Full Title: A Diachronic Cross-linguistic Study of the Macro-event Hypothesis (session at ICLC16)
Date: 07-Aug-2023 – 11-Aug-2023
Location: Düsseldorf, Germany
Contact Person: Thomas Li
Meeting Email: < click here to access email >
Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories
Call Deadline: 25-Oct-2022
Meeting Description:
Call for papers for a theme session at ICLC16, August 7-11, 2023, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany, https://iclc16.phil.hhu.de/call/
A Diachronic Cross-linguistic Study of the Macro-event Hypothesis
Fuyin (Thomas) Li
Beihang University, Beijing
thomaslibuaa.edu.cn; thomaslifuyinhotmail.com
Call for Papers:
Call for participation in a theme session at ICLC16
A Diachronic Cross-linguistic Study of the Macro-event Hypothesis
Several prominent theoretical models in Cognitive Linguistics are based on a systematic study of the form-meaning mapping between the syntactic and semantic levels. Thus, the two-way typology studies the mapping of the semantic element PATH onto its formal expression as the verb or satellite (Talmy 1985, 1991, 2000). The manner/result complementarity hypothesis is based on the distribution of MANNER and RESULT in the verb (Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1991). And English resultative constructions are studied at the syntactic level over a clause (Goldberg & Jackendoff 2004).
The size of a semantic element tends to vary with the size of its corresponding syntactic element — a correspondence of granularity. Thus, the concept of PATH is finer grained than that of EVENT at the semantic level. And, correlatively at the syntactic level, the former may correspond to a lexical form and the latter to a clause. Similarly, a verb is syntactically finer-grained than a clause. It seems that few, if any, of the models cited above include a diachronic perspective of the macro-event at the semantic level. The Macro-event Hypothesis has been proposed at the level of semantics to reflect the evolutionary trend of a language (Li 2020, 2022). Simply put, languages may generally fall into two broad categories, macro-event type languages and non-macro-event type languages, which then might be further divided into four distinctive types, respectively: steady state macro-event languages (language steadily using macro-event expression throughout of its history) versus conflated macro-event languages (language gradually forming macro-event expression by event integration, or clause combination), and steady state non-macro-event languages (language steadily using non-macro-event expression throughout of its history) versus deconflated non-macro-event languages (language steadily decomposing macro-event expression to non-macro-event expression throughout of its history). Recent literature (Li 2018, 2019) indicates that Mandarin is a conflated Macro-event language. The Macro-event Hypothesis requires both empirical and cross-linguistic support. Papers on any aspect of it are welcome.
Requirement: Send the following to the theme session organizer Thomas (thomasli(at)buaa.edu.cn ; thomaslifuyin(at)hotmail.com ) before the deadline of Oct 25, 2022. Paper title, author(s) name, institution, e-mail, and an abstract of no more than 100 words in English.
Issues to be explored: Patterns, rules and regularities exhibited in the evolutionary pathway of semantic elements at different granularities —including PATH, MANNER, CAUSE, EVENT, RESULTATIVE, MACRO-EVENT, etc.— should be explored, in connection with their linguistic forms —including verb, satellite, preposition, directional, complement, verb complex, serial verb, etc.
Notification regarding acceptance of the theme session proposal will take place by Nov 15, 2022. Then submit your full abstract to the ICLC16 website before December 15, 2022.
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