https://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-2987.html

Date: 20-Aug-2020 – 22-Aug-2020
Location: Antwerp, Belgium
Contact Person: Martin Hilpert

The constructicon is commonly understood as a network of “parent and peer”-relations (in Norde’s terminology): hierarchical relations between ‘mother’ and ‘daughter’ nodes and paradigmatic relations between ‘sister’ nodes on the same level of the taxonomy. This workshop will try to shed new light on the nature and role of paradigmatic or ‘sister’ relations. Up to this point, such relations are generally understudied; exceptions include Cappelle (2006), Van de Velde (2014), Diessel (2015), Booij & Masini (2015), Hoffmann (2017), Norde & Morris (2018), Audring (forthcoming) and Zehentner & Traugott (forthcoming). Individual studies show that sister links are useful for the modelling of a variety of phenomena, from syntactic alternations to the structure of inflectional paradigms, and from a synchronic as well as a diachronic perspective. At the same time, many questions remain open. With this workshop, we aim to draw together the relevant research in a systematic and comprehensive manner and to create a forum for discussion on the empirical and theoretical challenges and opportunities.

Call for Papers:

If you are interested in participating in this theme session, please send in a short abstract (400 words) by September 15. There will be space for 6-8 talks (20 + 5 mins). Successful abstracts will be included in a theme session proposal that we will send to the ICCG organizers and which will be subject to review.

Email martin.hilpert(at)unine.ch for submission information.

We invite papers discussing one or several of the following questions:

– What does it mean to be paradigmatically related? What kinds of structural and/or semantic relations can be modelled in terms of ‘sister’ links?
– What place do paradigmatic relations occupy in the grammar? Are they primary or secondary to hierarchical relations? For example, the notion of “allostructions” (Cappelle 2006, Perek 2012) suggests a secondary relation, while a usage-based view considers lower-level similarities as epistemologically primary to higher-level generalizations.
– What function do paradigmatic relations serve in language comprehension and production, i.e. in making sense of existing words and phrases, in forming new linguistic units, and in learning constraints on the use of constructions?
– Are paradigmatically related constructions always in mutual competition, or can they also exist symbiotically?
– What function to they serve in language acquisition? When and how are they learned?
– How can they be useful in modelling language change?
– What is the division of labour between paradigmatic ‘sister’ relations and hierarchical ‘mother-daughter’ relations?
– Do paradigmatic relations function the same way in morphology and in syntax? Are there paradigmatic relations that straddle the boundary between morphology and syntax?
– What is the status of paradigmatic relations involving shared semantics, but no shared form?
– How can paradigmatic relations be represented formally?
– Are paradigmatic relations identical to analogical relations, are they different phenomena, or is one a subset of the other?
– In what way do inflectional paradigms constitute a special type of paradigmatic relation? How can inflectional paradigms be modeled in a constructionist framework?
– How can constructionist theories benefit from assuming “second-order schemas”, i.e. paradigmatic relations between schemas?

We especially encourage contributions from the field of morphology, which tends to be underrepresented at ICCG.