Université de Caen Normandie

Conference “Tracing the Curve of evolution: Syntactic change through text types”

March 28-30 2024

Why

Establishing how investigations calibrated by text types support the understanding of syntactic change and their causes

Who

Keynote speakers:

Wendy Ayres-Bennett (Cambridge)

Johannes Kabatek (Zurich)

Interest in principle:

Kristin Bech (Oslo)

Anne Breitbarth (Ghent)

Andreas Dufter (München)

Charlotte Galves (Unicamp)

Adam Ledgeway (Cambridge)

Terttu Nevalainen (Helsinki)

Lene Schøsler (København)

Barbara Vance (Indiana)

Scientific committee: Brian Donaldson (Santa Cruz), Chiara De Bastiani (Venezia), Chiara Gianollo (Bologna), Mathieu Goux (Caen), Álvaro S. Octavio de Toledo (Madrid), Gabriella Parussa (Sorbonne), Afra Pujol i Campeny (Oxford), Tara Struik (Mannheim), David Willis (Oxford)

Organising committee: Natalia Romanava (Caen), Myriam Bergeron-Maguire (Paris 3), Corinne Denoyelle (Grenoble)

What

Research into patterns of evolution and their causes have enjoyed renewed interest with the development of digital corpora. The construction and analysis of such corpora have brought to the fore the question of text types. Comparing text types and how they document syntactic change has been done to achieve different objectives

1. Get closer to the evolution in the immediate competence of speakers. Studies have noted the impact of text-type in documenting evolving syntactic phenomena through time (Wanner 1987, Laroche Wilson 2012, Wolfsgruber 2017, Donaldson 2018, McLaughlin 2018, Farasyn et al 2018, Schøsler & Glessgen 2018, Amatuzzi et al 2020). One way this has been explored is through comparing direct speech and narration passages in literary sources (Vance 1997: 245-246, Schosler 2002, Rodriguez Somolinos 2003, Denoyelle 2010, Dufter 2010, Guillot et al. 2015, Parussa and Lefeuvre 2020), that tend to  show that direct speech is generally less conservative than narration (Glikman & Mazziotta 2014, 2019), although this is not always the case (Pujol 2018,  Imel 2019), and one may wonder whether the speech/narration divide is comparable to text type distinctions. The representativeness of literary direct speech difficult to assess given  the scarcity of non-fictional dialogue (Lio Mazor, Anglo-Norman Year Books, Old Bailey Corpus and the Salem Witch Trial).
2. Situate the role ofregister in the evolution of variants (Ayres-Bennett 2020, Wright 1991). It has been found that systematic register characterizes differences between subtypes of legal texts (Ingham 2016, Larrivée 2022), although these may evolve through time. Different text types have also been found to play a role in the dissemination of new variants (Pountain 2006).

iii.            Understand the historical development of text types and the historical evolution of their salient grammatical features (Halliday 1988, Nevalainen 1991, Biber 1995, Kohnen 2012, Taavitsainen 2001).

How
A two-page anonymous abstract about the significance for the understanding of syntactic change of investigations calibrated by text-types.

The abstract is expected to spell out the research problem and background, the notions and criteria, the method and data, the key findings and their relevance for the meeting. A comparative dimension across register, text-types and/or languages, as well as an explanatory dimension for the investigated phenomena, are highly desirable. Please indicate preference for an oral or poster presentation.

To pierre….@unicaen.fr

By October 1^st 2023.

Accepted authors will be encouraged to share a draft version of their talk before the conference.

Calendar
October 1st 2023: Deadline for abstract submission
January 3 2024: Notification from Scientific committee
January 15 2024: Publication of programme
February 28 2024: Deadline for reception of draft papers for circulation
March 28-30 2024: Conference

Amatuzzi, Antonella et al. 2020. Changement linguistique et périodisation du français (pré)classique: deux études de cas à partir des corpus du RCFC. Journal of French Language Studies 30,3, 301-326. Ayres-Bennett, Wendy. 2020. Syntaxe de l’oral. Christiane Marchello-Nizia et al (Eds), Grande grammaire historique du français. Berlin: De Gruyter. 1466-1479. Biber, Douglas. 1995. Dimensions of register variation. A Cross-linguistic comparison. Cambridge University Press. Denoyelle, Corinne. 2010. Poétique du dialogue médiéval. Rennes : Presses universitaires de Rennes. Donaldson, Brian. 2018. Diachrony of sentential negation in French: Contributions of a socio-historical approach. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 63,2, 221-241. Dufter, Andreas. 2010. Subordination et expression du sujet en ancien français. Maria Iliescu et al(Eds). Actes du XXVe Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes, Innsbruck, 3–8 septembre 2007, Berlin: de Gruyter, 443-458. Farasyn, Melissa et al. 2018. The interplay between genre variation and syntax in a historical Low German corpus. Richard J. Whitt (Ed.). Diachronic corpora, genre, and language change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 281–303. Glikman, Julie et Nicolas Mazziotta. 2019. Oral représenté et narration en ancien français. Spécificités syntaxiques dans trois textes de genres distincts. Linx 78. Glikman, Julie & Nicolas Mazziotta. 2014. Représentation de l’oral et structures syntaxiques dans la prose de la Queste del saint Graal (1225-1230). Dominique Lagorgette et al (Eds). Représentation du Sens Linguistique V. Chambéry: Université de Savoie. 43–64. Guillot, Céline et al. 2015. L’oral représenté dans un corpus de français médiéval (9e–15e) : approche contrastive et outillée de la variation diasystémique. Les variations diasystématiques et leurs interdépendances dans les langues romanes. J. Lindschouw et al (Eds). Actes du colloque DIA II à Copenhague (19-21 nov. 2012), Travaux de Linguistique Romane. 15–27. Halliday, M. A. K. 1988. On the language of physical science. Mohsen Ghadessy (Ed.). Registers of Written English. London: Pinter. 162-178. Ingham, Richard. 2016. Investigating language change using Anglo-Norman spoken and written register data. Linguistics 54,2, 381-410. Imel, Brock. 2019. Sa nature proveir se volt: A New Examination of Leftward Stylistic Displacement in Medieval French through Textual Domain, Information Structure, and Oral Représenté. PhD dissertation, Berkeley. Larrivée, Pierre. 2022. Is Medieval French diglossic? New evidence on remnant V2 and register. Ora Matushansky et al (Eds). Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory,  Isogloss 8,2, 1-16. Pountain, Ch. J. 2006. Towards a history of register in Spanish. Spanish in Context 3,1, 5-24. Pujol i Campeny, Afra. 2018. Word Order in Old Catalan. PhD dissertation, Cambridge.

Kabatek, Johannes. 2011. Die bolognesische Renaissance und der ausbau romanischer sprachen: Juristische diskurstraditionen und sprachentwicklung in südfrankreich und spanien im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert. Berlin: de Gruyter. Kohnen, Thomas. 2012. Historical text linguistics. Investigating language change in texts and genres. English historical linguistics 2008. Selected papers from the fifteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 15), Munich, 24-30 August 2008. Volume II. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 165-188. Laroche Wilson, Christin M. 2012. Variation and Text Type in Old Occitan Texts. PhD dissertation, Ohio State. McLaughlin, Mairi. 2018. Les temps verbaux dans la presse d’actualité historique. 6^e Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française. Nevalainen, Terttu. 1991. But, only, just: Focusing adverbial change in Modern English 1500–1900. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique. Parussa, Gabriela et al. 2020. L’oral représenté en diachronie et en synchronie : une voie d’accès à l’oral spontané ? Langages217. Rodríguez Somolinos, Amalia. 2003. Variation et changement de l’ancien au moyen français: l’ordre des mots et l’emploi du sujet. Michèle Goyens et al (Eds). The dawn of the written vernacular in Western Europe. Leuven: Leuven University Press. 273–288. Schøsler, Lene & Martin Glessgen. 2018. Repenser les axes diasystématiques : nature et statut ontologique. Martin Glessgen et al (Eds). Repenser la variation linguistique: Actes du Colloque DIA IV à Zürich (12-14 sept. 2016). Strasbourg: Editions de Linguistique et de Philologie. 11–52. Schøsler, Lene. 2002. La variation linguistique : le cas de l’expression du sujet. Rodney Sampson & Wendy Ayres-Bennett (Eds). Interpreting the history of French: A Festschrift for Peter Rickard on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 195–212. Taavitsainen, Irma. 2001. Language history and the scientific register. Hans-Jürgen Diller et al (Eds.). Towards a History of English as a History of Genres. Heidelberg: Winter. 185–202. Vance, Barbara S. 1997. Syntactic change in medieval French: Verb-Second and Null Subjects. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Wanner, Dieter. 1987. The development of Romance clitic pronouns: From Latin to Old Romance. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Wolfsgruber, Anne C. 2017. On, Se and related valency alternations in Medieval French. Lingvisticae Investigationes 40,1, 59-80. Wright, Susan M.  1991. On the stylistic basis of syntactic change. Susan Wright et al (Eds). Historical English Syntax. Berlin: de Gruyter. 469-492.