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Workshop on Linguistic Variation at the Interfaces

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Madrid, November 16-17, 2017

Call for papers Important dates Invited speakers

Scientific Committee Venue and Accommodation Program

The main aim of this workshop is to widen our understanding of the empirical phenomena displaying linguistic variation relevant to the following three interfaces: the lexicon-syntax interface, the syntax-discourse interface, and the syntax-prosody interface. Papers on the role of linguistic variation at these interfaces, the role of interface conditions, and, more generally, their relevance in the design of the overall grammatical architecture are welcome.

As for the lexicon-syntax interface, we invite papers that address linguistic variation in empirical domains that include but are not restricted to: lexicalization patterns (see Levin & Rappaport Hovav (in press) and Acedo-Matellán & Mateu 2015, for two recent overviews), causatives and applicatives (Pylkkänen 2008, Marantz 2013, and Cuervo 2015, i.a.), and argument structure alternations (Ramchand 2013 and Alexiadou, Anagnostopolou & Shäfer 2015, i.a.). Proposals on the linguistic variation involved in the formation of nominalizations (Alexiadou & Rathert 2010, i.a.), participles (Embick 2004, i.a.), deverbal adjectives (Oltra-Massuet 2014), denominal/deadjectival verbs (Harley 2005, i.a.) are also welcome. We also aim to address linguistic variation at the lexicon-syntax interface from a diachronic point of view (e.g., van Gelderen 2011 & 2014 on causative and psych predicates, respectively). Finally, regarding the different insights into the morphology-syntax interface, we also invite theoretical proposals that deal with linguistic variation in the context of the lexicalist/endoskeletal vs. constructivist/exoskeletal debate (e.g., cf. Borer 2005-2013 and Wechsler 2015, i.a.).

With respect to the syntax-discourse interface, we aim at addressing the linguistic variation involved in the interaction between the syntactic component and pragmatic principles, which touches on a bunch of phenomena that have been at the forefront of linguistic theory for the last thirty years (word order phenomena, topic-focus articulation, the left periphery of the clause, complementizers and discourse particles, illocutionary force, subordination, speaker anchoring; cf. Rizzi 1997; Chomsky 2008; Haegeman 2012; Wiltschko 2014, i.a.). The specific topics to be discussed include (but are not restricted to) the following: modality and its manifestations in the left periphery of the clause; the relations between subordination marks and verbal morphology; word order and information structure; the left periphery of measure phrases as well as the comparison of cartographic and non-cartographic approaches (cf. Rizzi 1997; López 2009; Ordóñez 1997; Ott 2014, i.a.).

Regarding the syntax-prosody interface, the workshop will focus on linguistic variation and the correspondence relation between the syntactic and prosodic constituent structure (Richards 2010, Mathieu 2016) and how this correspondence can be affected by information structure (Zubizarreta 1998; Frascarelli 2000, i.a.). The topics we are interested in include, but are not restricted to, the following: theoretical models of the syntax-prosody interface (Selkirk 2011, i.a.); the relationship between phrasal prominence and focus structure (Irutzun 2007, i.a.); the role of peripheral elements such as vocatives (D’Alessandro & van Oostendorp 2016), dislocations (Feldhausen 2016; Samek-Lodovici 2015, i.a.), discourse particles (Heim et al., i.a.), and the interaction of word order with prosody (Vanrell-Bosch & Fernández Soriano 2013, i.a.), among others.

References

Acedo-Matellán, Víctor & Jaume Mateu (2015). “Parameters and argument structure I: motion predicates and resultatives". In Antonio Fábregas, Jaume Mateu and Michael Putnam (eds.). Contemporary Linguistic Parameters. 99-122. London, Oxford & New York: Bloomsbury.

Alexiadou, Artemis, Elena Anagnostopoulou & Florian Schäfer. (2015). External Arguments in Transitivity Alternations: A Layering Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Alexiadou, Artemis & Monika Rathert (ed.). (2010). The Syntax of Nominalizations across Languages and Frameworks. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Borer, Hagit (2005-2013). Structuring Sense. Vols. I-III. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chomsky, Noam (2008). “On phases”. In Robert Freidin, Carlos P. Otero & Maria Luisa Zubizarreta (eds.). Foundational Issues in Linguistics. Essays in Honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud. 133-166. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Cuervo, M. Cristina (2015). “Parameters and argument structure II: causatives and applicatives". In Antonio Fábregas, Jaume Mateu and Michael Putnam (eds.). Contemporary Linguistic Parameters. 123-146. London, Oxford & New York: Bloomsbury.

D'Alessandro, Roberta & Mark van Oostendorp. (2016). “When imperfections are perfect: Prosody, phi-features and deixis in Central and Southern Italian vocatives”. In Ernestina Carrilho et al. (eds.). Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 10. 61-82. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Embick, David. (2004). “On the structure of resultative participles in English”. Linguistic Inquiry 35: 355–92.

Feldhausen, Ingo. (2016). “Inter-speaker Variation, Optimality Theory and the Prosody of Clitic Left-Dislocations in Spanish”. Probus 28(2): 293-333.

Frascarelli, Mara. (2000). The Syntax-Phonology Interface in Focus and Topic Constructions in Italian. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Gelderen, Elly van (2011). “Valency changes in the history of English”. Journal of Historical Linguistics 1.1: 106-143.

Gelderen, Elly van (2014). “Changes in Psych-verbs: A reanalysis of little v”. Arizona State University.

Haegeman, Liliane. (2012). Adverbial Clauses, Main Clause Phenomena and the Composition of the Left Periphery. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Harley, Heidi. (2005). “How do verbs get their names? Denominal verbs, manner incorporation, and the ontology of verb roots in English”. In Nomi Erteschik-Shir & Tova Rapoport (eds.). The syntax of aspect. Deriving thematic and aspectual interpretation. 42-64. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.

Heim, Johannes, Hermann Keupdjio, Zoe Wai-Man Lam, Adriana Osa-Gómez, Sonja Thoma & Martina Wiltschko. (2016). “Intonation and particles as speech act modifiers: A syntactic analysis”. Studies in Chinese Linguistics 37(2): 109-129.

Irurtzun, Aritz. (2007). The grammar of focus at the interfaces, Doctoral dissertation, Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea.

Levin, Beth & Malka Rappaport Hovav (in press). “Lexicalization patterns”. In Robert Truswell (ed.). Oxford Handbook of Event Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

López, Luis. (2009). A Derivational Syntax for Information Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Marantz, Alec. (2013). “Verbal argument structure: Events and participants”. Lingua 130: 152-168.

Mathieu, Eric (2016). ‘The Wh parameter and radical externalization’. In Luis Eguren, Olga Fernández Soriano & Amaya Mendikoetxea (eds.), Formal grammar and syntactic variation: Rethinking parameters, 252-290. Oxford University Press.

Ordóñez, Francisco. (1997). Word order and clause structure in Spanish and other Romance languages. PhD dissertation, City University of New York.

Oltra-Massuet, Isabel (2014). Deverbal Adjectives at the Interface: A Crosslinguistic Investigation into the Morphology, Syntax and Semantics of –ble. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Ott, Dennis. (2014). “An Ellipsis Approach to Contrastive Left-Dislocation.” Linguistic Inquiry 45: 269-303.

Pylkkänen, Liina. (2008). Introducing arguments. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Ramchand, Gillian C. (2013). “Argument structure and argument structure alternations”. In Marcel den Dikken (ed.). The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax. 265-321. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

Richards, Norvin (2010): Uttering Trees. MIT Press.

Rizzi, Luigi. (1997). “The fine structure of the left periphery”. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.). Elements of grammar. 281-337. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Samek-Lodovici, Vieri. (2015). The Interaction of Focus, Givenness, and Prosody. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Selkirk, Elisabeth. (2011). “The syntax-phonology interface”. In John Goldsmith, Jason Riggle & Alan Yu (eds.). The handbook of phonological theory, 2nd edition, 435–484. Oxford: Blackwell.

Vanrell-Bosch, Maria del Mar & Olga Fernández Soriano (2013). “Variation at the Interfaces in Ibero-Romance. Catalan and Spanish Prosody and Word Order”. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 12 (Special Issue ed. by Francisco Ordóñez & Francesc Roca: Microvariation in the Languages of the Iberian Peninsula): 253-282.

Wechsler, Stephen. (2015). Word Meaning and Syntax: Approaches to the Interface. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wiltschko, Martina. (2014). The Universal Structure of Categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Zubizarreta, María Luisa (1998). Prosody, Focus, and Word Order. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Papers on any issue related to the previous topics are welcome for this workshop. Each presenter will get 30 minutes for presentation followed by 10 minutes for discussion.

ORGANIZERS ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Jaume Mateu (UAB)

Luis Eguren (UAM) Anna Gavarró (UAB)

Olga Fernández-Soriano (UAM) Ángel Gallego (UAB)

M. Lluïsa Hernanz (UAB)

Isabel Pujol (UdG)

Montserrat Batllori (UdG)

Jorge Agulló, Antonio Cañas, Jennifer Tan

Contact: varint17@easychair.org

Research project La variación en las interfaces de la sintaxis con otros componentes del sistema lingüístico (FFI2014-56968-C4-1-P), Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad.