LINGUIST List 21.4231 Sun Oct 24 2010 Calls: Historical Ling, Syntax/Germany 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.     Roland Meyer , Grammatical Change and the Expression of Subjects Message 1: Grammatical Change and the Expression of Subjects Date: 22-Oct-2010 From: Roland Meyer <roland.meyersprachlit.uni-regensburg.de> Subject: Grammatical Change and the Expression of Subjects E-mail this message to a friend Full Title: Grammatical Change and the Expression of Subjects Short Title: GCES Date: 02-Dec-2010 - 04-Dec-2010 Location: Regensburg, Germany Contact Person: Roland Meyer Meeting Email: roland.meyersprachlit.uni-regensburg.de Web Site: http://www-slavistik.uni-regensburg.de/gces Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Syntax Call Deadline: 03-Dec-2010 Meeting Description: Diachronic grammatical change in the realm of subject expressions involves phenomena like the loss of pro-drop, alternations in thematic alignment, and the rise of various new passive and impersonal constructions. The conference seeks to bring together researchers working on these and closely related topics. Attention shall also be devoted to annotated historical corpora which facilitate the treatment of the above issues. Call For Papers Diachronic grammatical change affects verbal arguments through an interplay of various semantic and structural factors, leading to new alternations and structural patterns. In the realm of subject expressions, important documented changes include loss of pro-drop, alternations in thematic alignment, and the rise of various new passive and impersonal constructions. The notion of subject itself is, of course, a notoriously multi- faceted one, involving factors like referential relations, structural position, case, agreement, and thematic roles, the specifications of which certainly do not always harmonise. Precisely this state of affairs has often given rise to important and fascinating research questions, as e.g. in the case of null and expletive subjects, or of oblique/quirky subjects. Research on grammatical change has made a considerable leap forward by the exploitation of annotated corpora. Not only has its empirical base become more accessible in general, but methodological progress has made feasible new, exciting research questions, especially involving quantitative distributions of linguistic features. Historical and diachronic corpora of an increasing number of languages are being constructed and annotated with syntactically relevant information in order to address these and related issues. The conference aims at bringing together researchers working on diachronic change in the realm of subject expressions. Since corpus data are so vital for the field, we also invite researchers who have constructed historical and diachronic corpora which specifically include annotations for (some of) the above-mentioned factors, and thus expedite the treatment of subject-related issues. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: -Diachronic development of null subjects -Changes in subject expletives -Diachrony of oblique and quirky subjects -History of impersonal constructions -Development of diatheses affecting the external argument -Change in unaccusatives -History of subjects in root infinitives and modal constructions -Empirical methodology in diachronic syntax -Historical and diachronic corpora annotated for syntactic structure and - syntactic relations -The conference will seek a comparative and typological view. Papers will be given precedence which address grammatical change in a theoretically explicit way, aiming at an explanatory account, and/or demonstrate substantial methodological advancement. Abstract specifications Anonymous abstracts for 25 min. presentations (+10 min. discussion) should be submitted as am email attachment to gcessprachlit.uni- regensburg.de until 15 July 2010. Abstracts may be up to 2 pages long, including examples and references, in pdf format, with fonts embedded. If you have difficulties at producing pdf, you may also submit a doc file. Please include your contact information (name, affiliation, address, email address for correspondence), as well as the title of your abstract, in the body of the email. Every abstract will be reviewed anonymously by two external referees. Accepted papers will be published in a proceedings volume after the conference. Important dates Submission of abstracts: 15 July 2010 Notification of acceptance: 31 August 2010 Conference: 2-4 December 2010 Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 24-Oct-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.