LINGUIST List 21.3630 Tue Sep 14 2010 Calls: Slavic Langs, Semantics, Syntax/United Kingdom Editor for this issue: Di Wdzenczny <dilinguistlist.org> LINGUIST is pleased to announce the launch of an exciting new feature: Easy Abstracts! Easy Abs is a free abstract submission and review facility designed to help conference organizers and reviewers accept and process abstracts online. Just go to: http://www.linguistlist.org/confcustom, and begin your conference customization process today! With Easy Abstracts, submission and review will be as easy as 1-2-3! Directory         1.    Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka, Aspect and Performativity in Slavic Languages IPrA Panel Message 1: Aspect and Performativity in Slavic Languages IPrA Panel Date: 12-Sep-2010 From: Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka <iw.plisieckagmail.com> Subject: Aspect and Performativity in Slavic Languages IPrA Panel E-mail this message to a friend Full Title: Aspect and Performativity in Slavic Languages IPrA Panel Date: 03-Jul-2011 - 08-Jul-2011 Location: Manchester, United Kingdom Contact Person: Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka Meeting Email: iw.plisieckagmail.com Linguistic Field(s): Semantics; Syntax Language Family(ies): Slavic Subgroup Call Deadline: 15-Sep-2010 Meeting Description: Aspect and Performativity in Slavic Languages (and Beyond) Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka and Igor Z Zagar - IPrA 2011 Panel Through discussions gathered in this panel we would like to contrastively explore the relation between formal grammatical features, such as tense, aspect, Aktionsart, mood, voice, and the corresponding (potential) performativity in linguistic expressions. 2nd Call for Papers We invite papers focused on the relation between performativity and grammar: - the relation between tense, aspect, Aktionsart, mood, voice, and - the corresponding (potential) performativity in linguistic expressions. Exploration of the topic extends into: - speech-act oriented research traditions outside the Anglo-Saxon world - contrastive analysis of Anglo-Saxon and Continental research on performativity - past and contemporary reflection on the actional nature of language independent of the Austinian tradition Deadlines: Full texts and proposals in the form of abstracts should be sent by 15 September 2010 to the panel conveners: Igor Z. Zagar (igor.zzagargmail.com), Educational Research Institute & University of Maribor, Slovenia & Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka (iw.plisieckagmail.com), University of Lodz, Poland Conveners' statement: We believe that performativity is still an issue worthy of exploration. We would like to emphasize speech-act oriented research traditions outside the Anglo-Saxon world, next to better-known work by Emile Benveniste, contemporary to Austin, we would also like to draw attention to even earlier independent reflection on the actional nature of language, e.g. that of Skrabec (1911) in Slovenian or Koschmieder (1934) in Polish. In the Anglo-Saxon world 'the performative' is directly associated with John Austin's theory of speech acts, subsequently developed by John Searle, which concentrates on the institutional aspect in speech action. In turn our Slavic perspective seems to tend towards grammar and logic-oriented issues and focuses on the syntax-pragmatics, form-function relations. In describing what is happening, what is going on 'right now' as we speak, all Slavs would use the present tense of an imperfective and not a perfective verb. It, therefore, should not come as a surprise that in all Slavic languages performatives usually take the imperfective aspect. Dickey (2000: 177-178), however, quite contentiously observes that the North Slavic languages all allow coincidence of simultaneous actions with performative verbs and certain verba dicendi (taking the perfective aspect [sic!]) to some degree, 'while the South Slavic languages, with the exception of Slovene, almost never do. Within the North Slavic languages, West Slavic exhibits a much higher degree of coincidence with performative verbs [...] than East Slavic does.' There is thus an unsolved puzzle whether performativity can be directly related to tense and aspect and accounted for in a systematic way. Is the form-meaning of a performative necessarily either highly institutional or vague? To quote Stanislav Skrabec, a 19th-century Slovene linguist, '[a]s long as we are only promising (imperfective), we have not promised anything yet, and if we are not (doing anything) but promising (imperfective), we cannot take anything as having been promised.' Faced with such problems, in this panel we would like to focus on Slavic languages, whose rich and ramified morphology has not been widely documented with regard to the morphology-syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface. However, we believe that contrasting varied, even potentially contradictory Slavic data (cf. H. Galton's The Main Functions of the Slavic Verbal Aspect (1976) and S.M. Dickey's Parameters of Slavic Aspect (2000)), with related data from other language families can shed new light on the still mysterious and elusive concept of the performative value. In particular, we would like to explore the potential of converging Slavic linguistics research on tense, aspect and mood with the Anglo-Saxon research on related formal features of performativity. This call is part of a bigger project whose aim is a separate volume devoted to aspect and performativity in Slavic and other Indo-European languages, which is to be published with John Benjamins' Pragmatics & Beyond New Series. Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 14-Sep-2010       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.