29.960, Calls: Historical Ling, Ling Theories, Morphology, Syntax, Typology/Greece

Thu Mar 1 22:21:13 UTC 2018

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-960. Thu Mar 01 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.960, Calls: Historical Ling, Ling Theories, Morphology, Syntax, Typology/Greece

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Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2018 17:21:01
From: Christina Sevdali [c.sevdali at ulster.ac.uk]
Subject: On the Place of Case in Grammar (with special reference to the diachrony of case systems and the interaction between cases and prepositions)

Full Title: On the Place of Case in Grammar (with special reference to the diachrony of case systems and the interaction between cases and prepositions) 
Short Title: PlaCiG 

Date: 18-Oct-2018 - 20-Oct-2018
Location: Rethymnon, Crete., Greece 
Contact Person: Christina Sevdali
Meeting Email: c.sevdali at ulster.ac.uk

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Syntax; Typology 

Call Deadline: 08-May-2018 

Meeting Description:

Case has always been at the forefront of linguistic theorizing but the proper
characterization of the morphological expression of grammatical functions and
its link to formal syntax has never received a fully satisfactory account.
Within Principles & Parameters (P&P) the main theoretical question initially
regarded the role of case in languages where it is morphologically expressed,
versus languages where it is not. Vergnaud 1977/2008 and Chomsky 1981; 1986
proposed the notion of abstract Case, where case is a requirement for nouns to
be licit in the derivation regardless of morphology. An important distinction
was between structural vs. inherent case: structural case is licensed in
particular positions by case-assigning heads, while inherent case has its
value specified in the lexicon, in relation to a specific theta-role. Recent
reviews of case theory (Butt 2006, Bobaljik & Wurmbrand 2009; Pesetsky &
Torrego 2011, Polinsky & Preminger 2014 i.a.) point out that a lot of
questions about the nature and the role of case still remain unanswered: e.g.
what is case exactly, and why it is a necessary licenser for nominals.
Moreover, work in languages whose alignment of case morphology to grammatical
functions has not been one-to-one (e.g. Icelandic-Zaenen, Maling & Thráinsson
1985 i.a and also Marantz 1991 and McFadden 2004; 2010) has increasingly led
to an extensive line of research that dissociates morphological case from
syntactic licensing of nominals, also addressing the question of where
morphological case assignment rules apply, at PF, syntax or Spell-Out  (e.g.
Zaenen, Maling and Thráinsson 1985, Marantz 1991, Harley 1995, McFadden 2004,
and Bobaljik 2008, Pesetsky 2013, Baker 2015 i.a.). Finally, there is the
question of cross-linguistic realization of case and its relationship with
prepositions. In the classic version of P&P it was assumed that prepositions
are case-assigning elements, but recent work analyses case as a structural
layer above DPs, like the KP (Lamontagne & Travis 1986; Loebel 1994, Bittner &
Hale 1996). More recently Caha 2009 building on Blake 2001 proposed that cases
and prepositions are both present in a templatic structure that is realised as
a universally ordered series of functional heads above DPs. The relationship
between cases and prepositions is reinforced by the diachrony of case systems,
where cases are replaced by prepositions. These issues are at the centre of
our Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project 'Investigating
Variation and Change: Case in diachrony' (AH/P006612/1).

Invited Speakers:

- Mark Baker (Rutgers University)
- Miriam Butt (University of Konstanz)
- David Pesetsky (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 
- Ian Roberts (University of Cambridge)
- Arhonto Terzi (University of Patras) 

Call for Papers:

This workshop is part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
project 'Investigating Variation and Change: Case in diachrony' (AH/P006612/1)
 project and we invite papers that address, among others, the following
questions:

(a) What is the status of case features, the relationship between abstract and
morphological case and the place of case in grammar? 
(b) Which aspects of case are universal and which are language particular?
(c) What is the role of case morphology in a linguistic system vis à vis the
syntactic behaviour of nominals? 
(d) When the morphology of a linguistic case system changes, what are the
consequences for the syntax of case? 
(e) What is the relationship between prepositions and cases?
(f) How can the diachrony of case systems illuminate case theory?

Abstract deadline: 8 May 2018
Length: 2 pages. 
Submission through EasyChair: http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/PlaCiG2018 
Selected number of papers will appear in an edited volume with a major
publishing company.  

Organisers: Christina Sevdali, (c.sevdali at ulster.ac.uk) & Dionysios Mertyris,
(d.mertyris at ulster.ac.uk), Ulster University; Elena Anagnostopoulou,
(anagnostopoulou at uoc.gr), University of Crete.

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