30.1576, Calls: General Linguistics, Linguistic Theories, Morphology, Semantics, Syntax/United Kingdom

Wed Apr 10 22:09:39 UTC 2019

LINGUIST List: Vol-30-1576. Wed Apr 10 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.1576, Calls: General Linguistics, Linguistic Theories, Morphology, Semantics, Syntax/United Kingdom

Moderator: Malgorzata E. Cavar (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Student Moderator: Jeremy Coburn
Managing Editor: Becca Morris
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Everett Green, Sarah Robinson, Peace Han, Nils Hjortnaes, Yiwen Zhang, Julian Dietrich
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

**************************************    LINGUIST List Support    **************************************
                                              Fund Drive 2019
                          29 years of LINGUIST List! The annual Fund Drive is on!
Please support the LINGUIST List to ensure we can continue to deliver important information to your mailbox.
                                           Every amount counts:
                                https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

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

Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2019 18:08:31
From: Coppe van Urk [c.vanurk at qmul.ac.uk]
Subject: The Alphabet of Universal Grammar

Full Title: The Alphabet of Universal Grammar 

Date: 04-Jul-2019 - 05-Jul-2019
Location: London, United Kingdom 
Contact Person: Coppe van Urk
Meeting Email: c.vanurk at qmul.ac.uk
Web Site: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/alphabet-universal-grammar 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Semantics; Syntax 

Call Deadline: 30-Apr-2019 

Meeting Description:

British Academy conference “The Alphabet of Universal Grammar”

4–5 July 2019

Co-organizers: Daniel Harbour, Luisa Martí, Hazel Pearson and Coppe van Urk

Venue: the British Academy

Description:

Thirty years into the Cognitive Revolution, Muysken and Van Riemsdijk drew
attention to a deficiency of research into Universal Grammar. Understanding of
how complex structures are constructed and manipulated had advanced rapidly,
but features, the alphabet in which syntax is ‘written’, remained poorly
understood. This contrasted with phonology, where understanding of features
and structures had progressed in tandem. It was, they urged, “high time ... to
examine the theory of syntactic features”, as “even basic questions such as
‘how many [features] are there?’, ‘what are they?’, ‘how do they
distribute...?’ [had been] hardly addressed”. Another thirty years later,
syntactic features remain scantly researched. However, an upsurge in recent
interest shows that the field is at a tipping point for a major redirection of
enquiry. This conference aims to serve as a catalyst in setting a unified
agenda for a rigorous theory of features across multiple branches of syntactic
research.

The years after Muysken and Van Riemsdijk’s call to action saw a number of
advances within generative and general linguistics. In the early 1990s, two
major theoretical innovations, Chomsky’s Minimalism and Halle and Marantz’s
Distributed Morphology, afforded features a new centrality. The same period
saw a landmark study in feature-based typology (Noyer’s treatment of person
and number) and, at the end of the same decade, work by Cinque on universal
functional sequences triggered a major research programme of its own. Jointly,
these began to disaggregate previously indistinct notions of heads versus the
features that they host, which drive numerous syntactic processes. This
century, progress has been further fuelled by rich typological studies,
detailed studies of specific feature families, and further clarification of
the concept of features across multiple frameworks. What is needed now is a
synthesis of past results, pooling disparate pockets of progress, and
developing a unified programme of research into this fundamental area of
cognition.

Invited speakers:

Diogo Almeida
Ana Arregui
Mark Baker
Theresa Biberauer
Patricia Cabredo Hofherr
Greville Corbett
Jennifer Culbertson
Amy Rose Deal
Peter Klecha
Angelika Kratzer
Lisa Matthewson
Ora Matushansky
Yasutada Sudo
Peter Svenonius
Martina Wiltschko
Maria Luisa Zubizarreta

Call for Papers:

Call for Posters:

We invite abstracts for poster presentations for the British Academy
conference ''The alphabet of Universal Grammar'' (details here:
https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/alphabet-universal-grammar). The
posters will be displayed on stands and presenters will have the opportunity
to answer questions and receive feedback from the audience. Poster sessions
will take place during breaks from the main session and during dedicated
poster sessions each day.

Abstract Guidelines:

No abstract may be longer than 2 pages (A4 or letter size) with 1 inch (2.54
cm) margins. Abstracts must be set single spaced in a 12 pt font. Figures and
references may be set in a smaller font, but must be within the 2 page limit.
Only pdf files will be accepted. The submission must not reveal the identity
of the author(s) in any way. (Note that files uploaded to Easychair are
renamed by the system, but a PDF file may contain hidden information about its
author or creator.)

An author may submit a maximum of two abstracts, where only one submission may
be single-authored.

We have a small number of conference fee waivers available so please let us
know in your EasyChair submission if you need such support in order to attend
the conference (e.g., if you are a student, or in part-time employment).

Please submit abstracts via EasyChair no later than April 30 2019, 23:59 at
the following link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=alphug2019

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

***************************    LINGUIST List Support    ***************************
 The 2019 Fund Drive is under way! Please visit https://funddrive.linguistlist.org
  to find out how to donate and check how your university, country or discipline
     ranks in the fund drive challenges. Or go directly to the donation site:
               https://iufoundation.fundly.com/the-linguist-list-2019

                        Let's make this a short fund drive!
                Please feel free to share the link to our campaign:
                    https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-30-1576	
----------------------------------------------------------