28.4075, Confs: Historical Ling, Syntax, Text/Corpus Ling, Typology/Estonia

Wed Oct 4 19:00:59 UTC 2017

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-4075. Wed Oct 04 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.4075, Confs: Historical Ling, Syntax, Text/Corpus Ling, Typology/Estonia

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Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2017 15:00:49
From: Guglielmo Inglese [guglielmo.inglese01 at ateneopv.it]
Subject: Constructions and Valency Changing Strategies in a Diachronic Perspective: Evidence from Indo-European and Beyond

Constructions and Valency Changing Strategies in a Diachronic Perspective: Evidence from Indo-European and Beyond 

Date: 29-Aug-2018 - 01-Sep-2018 
Location: Tallinn, Estonia 
Contact: Guglielmo Inglese 
Contact Email: guglielmo.inglese01 at ateneopv.it 

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

Meeting Description: 

The recent decades are marked with a considerable progress in the study of the
encoding of transitivity oppositions in a typological perspective (see, among
others, Siewierska 1985; Geniušiene 1989; Kemmer 1993; Kittilä 2002; Nedjalkov
et al. 2007). Impressive results are achieved in the synchronic study of the
systems of voices and valency-changing derivations, such as passive,
causative, reflexive, antipassive and anticausative. Thanks to these studies,
our understanding of transitivity phenomena has dramatically increased. Since
the seminal work by Hopper & Thompson (1980), the notion of transitivity has
played a major role in the study of these and related categories. In
particular, scholars have focused on how transitivity can be defined as a
prototypical notion (Naess 2007), and how the transitivity parameter can
explain various linguistic phenomena, chiefly the realization of verbal
argument and the syntactic patterns verbs can occur in. The last decades have
witnessed a growing interest in the study of the patterns of argument
realization on verbs and the rules behind the alternation of individual verbs
across different patterns. Studies in Construction Grammar have set out to
investigate individual verbs’ argument structure constructions (cf. Goldberg
1995, 2006), as well as the grouping of verbs into classes based on the
constructions they occur in (Levin & Rappaport-Hovav 2005), and the
productivity of different argument structure construction patterns (Barđdal
2008). In linguistic typology, attention has been paid to how valency patterns
are realized and how they can be compared across languages (Malchukov & Comrie
2015). Moreover, studies in basic valency orientation (cf. Nichols et al.
2004) have attempted a typological classification of languages based on their
preferred patterns of encoding valency increase and reduction. 

 By contrast, a systematic treatment of these categories in a diachronic
perspective remains a desideratum. The rise, development and decline of these
categories mostly remain on the periphery of the typological research. The aim
of the workshop is to bring together scholars working on valency-changing
categories and other transitivity phenomena in both (1) languages (language
families) with well-documented history (such as, first of all, Indo-European
as well as, for instance, Semitic) and (2) languages which furnish less
historical evidence but, nevertheless, can provide us with some valuable data
on the basis of comparison of daughter languages and linguistic reconstruction
(e.g. Uralic).

Possible Topics to be addressed at the workshop include (but are not limited
to):

- Diachronic changes within the systems of voice and voice-related categories
(causative, reflexive etc.) 
- Changes in argument structure constructions over time
- Productivity, expansion, and decline of competing syntactic patterns over
time
- Paths of development of valency changing markers in individual languages
- The role of context in the development of valency changing markers
- Reconstructing basic valency orientation and valency changing markers in
proto-languages
- Possible sources of valency changing markers and patterns of polysemy
- Changes in basic valency orientation over time
- The role of language contacts in the development of valency-changing
derivations
- Alignment change in the history of individual languages
- Creation of digital resources for the diachronic study of argument structure
construction and valency-changing categories

Call for Papers:

We invite submission of abstracts up to 300 words (references not included).

Please send abstracts in an editable format to:

- kulikovli at googlemail.com
- guglielmo.inglese01 at universitadipavia.it

The deadline for the submission of abstracts is November 5, 2017.

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