This conference aims to examine the diverse ways in which these two fields, the history of linguistic thought and the history of different languages, each with its own approach, interact. It welcomes papers which address the following questions:
Call Deadline: 01-Jun-2015
Place: Paris, France
Date: 2016, January 21-23ÃÃÃÃÃÃÃÃÃÂ
Conference co-organised byÃÂ GEHLF,HTL, SIDF andÃÂ SHESL
- General Questions:
--- How does the language state influence contemporary representations of the language?
--- What representation of the history of languages is provided by linguistic theories?
--- Do metalinguistic texts (of different kinds including works on spelling, lexicons, teaching dialogues, dictionaries, volumes of remarks, grammars, languages treaties, translation methods, etc.) play a prescriptive role? What part do they play in the process of standardisation, the establishment of reforms, etc.?
--- What place is given to linguistic data of a historical nature in the exemplification and theoretical reflections of a grammarian or linguist?
- What place is given to the history of the language and to the history of linguistic thought in contemporary grammars (whether already published or being developed)?
- How have certain linguistic traditions conceived the history of their languages when these are viewed as ahistorical, revealed or unchanging?
- What are the situations (or contexts) which favour or necessitate reference to the other discipline or promote exchanges between the two disciplines? Conversely, when is it possible for them to remain autonomous?
- What is the basis for the construction of the disciplinary fields of the history of the language and the history of linguistic thought? Depending on the tradition (according to period, place, institutional history, etc.), which option is preferred?:
----- complete autonomy of the two disciplines?
----- subservience of one discipline to the other?
----- interaction or mixing of the two disciplines ?
--- Is it possible to identify key textsin the history of these relations? We might think of Saussures Course in General Linguistics, of Brunot History of the French Language, or of the works of Ascoli (1874) or Tullio De Mauro (1963, 2014).
--- Which notions allow us to explore these relations? To what extent are the oppositions between internal and external history or language as an artefact and language as a system useful?
--- To what extent has socio-historical linguistics renewed the relationship between the two fields?
- How should we treat the articulation between the history of the language and the history of linguistic thought in the case of languages with an oral tradition? The linguistic description of languages with an oral tradition is underpinned by descriptive and metalinguistic categories, with a history which differs from that of grammars for languages with a written tradition. How should this history be described?
- What does recent reflection around certain mechanisms of language change such as analogy, reanalysis, grammaticalization, lexicalization, pragmaticalization, constructionalization, etc. contribute to the study of particular linguistic features or to thinking about the reasons for and the nature of linguistic change in general? How far do these concepts, exploited both in a synchronic perspective and in studies of the history of the language, shed fresh light on the Saussurian dichotomy between synchrony and diachrony?
Papers should focus on the relationship between the history of (one or more) languages and the history of linguistic representations. We welcome submissions on any language or period.
Abstracts and papers for the conference may be in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish.
