LINGUIST List 11.1733

Fri Aug 11 2000

FYI: New Course/GSS, New URL/Conf Index

Editor for this issue: Lydia Grebenyova <lydialinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Wolfgang Schulze, Course: GSS - Grammar of Scenes and Scenarios, Germany
2. Peter White, New URL for Conference Index

The Institute of General and Indoeuropean Linguistics of the University
of Munich (Germany) announces a:

 Crash course

 The Grammar of Scenes and Scenarios (GSS)
 Its Application in Language Typology
 October 11 - 12, 2000
 [10 a.m. - 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. - 5 p.m.]
 University of Munich - Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 M�nchen
 Room 454

The theoretical framework underlying the 'Grammar of Scenes and
Scenarios' GSS (Schulze 1998) can be described as a strong diachronic
model that owes much to (holistic) cognitivism, constructivism, and
pragmatism. Modularity is only accepted as a secondary construction
(or mental hypothesis) of users about their language. Rather it is the
structural coupling of adequate network components together with their
emergent activities that have to be described as primary: This coupling
results in language as a complex cognitive event - as an emergent
activity of this polycentric complex. According to GSS, the linguistic
reaction to event images heavily depends on the cognitive and
communicative defaults of such events. It is assumed that there is a (in
parts strongly metaphorized) correlation between the cognitive and
communicative architecture of linguistically oriented event imaging
(scenes or (in (co)textual coupling) scenarios and their
grammaticalization that is based on the Operating System of a given
language. The architectures of scenes (and scenarios) represent strongly
ritualized systems that are metaphorized from (system) space and
(system) time experience and the embodiment of environmental experience.
These systems are characterized among others by a) the topology of their
paradigmatic space (formal architecture or blueprint), and b) by
parameters of figure-ground relations and their location in the deictic,
communicative, and pragmatic space and time as well as by further
strategies of modalization. Their linguistic instantiation as Operating
Systems that control the dynamic organization of linguistic paradigms
establishes the typological parameters relevant for the explanation of
the architecture of simple sentences. Their diversification in terms
of different and prototypically organized grammatical systems is mainly
explained as the particularization of universal techniques of
categorization within the organization of scenes and scenarios that is
conditioned by history and transmitted by collective (social)
experience.

The crash course will concentrate on the impliciations for language
typology emerging from the GSS framework (Cognitive Typology).
Introducing the notion of particularization we will discuss the
architecture of Operating Systems as well as the conditions that shape 
these architectures. (Cognition-Communication Interface, Linguistic,
Communicative and Cultural Habitus, Grammaticalitzation, System
Diachronics etc.). A major issue will be to elaborate the Accusative
Ergative Continuum as the most central part of Operating Systems, and
to test its descriptive and explanatory power against the empirics of
Language Typology.

For further information and registration please contact
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze: W.Schulzelrz.uni-muenchen.de.

*******************
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut fuer Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet M�nchen
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
D-80539 M�nchen
Tel.: +89-21805343 / Fax: +89-21805345
Email: W.Schulzelrz.uni-muenchen.de
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/

Dear colleagues,

There is some problem with the server that is used for the conference list
web pages. In the interim, you can find the updated conference list at 

	http://www.cltr.uq.edu.au/~peterw/conf.html

Apologies for the difficulties. 

Regards
Peter White

=========================================================================
Peter White
Centre for Language Teaching and Research
University of Queensland, Qld 4072
Australia
Fax: +61 7 3365 7077
Email: peterwlingua.cltr.uq.edu.au, or pbwhitepowerup.com.au
Web: http://www.cltr.uq.edu.au/~peterw
=========================================================================