What's New: Program (Final/PDF) 2015/7/2

The Department of Crosslinguistic Studies at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL) will be organizing an international symposium entitled Grammaticalization In Japanese and Across Languages accompanied by a special session on grammaticalization in Japanese. The details are as follows.

Dates: 3rd (Friday) to 5th (Sunday) July 2015
Venue: The National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL), 10-2 Midori-cho, Tachikawa-shi, Tokyo 190-8561, Japan ACCESS map
Organizing committee: Prashant PARDESHI (NINJAL) and Heiko NARROG (TOHOKU U/NINJAL)

Grammaticalization theory has been one of the most powerful frameworks of non-formal grammar in the past two decades internationally and has also increasingly engendered research in Japan in the past 10 or so years. Yet, despite the exponential increase in published research, and a strong research impetus originally coming from the study of African languages, main stream understanding of grammaticalization processes is still tightly bound to knowledge obtained from a very limited number of languages, such as the Germanic and Romance languages in Western publications, and English and Japanese in Japanese publications. Also, the widely accepted claim of unidirectionality may give the mistaken impression that grammaticalization is a uniform phenomenon. However, studies on grammaticalization in less-studied languages give us good reason to believe that there are considerable differences in different types of languages with respect to what typically constitutes grammaticalization. At this juncture, where grammaticalization research has greatly matured in general, the opportunity is ripe to investigate this issue in more depth.

Research issues
The starting point are areal clusters of languages. Although typological characteristics and areal distribution do not always converge, there is a strong tendency for languages of different genetic origin to cluster areally in terms of structure. So-called "Standard Average European", the Pacific Rim languages, South Asian languages, and South East Asian languages are well-known examples. Therefore, we have invited top experts on a variety of linguistic areas of the world as widely spread as possible. The speakers are asked to address the following questions:

  • What is characteristic of grammaticalization processes in the languages of your expertise?
  • To what extent are these processual, rather than characteristics being simply characteristics of the (synchronic) grammatical structure of these languages?
  • How do these characteristics bear on the general understanding of how we define and what constitutes grammaticalization, and how we should approach grammaticalization research?
  • How do they bear on our understanding of motivations for grammaticalization?
  • Do they also reflect back on specific grammaticalization processes in those languages that are typically used in research? The goal of this symposium is to cast a wide net and come to a comprehensive (if only preliminary) understanding of the issues at hand. Therefore, while case studies can be part of the presentation, the main focus should be on the overview of the characteristics of a larger group of languages.

◆Introduction
Heiko Narrog (Tohoku U and NINJAL)

◆Cross-Linguistic Session

Umberto Ansaldo (Hongkong U)
Östen Dahl (Stockholm U)
Mohssen Esseesy (U Washington)
Bernd Heine (U Köln)
Peter Hook(U Michigan/Virginia and NINJAL) and Prashant Pardeshi (NINJAL)
Kazuyuki Kiryu (Mimasaka U)
Marian Klamer (U Leiden)
John McWhorter (Columbia U)
Marianne Mithun (UC Santa Barbara)
Ilana Mushin (U Queensland)
Masayoshi Shibatani (Rice U and NINJAL)
Roberto Zariquiey (La Pontificia U Católica del Perú))

◆Session on Japanese

Invited speakers
Hirofumi Aoki (Kyushu U) 青木 博史（九州大学）
Toshio Ōhori (Tokyo U) 大堀 壽夫（東京大学）
Noriko Onodera (Aoyama Gakuin U) 小野寺 典子（青山学院大学）
Satoshi Kinsui (Osaka U) 金水 敏（大阪大学）
Tomokazu Koyanagi (Seishin Joshi U) 小柳 智一（聖心女子大学）
Kaoru Horie (Nagoya U) 堀江 薫（名古屋大学）

General Presentations
Hiroshi Abe (Nagoya U) 阿部 裕（名古屋大学）
Takako Hisayoshi (Kokusai Iryō Fukushi U) 久好 孝子（国際医療福祉大学）
Yūichirō Kasama (Kyūshū U) 笠間 裕一郎（九州大学大学院）
Kim, Alan Hyun-Oak（Southern Illinois University at Carbondale）
Hideki Kishimoto (Kōbe U) 岸本 秀樹（神戸大学）
Asako Miyachi (Nagoya U) 宮地 朝子（名古屋大学）
Ryoko Suzuki and Tsuyoshi Ono (Alberta U) 鈴木 亮子（慶応義塾大学）・大野 剛（アルバータ大学）
Wenjiang Yang (Nankai U) 楊 文江（中国　南開大学）

◆Poster presentations

Mikyung Ahn (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, South Korea)
Chihkai Lin (University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, USA)
Lukas Rieser and Rihito Shirata (Kyoto University and JSPS/University of the Ryukyus, Japan)
Marie Meili Yeh (National Hsinchu University of Education, Taiwan)
原田幸一 (淑徳大学)
髙 雅妃 (神戸女学院大学大学院)
柴﨑礼士郎 (明治大学)
朱 冰（名古屋大学大学院）
林智昭 (日本学術振興会／京都大学大学院)
胡 シン（九州大学大学院博士後期課程)・劉 洪岩（燕山外国語研究科）

Program (Final/PDF)


◆Attendance fee
(1) Symposium: 1,000yen per person including students
(2) Banquet: Students 1,000yen / Others 3,000yen

*Online registration does not entail online payment. Please pay in person at the conference site.

◆Deadline for online registration
(1) Symposium: by June 30(Tue) *Onsite registration is also possible.
(2) Banquet: by June 26 (Fri)

*Banquet: July 3(Fri) 18:30-20:30
*After submitting the registration form, the auto-reply message will be sent to your e-mail address. If you do not receive the message within 24 hours, please send email to: grammaticalization-sympo<at>ninjal.ac.jp.

Directions & Accommodation