Conference on Continuity and Change in Grammar . University of Cambridge

[Ana Castro]

Conference on

Continuity and Change in Grammar

18-20 March 2008

We are pleased to announce an international conference on Continuity and
Change in Grammar, which will take place from 18-20 March 2008 at the
University of Cambridge. The focus will be on theoretical and
methodological aspects of morphosyntactic change and conservatism.

The aim of the conference is to bring together researchers working on
different aspects of linguistic transmission in order to enhance our
understanding of what makes languages change and what in turn prevents them
from changing.

Factors that are thought to play a role in the diachronic development of
languages include first and (imperfect) second language acquisition, the
latter typically under conditions of language contact. The role of language
contact and resulting (biased) bi- or multilingualism in morpho-syntactic
change, and the question of whether in fact there can be any entirely
language-internal change are topics that have gained much interest
recently. If language contact has a role in triggering change, can it
equally be shown to play a role in preventing it? What other factors can
prevent or inhibit a change that might be expected on the basis that other
languages show a comparable change under comparable conditions?

A particular focus of the conference will be syntactic continuity, that is,
cases where syntactic change fails to happen, or at least is delayed, even
though change would be expected on the basis of parallel changes in other
languages. An example is Jespersen's Cycle, which occurred in a continuum
of languages beginning in early Old Norse in northern Europe, and giving
the appearance of spreading south from Scandinavia via German, English,
Dutch, Welsh, Breton, French and northern Italian dialects. In Jespersen's
Cycle as it is found in several European languages, a preverbal negation
marker is first reinforced and later replaced by a postverbal one. As
Jespersen's Cycle seems to have spread geographically (essentially from
north to south) in the course of the last millennium and to affect
languages from different subgroups of Indo-European, it has been suggested
that this might be a contact phenomenon or even a manifestation of a more
general western European convergence area (Ramat and Bernini 1990, Bernini
and Ramat 1996, Haspelmath 1998, 2001). However, Polish and especially
Czech, which have been in very close contact with German (and Yiddish) for
centuries, have never undergone a change of this sort in their negation
systems, even though their preverbal negation markers have undergone
considerable weakening (in Czech, for example, ne behaves like a verbal
prefix). Such resistence to change appears to cast doubt on the role of
contact in the spread of postverbal adverbial negation. A topic that
belongs to this general field of syntactic changes that are expected, but
fail to happen, are changes which occur in some dialects of a given
language but are delayed in others. The conference aims at encouraging
discussion on what might cause syntactic continuity in general. This is an
entirely novel perspective, as previous research has exclusively focussed
on explaining linguistic change.

Topics addressed at the conference may be from a range of perspectives,
theoretical linguistic as well as a language acquisitional, contact
linguistic and sociolinguistic, and the conference aims at creating
discussion and exchange between researchers with generative and
non-generative backgrounds and also beyond (historical) linguistics itself.
Longstanding points of dispute have been the perceived directionality and
the gradualness of syntactic change. Directionality seems to conflict with
generative models of linguistic change, which localise abrupt reanalyses or
parameter resetting in individual speakers. However, long-term pathways and
cycles do seem to be observable as well. How can this clash be reconciled?
Much research has been devoted to accomodating gradualness within a
generative conception of syntactic change, such as the grammar competition
approach (Kroch 1989 etc.). However, problems with grammar competition
approaches have not remained unnoticed, and invite reconsideration.

We particularly invite submissions addressing the following questions:

* contact-induced language change * first language acquisition and
syntactic change * bilingualism and syntactic change * directionality,
gradualness and long-term developments * absence of syntactic change /
syntactic conservatism * general theoretical models of syntactic change and
continuity, theoretical or computational * empirical case studies
discussing instances of continuity and/or change in grammar. * change in
the expression of negation * linguistic and cultural contact in the Middle
Ages

We invite anonymous submissions for 20+10 minute presentations, which will
be reviewed by an international committee of referees. Abstacts should be
submitted in .pdf format via EasyChair. Go to
http://www.easychair.org/CCG08/, create an account if you do not yet have
one and login as an author. The text of the abstract itself must be
anonymous; you will be asked to fill in your name, affiliation and email
address when you create your EasyChair account. This ensures a fair and
unbiased review procedure. Abstracts should not exceed one page of A4, with
one-inch margins on all sides, with the possibility of one additional page
for graphs, figures, examples and references. Deadline for submissions is 1
October 2007. Notification of acceptance is around 1 November 2007.

Invited speakers:
Jan-Terje Faarlund (Oslo)
Richard Ingham (Birmingham)
John Sundquist (Purdue)
Sarah Grey Thomason (Michigan)


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