Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Grammaticalisation

Researchers have long presumed that grammatical signs diachronically arise from lexemes. Although a common understanding of the constitutive mechanisms of grammaticalisation and their interactions has been achieved and recurring patterns in the form of grammaticalisation paths have been recognized, many questions regarding the factors that control and cause the process of grammaticalisation remain unanswered. A stronger interdisciplinary network would provide a promising approach to answering these questions.

Exemplary research questions for such an approach might include:
- In language acquisition, a transition from unanalysed units to grammatical constructions can be observed; in grammaticalisation, one refers to the diachronic transition from lexemes to grammatical signs. Are these processes based on comparable mechanisms?
- Whether and how grammaticalisation takes place is closely linked to the linguistic areas. Can the relevant factors be traced with methods of linguistic geography?
- Speech communities are usually linguistically heterogeneous due to their social structure. Which socio-linguistic factors are relevant to grammaticalisation in individual languages or in general? What contribution can such a perspective make to the field of variety linguistics?

The inclusion of cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, language typology, linguistic geography, neurolinguistics, and additional disciplines would crucially enrich the theories of grammaticalisation through an expansion of its research perspectives. The 23rd LIPP-Symposium therefore calls for contributions from all linguistic disciplines so that the potential of an interdisciplinary network to address grammaticalisation theory may be gauged.

• Submission deadline: April 10th, 2016
• Abstract length: (300-500 word without bibliography)
• File format: PDF
• Submission via the online application at http://www.gk.gwi.uni-muenchen.de or via E-Mail to symposium2016@lipp.uni-muenchen.de
• Feedback will be given by May 8th, 2016