Syntactic Variation in Romance

This two-day workshop is part of the Annual Conference of the Department of Linguistics of the University of Bucharest (https://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-3396.html). It is thematically devoted to linguistic variation in Romanian and Romance. The workshop is part of Formal Approaches to Romance Microvariation (FARM) initiative and represents a continuation of the workshop held in Bucharest in 2016. In the past 20 years, syntactic variation and microvariation in particular have played a crucial role in shaping the principles and parameters approach to the architecture of the language faculty. Issues in morphological and phonological variation also bring important contributions to the current development of theories of morphology and phonology. The Romance languages represent a fertile test-bed for formulating theoretical hypotheses on the nature, source and extent of (micro)variation, which may bring relevant contributions to the formal modelling of linguistic variation. Given their relatively well-known history and their common ancestry, the Romance languages also present a unique opportunity for understanding how linguistic variation emerges (i.e. the same input leading to different, variant outputs). The set of phenomena which are known in the literature to be subject to intense (syntactic, morphological and phonological) variation from both a cross-Romance and a dialectal (intralinguistic) perspective includes (but is not restricted to): (i) clitics, (ii) verb movement, (iii) negation, (

Call for papers

We invite submissions for 30 (20+10) minute long oral presentations dealing with issues in Romance syntactic variation and microvariation. Ideally, topics should be relevant for syntax, morphology and phonology (and also semantics). A (cross-Romance and intralinguistic, dialectal) comparative and diachronic perspective is strongly encouraged: proposals dealing with more than one Romance variety and with the historical source of phenomena subject to linguistic variation will have priority in the selection process. Submissions should be sent by attachment, as anonymous pdfs, to: colocviu_lingvistica@yahoo.ro, accompanied by a file containing the title of the paper, the authors and their affiliation. Submissions must be no longer than two single-spaced pages, in Times New Roman 12, including references and examples.

Registration fee: € 40 (or RON 180); students: € 20 (RON 90). The registration fee can be paid upon arrival.

Workshop languages: English and French

Deadline for submissions: October 5, 2018

Notification of acceptance: October 15, 2018

Conference dates: November 23-24, 2018