Morphological Complexity

Full Title: Morphological Complexity

Date: 22-Jan-2010 - 22-Jan-2010
Location: Cambridge, MA, USA
Contact Person: Matthew Baerman
Meeting Email: morphological.complexity@googlemail.com
Web Site: http://www.morphology.surrey.ac.uk/Workshop.htm

Linguistic Field(s): Morphology; Syntax

Call Deadline: 31-Oct-2009

Meeting Description:

The Surrey Morphology Group (University of Surrey, UK) and the Department of
Linguistics at Harvard University will host a one-day workshop entitled
'Morphological Complexity: Implications for the Theory of Language', as part of
a European Research Council project (grant number: ERC-2008-AdG-230268 MORPHOLOGY).

The workshop will be held on January 22, 2010 (Friday), on the Harvard Campus in
Cambridge MA. The conference is organized by Matthew Baerman, Greville Corbett
and Dunstan Brown (Surrey) and Maria Polinsky (Harvard).

Second Call for Papers

By the term 'morphological complexity', we understand the extra layer of
structure that morphological systems may introduce in between meaning and its
expression. This layer may operate at cross-purposes to functional distinctions,
attaining in some languages an astonishing degree of complexity. Such apparently
arbitrary distinctions in form (inflection classes, irregularity and similar
phenomena) are the particular focus of the project. They are a key resource for
understanding mental processes as they represent an unconscious and yet highly
structured autonomous system. This will be the first in a series of workshops,
to be held in various locations, addressing the implications that morphological
complexity has for (i) general linguistic theory, (ii) psycholinguistics, (iii)
historical linguistics and (iv) computational linguistics. The present workshop
will focus on question 'i'; that is, the ramifications that morphological
complexity has for linguistic theory and models of grammar.

The workshop will involve a mixture of invited papers and those selected by
abstract. The theme of the workshop is laid out in a position paper (last
updated October 10, 2009), available here. Abstracts are invited for 20 minute
presentations (plus a 10-minute question period), within this theme. Anonymous
abstracts should be no more than one page, and should be sent as an e-mail
attachment (in PDF or Word) by October 31, 2009 to:
morphological.complexity@googlemail.com.