Workshop: Growth and decline of morphological complexity
The Surrey Morphology Group will be holding a one-day workshop on the diachrony of morphological complexity, hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig (Germany) on Saturday, April 28, 2012. The workshop immediately follows the Anna Siewierska Memorial workshop on April 27, in the same location. Practical information may be found here. Anyone is welcome to attend; for planning purposes, please let us know if you're planning to come, by writing to morphological.complexity AT gmail.com.
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) |
11.00-11:30 | Break |
11.30-12:15 | Andrej Kibrik (Russian Academy of Sciences) |
12.15-1.30 | Lunch |
1.30-2.30 | Martin Maiden (Oxford) |
2:30-2:50 | Break |
2.50-3.35 | Enrique Palancar (Surrey) |
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 |
Note: the talk by Patrick McConvell has been cancelled.
