Conference description

The concept of transitivity is crucial for different linguistic fields, including linguistic typology, historical linguistics, and theoretical syntax. Since Hopper & Thompson (1980), transitivity has been viewed as a prototypical notion (cf. Naess 2007) and as a property of sentences/utterances, which crucially manifests itself in the realization of verbal arguments (Gelderen et al. 2013). Verbal argument realization and alternations have been given different explanations, including inherent semantic properties of verbal classes (e.g. Baker & Ruppenhofer 2002; Levin & Rappaport-Hovav 2005), of verbal frames (e.g. Fillmore & Atkins 1992), or of specific constructions in Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995; Croft 1998; Iwata 2005). From a typological standpoint, the notions of transitivity and argument realization can be combined by cross-linguistically comparing valency classes at a synchronic level (as in The Leipzig Valency Classes Project; Malchukov & Comrie 2015). Moreover, several studies have shown the relevance of reanalysis contexts for grammaticalized structures and the rise of alignment systems (Harris & Campbell 1995; Haig 2008; Gildea 2000).

By contrast, a systematic cross-linguistic investigation of the origins and motivations behind the development of argument structure and alignment patterns is still lacking in the diachronically oriented typological literature. An account of the general implications of such diachronic studies is still at need. Given this background, efforts toward the construction and development of linguistic resources are also of crucial importance both for linguistic analysis and for possible computational applications. Relevant examples include ValPal database, an outgrowth of the The Leipzig Valency Classes Project (Hartmann, Haspelmath & Taylor 2013), the Proposition Bank (PropBank) (Kingsbury & Palmer 2002; Palmer et al. 2005) and VerbNet (Kipper-Schuler 2005) for English, and T-PAS (Ježek et al. 2014) for Italian.

The conference aims to investigate the shaping of transitivity, argument structure and alignment patterns over time, with particular regard to the evolution of voice systems, (in)transitive alternations, and non-finite syntax. The general goal is to bring together insights from language change, language reconstruction, and language typology in light of current theories of argument realization and the encoding of the argument structure of verbs and clauses. Contributions on general theoretical issues, methodological issues, data collection, and the development of language resources are equally welcome.

References

Baker, Collin F. & Ruppenhofer, Josef. 2002. FrameNet's frames vs. Levin's verb classes. Proceedings of the 28th annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: 27-38. • Croft, William. 1998. Event structure in argument linking. In The projection of arguments: lexical and compositional factors, Miriam Butt & Wilhelm Geuder (eds), 21-63. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. • Fillmore, Charles J. & Atkins, Beryl T. 1992. Towards a frame-based lexicon: the case of RISK. In Frames, Fields, and Contrasts. Adrienne Lehrer & Eva Feder Kittay (eds), 75-102. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. • Gelderen, Elly van, Cennamo, Michela & Barðdal, Jóhanna. 2013. Argument Structure in Flux [SLCS 131]. Amsterdam: Benjamins. • Gildea, Spike. 2000. Reconstructing Grammar: Comparative Linguistics and Grammaticalization [TSL 43]. Amsterdam: Benjamins. • Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. • Haig, Geoffrey L. J. 2008. Alignment Change in Iranian Languages. A Construction Grammar Approach. Berlin: de Gruyter. • Harris, Alice & Campbell, Lyle. 1995. Historical syntax in cross-linguistic perspective. Cambridge: CUP. • Hartmann, Iren, Haspelmath, Martin & Taylor, Bradley (eds) 2013. Valency Patterns Leipzig. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. • Hopper, Paul J. & Thompson, Sandra. 1980. Transitivity in Grammar and Discourse. Language 56: 251-299. • Iwata, Seizi. 2005. Locative alternation and two levels of verb meaning. Cognitive Linguistics 6: 355-407. • Ježek, Elisabetta, Magnini, Bernardo, Feltracco, Anna, Bianchini, Alessia & Popescu, Octavian. 2014. T-PAS: A resource of Typed Predicate Argument Structures for linguistic analysis and semantic processing. Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC ‘14), Reykjavik, Iceland, May 2014. • Kingsbury, Paul & Palmer, Martha. 2002. From TreeBank to PropBank. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC ‘02): 1989-1993. • Kipper-Schuler, Karin. 2005. VerbNet: A broad-coverage, comprehensive verb lexicon. PhD thesis, Computer and Information Science Dept., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. • Levin, Beth & Rappaport Hovav, Malka. 2005. Argument Realization. Cambridge: CUP. • Malchukov, Andrej & Comrie, Bernard (eds). 2015. Valency Classes in the World’s Languages. Berlin: De Gruyter.• Naess, Åshild 2007. Prototypical transitivity [TSL 72]. Amsterdam: Benjamins. • Palmer, Martha, Gildea, Daniel & Kingsbury, Paul. 2005. The Proposition Bank: An annotated corpus of semantic roles. Computational linguistics 31(1): 71-106.

This conference is held in association with the PRIN project ‘Transitivity and Argument Structure in Flux’ (grant no. 20159M7X5P).

Invited speakers

Spike GILDEA, University of Oregon

Eitan GROSSMAN, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Paola MERLO, University of Geneva

Local organizing committee

Silvia LURAGHI - luraghi@unipv.it

Chiara ZANCHI - chiara.zanchi01@unipv.it

Sonia CRISTOFARO - sonia.cristofaro@unipv.it

Elisabetta JEZEK - jezek@unipv.it

Elisa ROMA - elisa.roma@unipv.it

Anna FELTRACCO - feltracco@fbk.eu

Vittorio GANFI - vittorio.ganfi@uniroma3.it

Scientific committee

Victor Acedo-Matellán, Gilles Authier, Jóhanna Barðdal, Michela Cennamo, Denis Creissels, Sonia Cristofaro, Eystein Dahl, Bridget Drinka, Claudia Fabrizio, Spike Gildea, Eitan Grossman, Lars Hellan, Steve Hewitt, Elisabetta Jezek, Adam Ledgeway, Silvia Luraghi, Andrej Malchukov, Johanna Nichols, Mohammad Rasekh-Mahand, Elisa Roma, Elly Van Gelderen, Chiara Zanchi.

Important dates

Abstract submission:

• March 31st, 2018 - Deadline for abstract submission
• We invite submissions of no more than one page abstracts (plus possibly one additional page for examples). Submissions should be anonymous and refrain from self-reference. Please, submit your abstract via Easychair.
• May 31st, 2018 - Notification of acceptance

>> Go to Call for papers.

Conference: October 25th-27th, 2018

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