A workshop at Evolang XIII, Brussels, 14th April 2020
The evolution of grammatical morphology – from tense markers, to agreement paradigms, to gender systems – has deep roots in the field of language evolution. Research into grammaticalization processes and the development of pidgins, creoles and emerging sign languages provide real-world insights into how languages develop complex morphology; these observations have inspired a rich body of recent work, using cutting-edge experimental, computational and corpus methods to investigate how complex morphological systems evolve, and why they look the way they do. This workshop will highlight state-of the-art research on the evolution of morphological systems, covering the role of learning and communication in shaping morphology, how specific morphological systems might arise under different conditions, and the extent to which the pressures driving morphological evolution are shared across modalities, domains, and species.
Programme
The workshop will feature 6 talks.
Ackerman & Malouf, Title TBC.
Corbett, Fedden, Franjieh, Grandison & Round, Categorization: combining canonical typology, evolution and psycholinguistics.
Di Garbo & Verkerk, Animacy and the evolution of gender agreement systems: A study of North-Western Bantu.
Mollica & Kemp, A fitness function for grammaticalization.
Schuler & Chen, Morphosyntactic variation is preserved, not regularized, when an optional form is rare.
Registration
TBC
Venue
TBC – the workshop will be co-located with Evolang XIII in Brussels.
Programme
The workshop will feature 6 talks.
Corbett, Title TBC.
Stoll, Title TBC.
Ackerman & Malouf, Title TBC.
Di Garbo & Verkerk, Animacy and the evolution of gender agreement systems: A study of North-Western Bantu.
Mollica & Kemp, A fitness function for grammaticalization.
Schuler & Chen, Morphosyntactic variation is preserved, not regularized, when an optional form is rare.
Contact
The workshop is organised by Jennifer Culbertson and Kenny Smith. Any questions, please email morphcomplex@gmail.com.
FUNDING
The workshop has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement 757643, held by Jennifer Culbertson, and grant agreement 681942, held by Kenny Smith).