Date: 10-Jan-2019 – 11-Jan-2019
Location: Oslo, Norway
Contact Person: Christine Meklenborg Salvesen
Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Syntax
Language Family(ies): Germanic; Romance
Call Deadline: 09-Nov-2018
Meeting Description:
This workshop asks the fundamental question why did the Germanic languages retain a V2 word order while the Romance languages lost it.
Call for Papers:
From a typological point of view, Verb Second (V2) is a very rare word order. It is first and foremost found in the Germanic languages, but not exclusively. In a historical perspective, it has been attested in several Old Romance languages (Vanelli et al. 1985; Roberts 1993; Adams 1989; Vance 1997; Salvi 2004; Benincà 2006; Ledgeway 2012; Vance et. al. 2009; Wolfe 2015a, 2015b, 2016), but it was lost in the late Middle Ages. The parallels between historical Germanic and Old Romance are striking: the languages observed a V2 word order, but they also permitted V3 orders in constructions where they are not permitted in modern V2 languages (Walkden 2015). For instance, fronted adverbial clauses were a trigger for V3 in the medieval languages (Donaldson 2012, Vance et al 2010, Salvesen in press), while fronted clauses are generally the first element of the V2 construction in present day V2 languages (but see Haegeman & Greco 2018ab for examples of V3 in Modern West Flemish). We also find that both Old Romance and Old Germanic made use of resumptive particles, that also lead to a surface V3 word order (Salvesen in press).
The medieval V2 languages combined this word order with an (admittedly limited) possibility of omitting the pronominal subject (see among others Adams 1987, Walkden 2013, Zimmermann 2014, Wolfe 2015, Kinn 2015). Some of these languages developed a general pro drop syntax, while others established a non-pro drop syntax.
The striking differences between the Medieval V2 languages, however, do not necessarily lie in synchronic comparisons. In a diachronic perspective, we find that while V2 is lost in all Romance languages (with the exception of certain Rhaeto-Romance varieties, see Poletto 2002), it is retained in Modern Germanic (with the exception of English).
This workshop asks the fundamental question why did the Germanic languages retain a V2 word order while the Romance languages lost it. We welcome papers that discuss questions related to the retention and loss of V2. Papers treating the issue from a comparative perspective are particularly welcome.
Papers should be aimed at a presentation of 20 minutes + 10 minutes for discussion.
Who?:
Everybody working on word order related to Verb Second are welcome. Project members of the Traces of History group will present their research, including George Walkden, Sam Wolfe, and Tolli Eythorsson.
When & Where:
The workshop will take place on the University of Oslo on 10–11 January 2018.
Submission:
Anonymous abstracts should be e-mailed to traces-of-history(at)ilos.uio.no. The e-mail should include name, affiliation and title of the abstract.