The choice of grammatical forms and constructions used for event descriptions, such as voice, differential case marking, or the realization of argument expressions, can be influenced by many different factors. One such factor is the internal organization of a text into what we call here ?(larger) discourse units?.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a number of works on the internal structure of discourse have been published (cf. Chafe 1980, Longacre 1979, van Dijk 1981) that investigate the syntax and semantics of so-called ?paragraphs? or ?episodes? in spoken and written language, i.e. units characterized as ?coherent sequences of sentences of a discourse, linguistically marked for beginning and/or end, and further defined in terms of some kind of ‘thematic unity’ ? for instance, in terms of identical participants, time, location or global event or action? (van Dijk 1981: 177). While in written language, discourse units are usually signalled graphically, in oral or signed speech such units are much less easily recognizable.
The workshop is based on a collaboration between the projects? Morphosyntax in Discourse? of the LABEX /Empirical Foundations in Language /in Paris (https://en.labex-efl.fr/) and ?Prominence-related structures in symmetrical voice systems and Papuan languages? of the Collaborative Research Centre /Prominence in Language/ in Cologne (https://sfb1252.uni-koeln.de/en/ <https://sfb1252.uni-koeln.de/en/>).
We hope to discover operationalizable methods for identifying larger discourse units with the help of semantic, lexical, grammatical and/or prosodic cues both in well-studied and in more recently documented languages. We are particularly interested in cues that so far have not been considered as being discourse boundary related such as differential case marking, specific voice constructions, etc. The workshop is meant as an opportunity for researchers from different theoretical backgrounds and with an expertise on typologically distinct languages to make further progress in the analysis of discourse data.
Dates:
Workshop dates: March 21st -22nd , 2024
Program:
For more information, here’s the link to the workshop presentation: https://units.sciencesconf.org/
Scientific Committee:
Isabelle Bril
Katharina Haude
Nikolaus P. Himmelmann
Sonja Riesberg
Fahime Same
