Full Title: Unlocking Evaluative Morphology: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges
Short Title: EvalMo

Date: 13-Mar-2024 - 15-Mar-2024
Location: Berlin, Germany
Contact Person: Muriel Norde
Meeting Email: [email protected]
Web Site: https://site.unibo.it/unlocking-evaluative-morphology/en

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Morphology; Pragmatics; Semantics; Text/Corpus Linguistics
Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Call Deadline: 01-Nov-2023

Meeting Description:

"Unlocking evaluative morphology: conceptual and methodological challenges" is a project funded by the Societas Linguistica Europaea through the "SLE Research Grant for Joint Initiatives" 2022 and coordinated by Francesca Masini (University of Bologna), Muriel Norde (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) and Kristel Van Goethem (F.R.S.-FNRS & Université catholique de Louvain). The project aims at advancing our knowledge of evaluative morphology – and evaluative semantics in general – by focusing on under-investigated evaluative functions/phenomena and by using new methodological techniques (like quantitative, experimental and behavioral methods) that might help shedding light on open issues. This is a Call for Papers for a workshop organized on this topic at Humboldt University of Berlin, March 13-15, 2024.

2nd Call for Papers:

EvalMo is a hybrid workshop at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, March 14-15, 2024, with a pre-workshop tutorial on March 13
Convenors: Muriel Norde (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Francesca Masini (Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna), Kristel Van Goethem (F.R.S.-FNRS & Université catholique de Louvain)
Organizing Committee: Daniel Ebner (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Beatrice Bernasconi (Roma Tre University & University of Rome “La Sapienza”), Flavio Pisciotta (University of Salerno)

Plenary speaker: Bert Cappelle (Lille)
Tutor: Stefan Hartmann (Düsseldorf)

This workshop – funded by the SLE Joint Initiative scheme – is concerned with morphological expression of evaluative semantics (Grandi & Körtvélessy 2015), such as diminution (Dressler & Barbaresi 1994), intensification (Rainer 2015) or approximation (Masini, Norde & Van Goethem 2023). Evaluation is a broad concept, covering a wide array of values that are not always easy to distinguish from each other. Within approximation, for instance, we may identify privativity (Cappelle, Daugs & Hartmann 2023), similarity (Masini & Micheli 2020), depreciation (Amiot & Stosic 2022), fakeness (Van Goethem & Norde 2020) and a great many others. On the formal side, evaluation can be expressed by prefixes such as pseudo- (Vassiliadou et al. 2023), suffixes such as -ish (Eitelmann, Haugland & Haumann 2020), prefixoids such as German Hammer- ‘fantastic; very’ (Norde & Van Goethem 2018), or reduplication such as Mädchen-Mädchen ‘girly girl’ (Frankowsky 2022). On all levels, moreover, we find overlap and competition – similar values can be expressed by different bound morphemes and vice versa, often within one and the same language.
The purpose of this workshop is to gain a better understanding of the sources, formal expressions and values of evaluative morphology cross-linguistically, addressing the following Research Questions:
1. Which evaluative values can be expressed morphologically and how are they related to each other?
2. How do morphological expressions of evaluation compete? Can they reinforce one another?
3. What is the relationship between evaluative morphology and evaluation on other levels (e.g. free adverbials)? Again, is there competition and / or reinforcement across linguistic levels?

For this workshop, we invite empirically-based studies addressing one or more of the above RQs, with a special focus on methodological approaches (e.g. corpus-based or experimental) to unlock the domain of evaluative morphology. Case studies on understudied evaluative functions and values, as well as from understudied languages are particularly welcome.
If you are interested in participating in this workshop, please send an anonymous abstract of max. 500 words (excluding examples and references) to [email protected]. In a separate file, send us a cover sheet including your name, affiliation, title and presentation preference (oral paper or poster). Deadline for submissions is November 1, 2023, notification of acceptance will be sent out by December 1, 2023.

On March 13, Stefan Hartmann (HHU Düsseldorf) will offer a (hybrid) tutorial for PhD students on visualisation of morphological data (do's and don'ts of data visualisation, introduction to R graphics, basic plot types). If you are interested in participating in this workshop, please send a short motivation (max. 300 words) to the conference address. (This also applies to PhD students who submit an abstract to the workshop.)

The workshop and the tutorial are free of charge.