Conf=?iso-8859-1?Q?=E9rences_?=de Farrell Ackerman

[Olivier Bonami]

L'UFR de Linguistique de Paris 7-Denis Diderot et le Laboratoire de 
Linguistique Formelle ont le plaisir de vous annoncer que le

Le professeur Farrell Ackerman
de l'Université de Californie à San Diego

donnera une série de conférences sur le thème suivant:

Typologie descriptive et théorie grammaticale: une étude de la morphosyntaxe des relatives en théorie des constructions

Les conférences auront lieu es lundis 6, 13, 20 et 27 février 2012, de 10h à midi
à l'UFR de linguistique, 175 rue du Chevaleret, 75013 Paris (métro Chevaleret, bus 27: Clisson)
en salle 4C92 (4e étage)

Résumé :
Sometimes in the course of examining lesser studied languages an encoding strategy for a familiar empirical phenomenon seems surprising, even puzzling, given expectations developed on the basis of previous descriptive and theoretical research: it seems anomalous.  Following Kibrik 2003:304, this impression may arise simply because of pervasive presuppositions and assumptions in linguistic theory:  such assumptions guide a popular strategy in linguistic theory to analyze unexpected rarity as variants of a more familiar pattern.  But, rarity can be viewed differently:   as an instruction to re-evaluate various fundamental assumptions about theory design. This is arguably the role of rarity or the unusual in the developmental sciences which emphasizes the importance of variation in complex objects.  Recently Evans and Levinson (2009, 2010) have argued for a parallel recognition for the significance of variation in linguistic analysis.  In these lectures I will present an extended case study of grammatical "oddity", specifically, examining a theoretically unexpected prenominal relative clause type in related and unrelated languages in Eurasia: among other issues, these relatives raise questions concerning the role of locality in linguistic theory.  I will demonstrate that this largely undocumented and infrequently analyzed relative clause type is a composite of properties found in four independent morphological and syntactic constructions: wherever this relative type appears the grammar of the language contains the same four independent constructions.   (Cross-linguistic research suggests that their presence is necessary not sufficient for the appearance of this relative type.) This relative, consequently, is best interpreted as a new construction made of old parts and, I argue, requires construction-theoretic assumptions for its explanation/motivation:  a guiding assumption is the notion of "cooperating constructions' in Malouf  (2000, 2003) and Kathol (2003).    In order to develop this line of argumentation the lectures will be divided as follows.  Lecture 1 will introduce the notion of linguistic rarity, its proposed role in theory construction, the utility of the developmental sciences for analyzing language, and it will present the basic phenomena and challenges posed by the Eurasian relative clauses.  Lecture 2 will focus on where these relatives fit within the typology of relative clauses and the pronominal encoding of subject arguments, on various construction-theoretic approaches to analysis that have been proposed in the literature and it concludes with a brief critique of previous attempts to analyze these relatives.  Lecture 3 gives a sketch of a large fragment of Tundra Nenets grammar, since the relatives in this language are the main empirical focus of the our analysis.  Lecture 4 develops our construction-theoretic proposal and how it addresses variation within the class of Tundra Nenets relatives, and concludes with some remarks on the  cross-linguistic expression of this relative type.  The lectures are based on a recently completed book with my co-author Irina Nikolaeva (with the same title as these lectures) and portions of this book will be available for reading.   
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