Date: 21-Aug-2019 – 24-Aug-2019
Location: Leipzig, Germany
Contact Person: Olivier Duplâtre
Meeting Email: olivier-duplatrewanadoo.fr

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; History of Linguistics; Morphology; Semantics; Syntax

Call Deadline: 05-Nov-2018

Meeting Description:

(Session of 52nd Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea)

The usefulness of parts of speech in the description of language is readily
acknowledged (Haspelmath 2001: 16538), even though among these parts of speech
there is one which, although less satisfactory than the others, is
paradoxically no less useful: the adverb.

The adverb seems indeed to have been invented to lump together all the items
that do not satisfy the definitions of the other parts of speech (Quirk et al.
1972: 267); it may even have been adopted as a very convenient way of
maintaining a relatively stable number of parts of speech (Rauh 2015: 38).
The definition of this part of the speech has certainly evolved since
Dionysius Thrax: the adverb is not only what applies to a verb, but a lexical
category made up of invariable terms that can apply to a verb, an adjective,
another adverb, or even a sentence (See in particular Lyons 1968:325, Abraham
1988:19, Haspelmath 2001:16544). The shortcomings of this definition are
comparable to those that already bothered ancient grammarians (Schmöe 2002:3):
the heterogeneity of the class makes it the least satisfactory of all parts of
speech (Quirk et al. 1972:267), so that one can agree with Gleason (1965:129)
that it corresponds to a set of items that have very little, if anything, in
common. This peculiarity is underlined by so many authors that it has become
almost a defining criterion of the adverb. To this problem can be added the
classical objection to the theory of the parts of speech, which is their
non-universality: Hengeveld & Velsta (2010) have demonstrated, for example,
the absence of adverbs in certain types of languages. We are thus led to
conclude that the adverb is a non-universal and heterogeneous part of speech
that includes invariable terms applying to a verb, an adjective, another
adverb, or even a sentence.

In order to solve this definitional problem, there are two solutions. The
first is to simply do away with the category of adverb and replace it by the
functional category of adverbial (Nølke 1990, Pittner 1999), which may be
defined in a purely syntactic way if necessary (Chomsky 1965, Steinitz 1969).
However this terminology is not very clear either (Eisenberg 2013:212), as,
like the adverb, the category of adverbial has fuzzy boundaries: if the
adverbial is a phrase that is not defined as a specific type of sentential
component (Nølke 1990:17), this means that any type of circumstantial, be it
an adverb, a prepositional phrase, etc., falls into this category. This
results in great heterogeneity (Nølke 1990:18) and leads to similar
classification problems to those posed by the category of adverb. Is this or
that unit an adverbial?

Opposed to this centrifugal approach, a centripetal perspective searches for a
prototype of the category (Ramat/Ricca 1994). But based on what criteria is
this prototype to be defined? Frequency? Meaning? If the latter criterion is
used, the manner adverb would constitute the prototype and this would confirm
Hengeveld’s position (1992, 2004) that the class of adverbs should be reduced
to the single category of manner adverbs.

Can other approaches be taken? can we deal with the adverb, as opposed to the
adverbial, by dispensing with the criterion of invariability? Can we define
the adverb based solely on syntax? Will traditional adverbs be adverbs in this
case? Are there other adverbs than those which have been traditionally
analyzed as such? Should we keep the term ‘adverb’ at all? And above all: Can
we propose a universal definition of the adverb? These are all questions that
deserve careful consideration, whether one is working within the limits of the
study of a given language or in a typological framework.

Call for Papers:

Please send the proposal (~ 300 words) before November 5, 2018 to
olivier-duplatre(a)wanadoo.fr and pymodicom.ling(a)yahoo.fr

Notifications of inclusion into the WS proposal will be sent by Nov. 20, and
the notification by SLE is expected one month later. See details on the
conference website: http://sle2019.eu/call-for-papers