[Histling-l] SLE 2018 workshop on semantic/pragmatic cyclicity - call for contributions

Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen at manchester.ac.uk
Fri Oct 20 10:18:17 EDT 2017


Workshop proposal, 51st Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Tallinn August 29-September 1, 2018

Cyclicity in Semantic-Pragmatic Change
Convenor:  Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen, The University of Manchester

**NB!  Prospective contributors are requested to submit a short abstract (300 words) to the workshop convenor no later than November 14.**

Description
It has been known at least since Jespersen (1917) that certain types of linguistic items or constructions tend to evolve in a cyclic fashion across languages.  Thus, van Gelderen (2011) identifies a total of seven well-documented diachronic cycles pertaining to (morpho-)syntactic items and constructions across a wide variety of languages.  Similar cyclic developments have been discovered in the domain of phonology (e.g. Bermudez-Otero & Trousdale 2012).
This workshop will investigate the nature and cross-linguistic importance of cyclicity at a third level of linguistic description, i.e. that of semantics and pragmatics, aiming to contribute potentially very significantly to current theoretical debates about the nature of language change more generally.
The idea that there might be cyclic movements at the level of semantics and pragmatics was first proposed by Hansen (2014), as well as (independently) by Ghezzi/Molinelli (2014).  In subsequent work, Hansen (fc) adduces a range of examples of semantic/pragmatic cyclicity from across various Romance languages.  Although the phenomenon appears manifest, its existence thus constitutes a very recent discovery, which promises to be of descriptive and theoretical significance, but whose scope and cross-linguistic importance need to be more systematically investigated.  Such investigation necessitates a concerted team effort involving semantics/pragmatics specialists with expertise across a range of languages.
The proposed workshop is exploratory in nature.  It constitutes a follow-up to a recent conference panel (IPrA  2017), its aim being to present a series of further case studies of semantic/pragmatic cyclicity. Contributions should identify and analyze examples of semantic/pragmatic cycles in one or more languages, focusing either on the evolution of pragmatic markers from propositional source items and constructions, or on the role of semantic/pragmatic cyclicity in language-specific instances of (morpho)syntactic cycles.
In addition, contributions may, for instance, aim to (i) assess the degree to which individual stages of a given semantic/pragmatic cycle constitute directly linked changes, and whether push- or drag-chains are involved; (ii) assess the role played by the larger linguistic system in semantic/pragmatic cycles;  (iii) determine whether some semantic/pragmatic fields (e.g. temporality) are more prone to exhibit cyclicity than others.
For the sake of comparability, and due to the comparative wealth of documentation available, contributors may wish, but are in no way obliged, to focus on the major European language families.

References:
Bermudez-Otero, Ricardo & Graeme Trousdale. 2012. Cycles and continua: on unidirectionality and gradualness in language change. In Terttu Nevalainen & Elizabeth Closs Traugott, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the History of English.  Oxford: OUP, 691-720.
van Gelderen, Elly. 2011.  The Linguistic Cycle.  Oxford: OUP.
Ghezzi, Chiara & Piera Molinelli. 2014.  Deverbal pragmatic markers from Latin to Italian (Lat. quaeso and It. prego): the cyclic nature of functional developments. In Chiara Ghezzi & Piera Molinelli, eds., Discourse and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to the Romance Languages. Oxford: OUP, 61-85.
Hansen, Maj-Britt Mosegaard.  2014.  Cyclicity in semantic-pragmatic change: Old French ja between Latin iam and Modern French déjà.  In Chiara Ghezzi & Piera Molinelli, eds., Pragmatic Markers from Latin to Romance.  Oxford: OUP, 139-165.
Hansen, Maj-Britt Mosegaard. Forthcoming. Cyclic phenomena in the evolution of pragmatic markers. Examples from Romance. In Oscar Loureda and Salvador Pons Bordería, eds. Discourse Pragmatic Change in Romance. Leiden: Brill.
IPrA. 2017. Cyclicity in Semantic/Pragmatic Change. Thematic panel, 15th International Pragmatics Conference, Belfast, 16-21 July.
Jespersen, Otto. 1917. Negation in English and Other Languages. Copenhagen: Høst & Søn.

__________________________________________________________
Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen
Professor, PhD, dr.phil.
Linguistics and English Language
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
The University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9PL
United Kingdom

Academic profile<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.research.manchester.ac.uk_portal_Maj-2DBritt.MosegaardHansen.html&d=DwIFAw&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=xWgwnXzyLjTDtEN1jkc-sliD_cd49k7fc7XSMi_8aeo&m=8Is1t0C_qhuT_9c4E7q_fzFQZSESFwnz_-wWJZf_K4o&s=JDA97lO8tp5eQbeJI0YCSfahF0pxpocZp4CK5vrU-g4&e=>
Elected Fellow of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.royalacademy.dk_&d=DwIFAw&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=xWgwnXzyLjTDtEN1jkc-sliD_cd49k7fc7XSMi_8aeo&m=8Is1t0C_qhuT_9c4E7q_fzFQZSESFwnz_-wWJZf_K4o&s=FBEQCEXo7slaTZBSg42BTdgzx7N61m2FDTzcRxHdcKw&e=>
Editor of Studies in Pragmatics<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.brill.com_publications_studies-2Dpragmatics&d=DwIFAw&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=xWgwnXzyLjTDtEN1jkc-sliD_cd49k7fc7XSMi_8aeo&m=8Is1t0C_qhuT_9c4E7q_fzFQZSESFwnz_-wWJZf_K4o&s=rVwnU9w5IRZTOOkNzrzzsQ67Secss9AY49zdf12u-DQ&e=>; Member of the editorial board of Langue française<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.revues.armand-2Dcolin.com_lettres-2Dlangue_langue-2Dfrancaise&d=DwIFAw&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=xWgwnXzyLjTDtEN1jkc-sliD_cd49k7fc7XSMi_8aeo&m=8Is1t0C_qhuT_9c4E7q_fzFQZSESFwnz_-wWJZf_K4o&s=nNDQ_TUYgfO5xMnjfLgBF1ItEccOnql11PCHW0t7BrY&e=>

Recent books and special issues:
The (Co-)Construction of Interpersonally Sensitive Activities Acrosss Institutional Settings<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__benjamins.com_-23catalog_journals_ps.7.4_main&d=DwIFAw&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=xWgwnXzyLjTDtEN1jkc-sliD_cd49k7fc7XSMi_8aeo&m=8Is1t0C_qhuT_9c4E7q_fzFQZSESFwnz_-wWJZf_K4o&s=RH96B7IJNHP85Anb-s6br8NuNJLbMngrf_0WQPlQqOs&e=>. (Eds. Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen & Rosina Marquez Reiter.) Pragmatics & Society 7(4), 2016.
The Structure of Modern Standard French.  A Student Grammar<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__ukcatalogue.oup.com_product_9780198723745.do&d=DwIFAw&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=xWgwnXzyLjTDtEN1jkc-sliD_cd49k7fc7XSMi_8aeo&m=8Is1t0C_qhuT_9c4E7q_fzFQZSESFwnz_-wWJZf_K4o&s=rdt-gndl_pOPsns43eWeVzc_B9h_5w_KmQKnGnOPOTs&e=>.  OUP 2016.
The Diachrony of Negation<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__benjamins.com_-23catalog_books_slcs.160_main&d=DwIFAw&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=xWgwnXzyLjTDtEN1jkc-sliD_cd49k7fc7XSMi_8aeo&m=8Is1t0C_qhuT_9c4E7q_fzFQZSESFwnz_-wWJZf_K4o&s=KptVLDnvQzU0KeNX1XoWTiyWp8mthMB1-jJsOyR8YTY&e=>. (Eds. M.-B. Mosegaard Hansen & Jacqueline Visconti.) John Benjamins 2014.

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