The 29th edition of the Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop is jointly organised by the Minimalist Syntax Group at the Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, and the “Rethinking Comparative Syntax” (ReCoS) project at the University of Cambridge. The dates for the workshop are 25-27 September 2014.

Invited Speakers
Liliane Haegeman (Ghent)
Henk van Riemsdijk (Tilburg)
Jim Wood (Yale)

We invite abstracts for thirty-minute talks (followed by ten minutes of discussion ) on any aspect of comparative Germanic syntax, including diachronic syntax.

Abstract Guidelines

Abstracts should not exceed two pages, with 2.5cm margins on all sides and a font size of 12pt. This includes data, references and diagrams.

Each author may submit no more than one single-authored and one co-authored abstract, or two co-authored ones.

Abstracts must be anonymous and prospective presenters should submit their abstract in pdf to cgsw29@york.ac.uk.

 

The deadline for submission is 15 June 2013.

Notification of acceptance by 15 July 2013.

CGSW will be preceded by a one day workshop on the state of the art in comparative syntax.  The call for papers for this event follows:

The study of comparative grammar has a long and distinguished pedigree. Within Generative Grammar, truly comparative work really began in earnest with the advent of the Principles and Parameters model in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Thirty-five years on, we have accumulated a vast store of knowledge which has both deepened our understanding of crosslinguistic variation and directly informed our understanding of the language faculty. The purpose of this workshop is to consider questions such as the following:

• What have comparative studies taught us about the origin, extent and significance of syntactic variation, and about the nature of the language faculty and its interaction with other cognitive domains?

• How do the results of comparative generative work fit with the theoretical assumptions central to work in the minimalist framework and, in particular, with its commitment to a minimally specified Universal Grammar, to the importance of the interfaces, and to so-called ‘third-factor’ effects in shaping the form of grammars?

• What is the agenda for future work in comparative syntax?

• Are there methodological lessons to be learned from comparative work so far?

The workshop will feature invited talks by David Pesetsky (MIT) and Giuseppe Longobardi (York), with extended commentaries by Ian Roberts (Cambridge) and Anders Holmberg (Newcastle) respectively.

 Abstracts for this workshop should be submitted to the same address as for CGSW29, and by the same deadline, but authors should indicate in the body of the email that their abstract should specifically be considered for the workshop.