LINGUIST List 29.912
Mon Feb 26 2018
Calls: Historical Ling, Ling Theories, Semantics, Socioling, Syntax/Belgium
Editor for this issue: Kenneth Steimel <kenlinguistlist.org>
Date: 25-Feb-2018
From: Miriam Bouzouita <miriam.bouzouita
ugent.be>
Subject: Possessive Constructions in Romance
E-mail this
message to a friend Full Title: Possessive Constructions in Romance
Short Title: PossRom2018
Date: 27-Jun-2018 - 29-Jun-2018
Location: Ghent, Belgium
Contact
Person: Miriam Bouzouita
Meeting Email:
<
click here to access email > Web Site:
http://www.dialing.ugent.be/conference-possessive-constructions-in-romance-possrom2018/
Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Semantics;
Sociolinguistics; Syntax
Language Family(ies): Romance
Call
Deadline: 15-Mar-2018
Meeting Description:
PossRom2018 is dedicated
to the investigation of synchronic and diachronic functioning and variation of
possessives from a great variety of perspectives and in any Romance varieties.
Invited Speakers:
- Virginia Bertolotti
- Giuseppina Silvestri
-
Carme Silva Domínguez
2nd Call for Papers:
As is known, there are
syntactic differences within the Romance languages wrt the adjectival or
article-like status of prenominal possessives: as such, Italian and Catalan need to
use the combination of an article and a possessive, while for others, such as
French, the possessive itself suffices. Certain Romance languages also display
so-called Differential Possessor Marking (O’Connor 2003) as two constructions can
express internal possession, using for instance pre- and postnominal possessives.
However, most accounts that describe possessive structures limit themselves to the
standard Romance languages, leaving aside the rich microvariation displayed by the
vernaculars. To illustrate, the microvariation in the use of prenominals can be
observed not only between the various Romance languages, but also within different
historical and diatopic varieties of the same language, as in Old & Guatemalan
Spanish; or Old & Brazilian Portuguese (e.g. Brito & Lopes 2016; Company Company
2009; Elsig 2017). This syntactic microvariation is not limited to the prenominal
domain, as shown by the Italian dialects, where the northern ones favour the
prenominal position, while the southern ones opt for the postnominal distribution
(e.g. Silvestri 2016).
Moreover, Differential Possessor Marking appears to
be more complex in diatopic vernaculars: Canarian Spanish, for instance, does not
display two, but (at least) three different internal possession constructions, as
PPs with personal pronouns, are also used. Despite this rich microvariation, to date
hardly any studies have tried to provide accurate descriptions of the syntactic
distribution of the possessive NP constructions for the diatopic varieties of
Spanish, which also detail their semantic and pragmatic functions.
(1)
detrás mío / mía - meu / mina - meu /*meva ‘Behind me’
(2) Gustas mío? - Gostas
meu ‘Do you like me?’
Moreover, the use of possessives in domains other
than the nominal one has received only very recently some attention, and only for
Spanish. Possessives can be documented as complements of locative adverbials, as
well as verbs, as in (1) and (2). While the range of adverbs which can appear with
possessive complements has been studied for Spanish (eg. Marttinen Larsson &
Bouzouita in press), this remains to be done for other Romance languages, such as
Catalan and Galician. Interestingly, the adverbial possessives can also appear in
the feminine form in some varieties (eg. in Andalusian Spanish), but only in the
masculine in others, such as Catalan (Silva Domínguez 1995). It remains unclear
whether these cases genuinely mark gender or whether other factors are at play.
The
verbal possessives too can be found in different varieties, as in Uruguayan Spanish
and certain Brazilian Portuguese vernaculars. Nonetheless, little is known about
their syntactic behaviour, or the functional or sociolinguistic factors that
propagate their use.
Therefore it has become increasingly urgent to
scrutinise the functioning of possessives within the different sentential domains
for Romance. We welcome contributions that deal with:
- The syntactic,
semantic, pragmatic and prosodic functioning of pre- and postnominal possessives in
Romance
- The intra- & extra-linguistic factors that govern the variation in the
various possessive constructions synchronically and diachronically
- The genesis
and diachronic development of the different syntactic possessive configurations,
within any of the sentential domains (e.g. adverbial, verbal, etc.)
- The
grammatical interaction between the different domains in which possessives are used
We encourage studies on any of the Romance languages, as well as
Romance-based creoles and pidgins.
Abstract submission:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=possrom2018
Page Updated: 26-Feb-2018