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16th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics Institute of English Studies, University of Pécs (Hungary) August 23−27, 2010

Convenors:

• Gabriele Diewald (Leibniz Universität Hannover)
• Leena Kahlas-Tarkka (University Helsinki)
• Ilse Wischer (Universität Potsdam) 

English and German are closely related West-Germanic languages, which even after their separation in the first centuries BC have had a long history of contact and interrelated development. Nevertheless they have developed into different directions from a typological point of view. While there are similarities concerning increase in analytic forms, there are blatant differences in the development of the structure of grammatical categories, in particular in the verbal domain.

Thus, while English developed an aspectual system, German did not. Instead German kept and even refined a complicated system of mood marking, which - in turn - has disappeared from English. Even the two categories both languages developed in a similar direction - i.e. tense and voice - display fundamental differences as far as the internal structuring of the paradigms and their values are concerned.

These differences are the more marked as the source items for each involved construction as well as the general mechanisms of grammaticalization are very similar. It is assumed that these differences in the pathways and direction of grammaticalization can be put down to different language contacts to a substantial degree, but also to differences in the original situation in the oldest attestable periods of each language.

The aim of this workshop is to discover the early traces of the distinct developments of both languages by contrastive analyses of central verbal categories of Old High German and Old English. This will establish their commonalities as well as their differences and thus prepare the ground for a parallel investigation of their respective grammaticalization chains.

The workshop will unite researchers already cooperating in this endeavour as well as scholars working in each language and having a special interest in the topic. The methodology includes corpus-based research (Helsinki Corpus, DOC (Dictionary of Old English Corpus) KALI corpus and other corpora for OHG) as well as theoretical and philological reflection. Due to the focus of this conference, emphasis will be put on OE but OHG will be sufficiently considered as well. 

Central questions to be addressed in the presentations may include:

• What problems arise in comparative diachronic corpus studies and how can they be solved?
• What materials do we have currently available?
•  (How) Can, for example, Construction Grammar be applied to historical corpus studies?
• What are the distinct sets of verbal categories and their members in OE / OHG?
• How do we distinguish central and peripheral members in old texts?
• Does the set of categories show interdependencies (e.g. tense influencing mood or aspect etc., language internal factors in general)?
• What are the potential source constructions and paths for the grammaticalization of verbal categories in OE / OHG?
• What is the role of constructions/constructs as source(s) and product(s) of the grammaticalization of verbal categories?
• Which language specific factors - frequency, contexts, competing constructions and word order - have to be taken into account?
• What sociolinguistic and regional factors have to be taken into account?
• Relevance of text types?
• When, where and how are pragmatic factors relevant for the restructuring of grammatical categories?
• To what extent or in what way can language contact, including Latin, influence the restructuring of grammatical categories? 

Preliminary table of participants (confirmed):

• Gabriele Diewald (University Hannover, Germany)
• Ilse Wischer (University Potsdam, Germany)
• Leena Kahlas-Tarkka (University Helsinki, Finland)
• Matti Rissanen (University Helsinki, Finland)
• Terttu Nevalainen (University Helsinki, Finland)
• Matti Kilpiö (University Helsinki, Finland) 

CALL FOR PAPERS

We encourage abstract submission on any of the topics mentioned above. Papers, no matter whether theory or data-driven, need not take into account both Old English and Old High German at the same level of intensity but should be explicitly treat verbal categories of that period and address contrastive aspects. Presentations will have the usual 20 min + 10 min discussion format. 

Abstracts of no more than 350 words should be sent to one of the following addresses:

gabriele.diewald@germanistik.uni-hannover.de

wischer@uni-potsdam.de

leena.kahlas-tarkka@helsinki.fi  

Deadline for the abstracts is 31 January 2010

Notification of acceptance will be sent out by end of February 2010.

utoljára frissítve: 2009. november 09. 10:05:31

Címkék: pécs university icehl-16 pecs of workshop