Date: 10-Mar-2011
From: Femmy Admiraal <femmyadmiraal gmail.com>
Subject: Word Formation in South American Languages
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Full Title: Word Formation in South American Languages
Date: 24-Jun-2011 - 25-Jun-2011
Location: Leipzig, Germany
Contact Person: Femmy Admiraal
Meeting Email: femmyadmiraalgmail.com
Linguistic Field(s): Morphology; Typology
Call Deadline: 01-May-2011
Meeting Description:
The upcoming meeting of the Americanist group, June 24 and 25 (possibly,
depending on the number of contributions), will be organized in Leipzig this
time, by Femmy Admiraal, Swintha Danielsen, and Katja Hannß.
The topic of this year's Americanist Meeting is Word Formation in South American
Languages.
There are a number of general descriptive volumes focusing on the typology of
South American languages (e.g. Adelaar with Muysken 2004, Derbyshire & Pullum
1986-1998, Dixon & Aikhenvald 1999, Payne 1990). Many, but by no means all
languages are characterized as synthetic and agglutinating. In the language
descriptions we find elaborate inflectional and derivational morphology, which
is partly responsible for the synthetic character of the languages; in addition
nominal classification, incorporation, and reduplication are recurring
morphological processes. However, one process that does not seem to be very
frequent in South American languages is compounding. On the one hand, compounds
are argued to be exceptional or infrequent for Quechuan (Adelaar with Muysken
2004), Yurakaré (van Gijn 2006), and Arawakan (Zamponi 2009). On the other hand,
compounding is attested in the following language families: Mapudungun (Adelaar
with Muysken 2004 on Mapuche), Makú (Martins & Martins 1999), and Arawakan
(Duff-Tripp 1997 on Amuesha, Danielsen 2007 on Baure), and also mentioned in
passing for Panoan (Loos 1999), Tupi-Guaraní (Jensen 1999), Cuna, Harakmbut, and
the Fuegian languages (Adelaar with Muysken 2004), among others. One reason why
compounding is addressed so rarely among South American languages is probably
the fact that similar processes are not categorized as composition, but rather
as derivation (in the case of classifier attachment, cf. Seifart 2005), as
syntactic constructions, e.g. for modification (cf. Guillaume 2008), as genitive
constructions (Zamponi 2009), or as postpositions, instead of referring to
spatial compounds (cf. Rybka 2009).
A number of South American languages make use of verbal compounding by joining
two verbal roots, as well as incorporation of nominal roots into verbs. It may
be claimed that verbal incorporation and nominal compounding are two parts of a
general tendency of creating more complex units of (lexical) morphemes (cf.
Adelaar with Muysken 2004, Mithun 1984). Due to the synthetic character of many
languages we would also expect that 'compound affixes', i.e. 'multi-[a]ffix
chunks that are processed as a single unit' (compare Gildea 2000: 234) may be
found, forming units of grammatical morphemes.
Call for Papers:
We invite presentations on all sorts of word formation processes. Possible
topics, among others, are: Are compounds really so rare in South American
languages? What kinds of compounds does a particular language have, and for
which types of semantic relations are they used? Of particular interest are
comparisons between compounding and modifying constructions, classification,
verbal incorporation, derivational processes, and serialization, and reflections
on phrasal and clausal compounds, as well compounding of grammatical units.
Abstracts should not exceed 300 words, excluding references. The presentations
are planned to be 20 minutes plus 10 minutes of discussion. We also invite
papers from other American languages and encourage joined papers which take a
broader perspective and comparative data into account.
Deadline: May 1, 2011.
Please send your abstract to Femmy Admiraal (femmyadmiraalgmail.com) until May
1st 2011. We will send the notification of acceptance of your papers by May 15,
2011. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact one
of the organizers:
Femmy Admiraal: femmyadmiraalgmail.com (University of Leipzig)
Swintha Danielsen: Swinthahotmail.com (University of Leipzig)
Katja Hannß: Katja.Hannssgmx.net (Universities of Bonn and Nijmegen)
References:
Adelaar, Willem F. H. with Pieter C. Muysken. 2004. The languages of the Andes.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Danielsen, Swintha. 2007. Baure: An Arawak Language of Bolivia. Leiden: CNWS.
Derbyshire, Desmond C. and Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds). 1986-1998. Handbook of
Amazonian Languages, Volumes I - IV. Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Dixon, R. W. M. and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds). 1999. The Amazonian
Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Duff-Tripp, Martha. 1997. Gramática del idioma yanesha' (amuesha). SLP 43. Lima:
ILV.
Gildea, Spike (ed). 2000. Reconstructing Grammar: Comparative Linguistics and
Grammaticalization Theory. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Guillaume, Antoine. 2008. A grammar of Cavineña. Berlin & New York, Mouton de
Gruyter.
Jensen, Cheryl. 1999. 'Tupí-Guaraní'. In Dixon & Aikhenvald (eds), 125-163.
Loos, Eugene E. 1999. 'Pano'. In Dixon & Aikhnevald (eds), 227-250.
Martins, Silvana & Valteir Martins. 1999. 'Makú'. In: Dixon & Aikhenvald (eds),
251-267. Mithun,
Marianne. 1984. 'The evolution of noun incorporation'. Language 60, 847-894.
Payne, Doris L. (ed). 1990. Amazonian Linguistics: Studies in Lowland South
American Languages. Texas: University of Texas Press.
Rybka, Konrad. 2009. Semantics of topological relators in Lokono and a sketch of
their morphosyntax. MA thesis, University of Amsterdam. Ms.
Seifart, Frank. 2005. The structure and use of shape-based noun classes in
Miraña (North West Amazon). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
van Gijn, Rik. 2006. A grammar of Yurakaré. PhD thesis, Radboud University
Nijmegen. Ms.
Zamponi, Raoul. 2009. 'Arawakan: Maipure-Yavitero'. In Lieber & ?tekauer (eds),
584-593.
Suggested Reading:
Rochelle Lieber & Pavol ?tekauer (eds). 2009. The Oxford handbook of
compounding. New York: Oxford University Press.
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donate by check, money order, or wire transfer, please visit:
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The LINGUIST List is under the umbrella of Eastern Michigan University and as
such can receive donations through the EMU Foundation, which is a registered
501(c) Non Profit organization. Our Federal Tax number is 38-6005986. These
donations can be offset against your federal and sometimes your state tax return
(U.S. tax payers only). For more information visit the IRS Web-Site, or contact
your financial advisor.
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