29.3746, Calls: Historical Linguistics, Typology/Germany

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3746. Fri Sep 28 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.3746, Calls: Historical Linguistics, Typology/Germany

Moderator: linguist at linguistlist.org (Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Helen Aristar-Dry, Robert Coté)
Homepage: https://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Everett Green <everett at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 02:48:45
From: Olga Spevak [spevak at univ-tlse2.fr]
Subject: Towards a Diachronic Typology of Future Tenses

 
Full Title: Towards a Diachronic Typology of Future Tenses 

Date: 21-Aug-2019 - 24-Aug-2019
Location: Leipzig, Germany 
Contact Person: Eugen Hill
Meeting Email: eugen.hill at uni-koeln.de

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Typology 

Call Deadline: 15-Nov-2018 

Meeting Description:

(Session of 52nd Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea)

Unlike present and past tenses, future tenses exhibit a typologically robust
tendency towards encoding modality. Accordingly, in the typological literature
the future has been described both in temporal and modal terms. This might be
ultimately rooted in the fact that the notion of future time is inherently
linked to uncertainty given the fact that the current reality may develop in
several ways. In a similar vein, future time reference is known to frequently
interact with aspect and with aspectual properties of verbs and constructions.
Accordingly, encoding of future may be described future in terms of a
hierarchical interplay between two operators, a modal and an aspectual one.

However, these features inherent to future time reference from a most general
point of view do not by themselves explain the considerable variation we
observe regarding modality and aspectuality in future grams (henceforth
“futures”) of different languages. We assume that this variation can be better
understood from a data-oriented semasiological perspective, which implies
taking into account the diachronic dimension of futures. This amounts to
finding answers to the following questions:

- What diachronic factors may be responsible for the observed variation in
modal and aspectual values of futures?
- What are the possible correlations between these factors and the different
kinds of modal and aspectual meanings in futures?
- Which patterns of interaction between the different factors are actually
attested in natural languages?
- What are the possible trajectories of modality and aspectuality in the
development of futures?

At present, three different factors potentially relevant to modality and
aspectuality in futures may count as established. The first is the different
sources of future grams. Numerous languages possess futures known to have only
recently evolved out of forms or constructions with non-future semantics. The
most prominent sources are (a) tense-aspect forms (cf. the perfective future
in North Slavic), (b) deontic modal expressions (cf. the shall- and
will-futures in English), (c) constructions with verbs of movement (cf. the
aller-future in French), (d) constructions with inchoative copula verbs (cf.
the werden-future in German). Differences in the semantics of the source
constructions may be relevant in two similar but distinct ways (cf. the notion
of “source determination”). First, futures with similar modal sources are
likely to exhibit similar inherited modal readings. Second, futures with a
similar source may be expected to develop similarly.

The second factor may be the different mechanisms of future tense development.
The first is the grammaticalisation of an inherited content word (cf. Bybee,
Perkins & Pagliuca 1994, Heine & Kuteva 2002). The second mechanism is the
more direct functional shift, i.e. “hypoanalysis” from a non-future to a
future (cf. Haspelmath 1998, Reinöhl & Himmelmann 2016). It is known that
futures which emerged by hypoanalysis often allow for gnomic and habitual
readings, although in purely semantic terms these two meanings are difficult
to link to future time reference (cf. Haspelmath 1998). By contrast, gnomic or
habitual readings are not attested for many subtypes of grammaticalisation
futures.

Finally, the third factor potentially responsible for modal and aspectual
readings in futures is the different behaviour of future tenses in the
relevant language systems which may accommodate several functionally distinct
futures. In such a situation, it is natural to expect complex patterns of
interaction between different future tenses which, in theory, might be
responsible for different modal and aspectual flavours in futures.
The workshop invites papers addressing the research questions stated above.


Call for Papers:

The workshop invites papers addressing the research questions stated above.
Especially welcome would be contributions aimed at:

- identifying new factors potentially relevant to emerging and subsequent
development of modality and aspectuality in futures,
- describing patterns of interaction between these factors,
- identifying recurrent patterns of interaction and establishing correlations
with different kinds of modality and aspectuality.

Provisional titles and abstracts (up to 300 words) may be sent until November
15 at the following address: eugen.hill at uni-koeln.de.




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

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:

              The IU Foundation Crowd Funding site:
       https://iufoundation.fundly.com/the-linguist-list

               The LINGUIST List FundDrive Page:
            https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3746	
----------------------------------------------------------