31.2041, Calls: Syntax/France

Mon Jun 22 16:49:14 UTC 2020

LINGUIST List: Vol-31-2041. Mon Jun 22 2020. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 31.2041, Calls: Syntax/France

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Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2020 12:48:32
From: Eric Corre [eric.corre at sorbonne-nouvelle.fr]
Subject: New perspectives on aspect : from the “Slavic model” to other languages

Full Title: New perspectives on aspect : from the “Slavic model” to other languages 

Date: 08-Apr-2021 - 10-Apr-2021
Location: Paris, France 
Contact Person: Eric Corre
Meeting Email: eric.corre at sorbonne-nouvelle.fr
Web Site: http://aspect2021.sciencesconf.org/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Syntax 

Call Deadline: 15-Oct-2020 

Meeting Description:

In connection with the syllabus of the Agrégation externe (national
examination for secondary school teaching qualification) in English, which
includes the issue of Aspect, Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, Sorbonne Université
and Université de Paris, with the added sponsorship of the Association des
Linguistes Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur (ALAES), are holding a
two-day international conference in April 2021:
- a whole day is devoted to aspect in English;
- the rest of the conference deals with aspect in various languages, including
Russian.

Keynote speakers :
- John Beavers (university of Texas, Austin) 
- Henriette de Swart (Université d’Anvers) 
- Astrid de Wit (Université d’Anvers) 
- Vladimir Plungian (Moscow State University) 
- Laurent Gosselin (Université de Rouen)

Call for Papers: 

The concept, and the term aspect , as they are used in the Indo-European non
Slavic languages, comes essentially from the description of the Slavic
languages, which know a compulsory morphologized opposition between a verb of
perfective aspect and a verb imperfect. The important work of B. Comrie,
Aspect 1976, helped to root the Slavic model of aspect in theoretical
descriptions of verbal categories for English, both interacting with and
opposing the category of time ( tense). Since Comrie and especially Smith
(1991), a large number of contemporary researchers in aspectology (in the
English-speaking area, but not only) have established the distinction between
a grammatical aspect or point of view ( viewpoint aspect ) and a lexical or
semantic aspect ( situation aspect , Aktionsart ). The aspect ''point of
view'', due to its mode of expression (grammatical inflections), is manifested
by a series of contrasts, some are also linked with time: simple form vs .
progressive, perfect vs . not perfect. According to Bertinetto and Delfitto
(2000), ''  aspect is the specific perspective adopted by the speaker /
writer'', and is distinct fromactionality , or Aktionsart , ''the type of
event, specified according to a limited number of relevant properties'' (190).
The notion of perspective, of point of view, has in turn prompted in-depth
work on the types of meaning implemented by the aspectual forms which seem to
go beyond purely temporal considerations: we think of the values of action
accomplished ( ''General factual'') of the Russian imperfective (Forsyth 1970,
Glovinskaja 2001, Grønn 2004), with commentary / modal values of the English
progressive (Adamczewski 1982, Larreya & Rivière 2010), of the mirativeness
and the obviousness of the progressive in other languages (Vafaeian 2018, de
Wit 2017, Vydrin 2012). A large number of works devoted to the grammatical
aspect have noted paradoxes and enigmas (puzzles ) of all kinds: imperfect
paradox (Dowty 1979) which allows telic predicates and progressive to coexist,
by nature unbounded; the present perfect puzzle (Klein 1994), which attempts
to explain the interaction at first sight impossible between an English
present perfect and a specific definite circumstance of type yesterday , and
more recently, the perfective paradox (de Wit 2017), which makes account of
the difficult compatibility of the present time and the perfecting aspect in
certain languages, including Russian.

The same proliferation is found in studies devoted to the lexical aspect: the
works of Vendler 1957 (but also of Maslov 1947) have devoted the so-called
aspectual classification of verbs and verbal syntagms according to their
inherent temporal properties, including dynamism, duration, (a) telicity.
Following Vendler, the classifications were refined according to independent
properties. For Verkuyl (1972, 1989, 2005), Krifka (1989, 1992), (a) telicity
comes from the interpretative interaction between the properties of the verb
and those of the direct object. A crucial notion which appears in all the
lexical aspect classification models is that of the presence or not of a
privileged end point to the action expressed by the verb, the telos . It is
undeniable that theAktionsart (the verb and its complementary structure) and
the (a) telicity associated with it have important repercussions in the syntax
of sentences, as shown by Krifka (1992), Tenny (1994), Borer (2005) , among
others. Thus appeared the notion of the aspectual role carried by certain
privileged arguments of the verb, essentially the direct internal argument
with its role of incremental theme. The latter is a distinguished argument in
the sense that it is this argument which is aspectual, that is to say which
ensures homomorphism between object and event, homomorphism which sets telic
or quantized predicates apart other predicates (cumulative).

An innovative proposition was that of Tenny in his book Aspectual roles and
the Syntax-Semantics Interface (1994), in which it enshrines the notion of
aspect role as a mediator between semantics and syntax. Similarly, the concept
of event structure (Pustejovsky 1991; Levin & R. Hovav 1998, 2001, 2005; Croft
2012) was intended to bring out stable and predictable principles of semantic
/ syntax matching according to properties of Aktionsart and the participative
properties (causal, in particular) of verbs and their arguments. A problem
appeared with verbs with variable telicity, “ degree achievements ” (Dowty
1979): verbs like widen , lengthen, cool , dry , straighten , etc. pose
classification difficulties, these verbs manifesting telic or atelic
properties if we stick to traditional diagnoses, like other classes of verbs
for that matter. More ambitious models have emerged, which have attempted to
derive the telicity of semantic features independent of certain verbs which
make the notion of change correlate with a scalar dimension (Kennedy & Levin
2008, Beavers 2008).

This conference intends to take stock and deepen the lines of study raised in
the description, and welcomes any proposal which will concern these subjects,
on English, Russian or any other language. 

Proposals (20 mns + 10mns for questions) should be submitted via
Sciencesconf.org between June 22 and October 15, 2020, via
https://aspect2021.sciencesconf.org/
NB: please note that in order to submit an abstract, you must first create
your account. 

400 word abstracts (plus references) in French or English will state the
research hypothesis, methodology, data, findings and the area(s) of research
as indicated above.

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