SMG Workshop: Growth and decline of morphological complexity

When?

Saturday 28 April 2012, 09:30AM to 4:30PM

Where?

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig (Germany)

Open to:

Theme of the workshop

Inflection often (or even typically) displays formal patterns which cannot be readily derived from the syntactic and semantic categories which it realizes. Phenomena such as inflectional classes, syncretism, defectiveness and deponency manifest what appear to be a purely morphological element in the composition of words and paradigms. While these are sometimes dismissed as mere products of diachrony, the historical development of such ‘autonomous’ morphology may well be the best argument for its existence: the maintenance, extension and dismantling of morphological patterns all provide evidence for morphological structures, as well as their interaction with other grammatical components.

Programme

9.30-10:00	Introduction
10:00-11.00	Bernard Comrie (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, and U.C. Santa Barbara) ‘On the origins of morphological complexity’
11.00-11:30	Break
11.30-12:15	Andrej Kibrik (Russian Academy of Sciences) ‘Qualitative morphological complexity: The case of Athabaskan’
12.15-1.30	Lunch
1.30-2.30	Martin Maiden (Oxford) ‘Romanian feminine nouns and other diachronic delinquents. Reflections on why morphomes persist in diachrony’
2:30-2:50	Break
2.50-3.35	Enrique Palancar (Surrey) ‘The history and evolution of the conjugation classes of Otomi: From the colonial to the modern times’
3.35-4.20	David Gil (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig) & Tim McKinnon (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Jakarta) ‘New Morphology in Malayic Languages’
4.20-4.30	Conclusion