Rappel Conf=?iso-8859-1?Q?=E9rence_n=B04_?=Frajzyngier Semantic Prerequisites for the Typology of Functional Categories le LUNDI 23

Thu Jun 19 15:43:46 UTC 2014

LUNDI 23 juin (et non mardi 24) aura lieu, de 14h à 16h salle 5.05 du pôle LC de l'INALCO (65 rue des Grands Moulins), la dernière conférence du professeur Zygmunt Frajzyngier intitulée: 

Lecture 4 ‘A demonstration of a non-aprioristic typology with respect to clausal structures

Much of contemporary typologies of functional categories has clause as one of its central themes. This lecture will provide a model for a typology of clausal predications and associated semantic relations. The lecture will demonstrate how to discover meanings encoded in clausal predications, how to prove these meanings, and finally how to build a typology based on the discovered meanings. A typology based on functions actually encoded in individual languages allows us to explain why certain languages have passive constructions and others do not. An extension of the proposed approach to other functional domains contributes to the elucidation of one of most important questions in linguistic typology, viz. why languages are similar and why they are different.

Les trois premières conférences sont disponibles en vidéo sur le site : http://cortypo.huma-num.fr/resources.html
(emplacement provisoire en attendant que les vidéos soient mises sur le site du Labex EFL)

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Le Labex EFL - Empirical Foundations of Linguistics - Sorbonne Paris Cité est heureux de vous inviter aux quatre prochaines conférences que donnera le Professeur Zygmunt Frajzyngier (University of Colorado at Boulder, USA), sur le thème 'Semantic prerequisites for the typology of functional categories'  au Pôle des Langues et Civilisations de l'INALCO, 65 rue des Grands Moulins, 75013 Paris (Salle 5.05, de 14 à 16h), les 3, 10, 17 et 23 juin 2014.

Le professeur Zygmunt Frajzyngier sera accueilli au laboratoire LLACAN (Langage, Langues et Cultures d'Afrique Noire http://llacan.vjf.cnrs.fr/), UMR 8135, pendant la durée de son séjour. Auteur de plusieurs grammaires de langues tchadiques, de plusieurs ouvrages de linguistique générale et typologique, et de nombreux articles, sa recherche est ancrée dans l'analyse de langues peu décrites, et fondée sur un travail de terrain intensif et régulier en Afrique. Son approche de la typologie, qu'il qualifie lui-même de non-aprioristique, pose des questions fondamentales concernant la comparabilité des langues, la nature des catégories linguistiques, et le statut de la preuve en linguistique.

Pour en savoir plus: http://spot.colorado.edu/~frajzyng/index.html

Le cycle de conférences est intitulé 'Semantic prerequisites for the typology of functional categories', il sera décliné en quatre conférences suivant une progression logique, dont le résumé est donné ci-dessous.

The usual approach to the typology of functional categories has been to start with categories well established in Indo-Europan languages and proceed with the study of their presence or absence in other languages. The aim of the proposed course (four lectures, based on a submitted book, see also Frajzyngier 2013) is to develop theoretical and methodological foundations for the typologies of functional categories. At the basis of this approach are meanings actually encoded in grammatical systems of individual languages rather than a fixed set of formal categories (Newmeyer 2007), basic meanings (Seiler 1995) or comparative concepts (Lazard 2004, Haspelmath 2010). The proposed approach emerged as a result of empirical research, including many seasons of fieldwork and laboratory work on hitherto undescribed languages from various language families, including Kwa, Chadic, Semitic, Bantu, Cushitic, and Omotic languages.  In addition to theoretical foundations, the course will offer the empirical evidence for the hypotheses pertaining to the theoretical concepts proposed; a methodology for the discovery of meanings encoded in grammatical systems; and a demonstration of an empirically based typology of the relationship between predicate and noun phrases for selected languages.

Lecture 1 ‘Theoretical foundations of the proposed approach’

This lecture will lay out the theoretical foundations for the proposed approach. The fundamental concept of the proposed approach is that every language has a semantic structure composed of functional domains, subdomains, and individual grammaticalized meanings. The individual grammaticalized meanings are described in relationship to other grammaticalized meanings within the same domain. The formal means existing in the language (Lecture 2) serve to encode the grammaticalized meaning.

Lecture 2 'A methodology for the discovery of grammaticalized meaning'

A fundamental prerequisite for the discovery of meaning encoded in the grammar is the discovery of all the formal means of the given language, including lexical categories, inflectional morphology, linear orders (Frajzyngier 2011) and other formal means described in Frajzyngier and Shay 2003. The discussion of formal means will constitute the first part of lecture 2. The second part will discuss how to discover the meaning of individual forms using the notion of functional domains and subdomains, and using the methodology of distributional analysis, in particular the notions of contrastive and complementary distribution. Elements that can occur within the same formal unit, such as phrase, clause, etc. belong to different functional domains and subdomains.

Lecture 3 ‘Consequences of grammaticalized meanings for the forms of utterances’

A fundamental consequence of the encoding of meaning in the grammatical system is that certain constructions are possible in some languages and not possible in others. It will explain why certain constructions are possible in some languages and impossible in others, something Construction Grammar cannot explain. A case in point is the sentence  ‘He sneezed his tooth right across town.’ (Goldberg 1995: 6). I will also explain constraints on lexical deployment, viz. why some lexical items can be inserted in some constructions and not into others, again something that cannot be explained by Construction Grammar. I will explain under what conditions a meaning encoded in grammar can be realized by a variety of constructions. Finally, the lecture will address the issue of the interaction of various functional domains within the same clause or sentence, e.g. the interaction of the coding of grammatical and/or semantic relations with the coding of information structure.

Lecture 4 ‘A demonstration of a non-aprioristic typology with respect to clausal structures

Much of contemporary typologies of functional categories has clause as one of its central themes. This lecture will provide a model for a typology of clausal predications and associated semantic relations. The lecture will demonstrate how to discover meanings encoded in clausal predications, how to prove these meanings, and finally how to build a typology based on the discovered meanings. A typology based on functions actually encoded in individual languages allows us to explain why certain languages have passive constructions and others do not. An extension of the proposed approach to other functional domains contributes to the elucidation of one of most important questions in linguistic typology, viz. why languages are similar and why they are different.

References

Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 2011. Les fonctions de l'ordre linéaire des constituants. In Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, 107:1, 7-37.

Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 2013. Non-aprioristic typology as a discovery tool. In Functional-Historical Approaches to Explanation: In honor of Scott DeLancey, eds. Tim Thornes, Erik Andvik, Gwen Hyslop and Joana Jansen. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 3-25.

Frajzyngier, Zygmunt, and Erin Shay. 2003. Explaining language structure through systems interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins,

Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Haspelmath, Martin. 2010. Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in cross-linguistic studies. Language 86(3). 663-687.

Lazard, Gilbert. 2004. On the status of linguistics with particular regard to typology. The Linguistic Review 21:389-411.
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2007. Linguistic typology requires crosslinguistic formal categories. Linguistic Typology 11.133-157.

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Amina METTOUCHI
Directrice du laboratoire LLACAN (Chair of the LLACAN research laboratory)
Directrice d'Etudes en Linguistique berbère à l'EPHE (Professor of Berber linguistics at EPHE)
http://aminamettouchi.linguanet.org/

Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
IVe section, Sciences historiques et philologiques
Sorbonne
54, rue Saint-Jacques
CS 20525, 75005 Paris

Laboratoire CNRS LLACAN, http://llacan.vjf.cnrs.fr/
UMR 8135, 7, rue Guy Môquet - BP 8 
94801 VILLEJUIF (France)
Tél : (33)1 49 58 38 18 
Fax: (33)1 49 58 38 00

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