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All About ‘Voice’: A Crosslinguistic Perspective
A two day seminar organized by Indian Institute of Technology Madras
All About ‘Voice’: A Crosslinguistic Perspective
A two day seminar organized by Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Voice constructions are one of the oldest and most ancient topics in the traditions of descriptive grammar. Historically, the study of voice dates at least to the Sanskrit Grammar of Pāṇini (circa 500 BCE) where he has described it through inflectional paradigms. In the recent decades too, the field of both theoretical and descriptive grammar studies have seen an outpouring of detailed research on voice constructions cross-linguistically. This has substantially enriched our understanding of the typology of voice constructions, as well as their consequences for theoretical analysis.
Grammatical voice, as a morphosyntactic phenomenon, signifies a specific relationship between the meaning and form of clauses. Its values correspond to particular diatheses marked on the form of predicates. Under the umbrella of ‘Voice’, a range of grammatical categories are listed, such as passives, causatives, middles, reflexives, antipassives and applicatives. These constructions have been studied through both synchronic and diachronic perspectives by using inductive or deductive methodologies. Researchers have been exploring them through various typological, pragmatic and generative frameworks.
Though the voice systems in some of the Indian languages have been studied in great detail following both theoretical and typological frameworks, yet we haven’t had much clarity on various aspects of this system because of the diversity of views among researchers. For example, while on the one hand we understand Indian languages have both canonical and non-canonical passives, on the other hand, we do not have much clarity on what leads to the variations in these constructions, both theoretically and typologically. We also have very little understanding of the cognition, perception and acquisition of voice constructions of the children who speak Indian languages. The seminar attempts to explore the voice constructions through the lens of theoretical, typological and acquisition centric perspectives.
Topics may include, but are not limited to, the ways voice and other related phenomena are represented in the following areas:
Typology of voice constructions
Theoretical analysis of grammatical voice
Acquisition of voice
Pragmatics of voice constructions
Voice in conversational discourse
The text and the voice system
Diachrony of voice constructions
Voice and gender
Voice systems and their areal distribution
Cognition and perception in voice systems
Submission Guidelines
All the abstracts should be submitted anonymous with the author(s)' details in the body of the text. They should not exceed 500 words (excluding examples and references, if any) and be mailed (in both .doc and .pdf formats) at aslinguistics.iitm@gmail.com. Each participant can maximally submit one single-authored abstract and one co-authored abstract. In the case of a co-authored paper, each of the authors joining the conference in person has to pay the registration fees.
All the abstracts received are subject to blind review.
NOTE: Selected papers will be published by an international publisher of repute in an edited volume.
Abstract submission deadline: March 15, 2023 22 March 2023
Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: March 31, 2023
Presenter/Participant Registration: 8 April, 2023
Seminar date: April 14-15, 2023