31.2699, Calls: Greek, Ancient; Semantics, Syntax/Greece

Wed Sep 2 01:53:43 UTC 2020

LINGUIST List: Vol-31-2699. Tue Sep 01 2020. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 31.2699, Calls: Greek, Ancient; Semantics, Syntax/Greece

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Date: Tue, 01 Sep 2020 21:52:59
From: Camille Denizot [cdenizot at parisnanterre.fr]
Subject: Building modality with syntax: focus on Ancient Greek

Full Title: Building modality with syntax: focus on Ancient Greek 

Date: 31-Aug-2021 - 03-Sep-2021
Location: Athens, Greece 
Contact Person: Camille Denizot
Meeting Email: cdenizot at parisnanterre.fr
Web Site: http://sle2021.eu/call-for-workshop-papers 

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics; Syntax 

Subject Language(s): Greek, Ancient (grc)

Call Deadline: 09-Nov-2020 

Meeting Description:

General discussion on modality has covered topics pertaining mostly to
semantics and pragmatics including (a) the relevant semantic categories
involved (“dynamicity”, “possibility”, “necessity”: van der Auwera & Plungian
1998, Nuyts 2016; “evidentiality”: Squartini 2016); (b) the role of clause
polarity (factuality vs non-factuality, Kiefer 1997, Declerck 2011) and the
correlation with speech acts (Narrog 2012a); (c) the pragmatically-oriented
notion of “speaker’s attitude” (Palmer 1986; Nuyts 2005; see also the notion
of “subjectification” in language change, cf. Traugott 2010, Narrog 2012b). 

Ancient Greek is an interesting test bench for investigating modality and
scholarship has dedicated studies to its rich system of moods (recently,
Rijksbaron 2006, Willmott 2007), modal particles (Basset 1988, Gerö 2000, Beck
et al. 2012) and modal verbs (Ruiz Yamuza 2008; Allan 2013), but also to the
interaction of verbal moods with several modal adverbs and particles, e.g.
ἴσως, τάχα (Ruiz Yamuza 2001; Conti 2019), τυχόν (Denizot & Vassilaki 2017), ἦ
and ἄρα (la Roi 2019). The list of “modal-oriented” grammatical devices is
longer and may include e.g. indefinites and negation. Recent studies suggest
that “modal meanings could be available for all syntactic categories and at
all the different levels of syntactic structure” (Arregui et al. 2017: 18). 

All these categories may play a role in shaping modality but the way they
interact and influence each other for building modal meanings has still to be
explored in a more syntactically-oriented perspective. In Ancient Greek
linguistics, the interaction of multiple “modal-oriented” grammatical devices
has been recently explored by Drummen (2013) on ἄν + optative within the
constructionist framework, Revuelta Puigdollers (2017) on result clauses in a
distributionist approach, and Denizot et al. (forthcoming) on temporal clauses
with ἄν in a contrastive study on three stages of Ancient Greek. The way
different devices jointly contribute to create a specific modal meaning can
thus be captured at the clause-level; the modal meaning in turn influences the
meaning of its components (sub-clauses, reference of the indefinites, scope of
the negation among others).

The aim of this workshop is to encourage corpus-based studies devoted to the
syntax of modality in ancient Greek, within different theoretical models. All
stages of ancient Greek from Archaic to Hellenistic Greek, including all types
of texts, literary and non-literary, are within the scope of the workshop. 

(References
:http://sle2021.eu/downloads/workshops/Syntax%20of%20modality_SLE.pdf)

Call for Papers: 

Issues to approach: 
1) The nature of factors involved
a) Verbal categories (e.g. aspect and tense) are not the only contributors to
modality. More specific attention should be given to indefinites, negation, or
a wide range of particles, e.g., as regards their interaction with other modal
means.
b) These interactions are also syntactically-conditioned by the nature of the
clause in which they appear (main vs subordinate clause, types of subordinate
clauses, etc.). 

2) The way the different factors interact
a) Is the interaction between different parameters a rule or a tendency? We
need to investigate which factors are compulsory in interaction with others,
which ones are possible, which combinations are unattested.
b) 'Interaction' is a practical but imprecise term that needs further
elaboration. Is it relevant to consider that the interaction between different
modal factors creates collocations or constructions, and if so, how? Which
factors influence or condition the other(s) in building modality? How does the
modal meaning of a clause influence the meaning of its components?

3) Role of different types of variation and language change
a) Synchronic and diachronic approaches to Ancient Greek are equally welcome.
Contrastive studies between different stages of Greek can also help to shed
light on structural differences in the way modality is built at different
synchronic layers.
b) Other factors such as sociolinguistic and dialectal variation, types of
texts, e.g. literary vs non-literary may nuance our approach to Ancient Greek.

4) Reflection on the relevant methodology
Ancient Greek can be approached through a corpus, which is closed but large
and with diverse and clearly defined types of text. It has also benefitted
from a long and rich grammatical tradition. Corpus-based studies on AG allow
us to test different theoretical frameworks and to evaluate the relevance of
different concepts to describe and understand the way modality is built
syntactically. This kind of approach should bring new knowledge to Ancient
Greek but also to general linguistics.

Please send a short abstract (300 words without references) to the convenors
of the workshop :
Camille Denizot (cdenizot at parisnanterre.fr)
Liana Tronci (tronci at unistrasi.it)

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