LINGUIST List 34.262
Wed Jan 25 2023
Calls: Morphology, Linguistic Theories, Syntax/Germany
Editor for this issue: Everett Green <everettlinguistlist.org>
Date: 20-Jan-2023
From: Johannes Mursell <j.mursell
lingua.uni-frankfurt.de>
Subject: Syntax at the vP edge in African languages
E-mail this message to a friend Full Title: Syntax at the vP edge in African languages
Short Title: SASAL III
Date: 29-Jun-2023 - 30-Jun-2023
Location: Frankfurt Main, Germany
Contact Person: Johannes Mursell
Meeting Email:
< click here to access email > Web Site:
https://mabia-vp.com/tiki-index.php?page=Workshop:-The-syntax-at-the-vP-edge-in-African-languages
Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Syntax
Call Deadline: 19-Mar-2023
Meeting Description:
Recent years have seen a heightened interest in research into previously undocumented and understudied languages, particularly on the African continent. The SASAL (Syntax and Semantics of African Languages) workshop series is intended to continue this line of research and to provide a forum for linguists working on these languages to exchange ideas and theoretical approaches to a wide range of phenomena.
As part of our DFG-funded project “The VP-periphery in Mabia languages”, we are happy to announce the third installment in this workshop series, SASAL III, which will focus on the syntactic processes taking place at the vP edge. For example, it has become clear that information-structural notions like focus do not only impact movement to the clausal left periphery (see Amaechi 2020 for Igbo (Volta-Niger), Issah 2020 for Dagbani (Mabia), a.o.) but that they also play a role for the vP edge, in triggering the (sometimes obligatory) presence of certain particles. Take, for example, the sentence pair in (1) from Gurene (Mabia), where the post-verbal particle 'la' is obligatory in cases of in-situ focus, including cases of in-situ wh-questions.
(1) (a)
Adam korege-ri *(la) beni?
Adam slaughter-IPFV LA what
'What is Adam slaughtering.'
(b)
Adam korege-ri *(la) nua.
Adam slaughter-IPFV LA fowl
'Adam is slaughtering fowl.'
In addition to information-structural marking, the area around the vP edge, i.e. the positions immediately above and below it, is of course the area of the clause where most of the tense, aspect, mood (TAM), and negation marking takes place, as well as the encoding of the conjoint/disjoint alternation (for Bantu cf. van der Wal & Hyman 2017). Frequently, all these processes interact with each other, very often in non-trivial ways. But possible interactions are not limited to these elements, as it has been argued that even A'-movement out of the vP phase can have an observable impact in this area if the clause.
References:
- Amaechi, Mary Chimaobi (2020): A′-movement dependencies and their reflexes in Igbo. Ph. D. thesis. University of Potsdam
- Issah, Samuel Alhassan (2020): On the structure of A-bar constructions in Dagbani: Perspectives of ''wh''-questions and fragment answers.Berlin: Peter Lang
- Van der Wal, Jenneke and Hyman, Larry M. (2017): The conjoint/disjoint alternation in Bantu. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM], 301. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton
Invited Speakers:
Maria Kouneli (Leipzig)
t.b.a.
(see WEBSITE for updates)
Call for Papers:
We invite submissions for online or in person talks (25min+10min discussion) that investigate syntactic processes at the vP in languages spoken in Africa. Possible topics include among others:
- information-structural marking
- interaction of TAM markers among each other and with other markings
- verbal movement
- encoding of conjoint/disjoint
- reflexes of movement across v
- negation and its interaction with other markings and processes
Abstract Guidelines
================
- 1 page abstracts with an additional page for data, figures, references, etc
- max. 1 single-authored or 2 joint abstracts per researchers
- A4/US letter paper size with 1in margins
- 11pt font
- submission via EasyChair here:
https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=sasal3 Important Deadlines:
================
Deadline for Abstract Submission: March 19, 2023
Notification: April 1, 2023
Workshop: June 29-30, 2023 at Goethe-University Frankfurt (hybrid: people can attend the workshop in person or via Zoom)
Page Updated: 25-Jan-2023