- Abstract syntactic phenomena, such as canonical vs. non-canonical subject
and object marking in the IE languages
- Existential vs. lexicalized expression of possessiveness
- Isoglosses in morphosyntax of non-finite forms (infinitives, converbs,
etc.).

The workshop is organized as a session of the 23rd International Symposium on
Theoretical & Applied Linguistics (http://www.enl.auth.gr/istal23/) organized
by the Department of Theoretical & Applied Linguistics, School of English,
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, to be held on March 31 - April 2, 2017,
in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Abstracts can be submitted via the EasyAbs page at
http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/ISTALisoglosses2017 .

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