This workshop – funded by the SLE Research Grant – Joint Initiative scheme – is concerned with morphological expression of evaluative semantics (Grandi & Körtvélessy 2015), such as diminution (Dressler & Barbaresi 1994), intensification (Rainer 2015) or approximation (Masini, Norde & Van Goethem 2023). Evaluation is a broad concept, covering a wide array of values that are not always easy to distinguish from each other. Within approximation, for instance, we may identify privativity (Cappelle, Daugs & Hartmann 2023), similarity (Masini & Micheli 2020), depreciation (Amiot & Stosic 2022), fakeness (Van Goethem & Norde 2020) and a great many others. On the formal side, evaluation can be expressed by prefixes such as pseudo- (Vassiliadou et al. 2023), suffixes such as -ish (Eitelmann, Haugland & Haumann 2020), prefixoids such as German Hammer- ‘fantastic; very’ (Norde & Van Goethem 2018), or reduplication such as Mädchen-Mädchen ‘girly girl’ (Frankowsky 2022). On all levels, moreover, we find overlap and competition – similar values can be expressed by different bound morphemes and vice versa, often within one and the same language.
The purpose of this workshop is to gain a better understanding of the sources, formal expressions and values of evaluative morphology cross-linguistically, addressing the following Research Questions:
For this workshop, we invite empirically-based studies addressing one or more of the above RQs, with a special focus on methodological approaches (e.g. corpus-based or experimental) to unlock the domain of evaluative morphology and evaluative semantics. Case studies on understudied evaluative functions and values, as well as from understudied languages are particularly welcome.
Bert Cappelle (University of Lille)
If you are interested in participating in this workshop, please send an anonymous abstract of max. 500 words (excluding examples and references) to evaluativemorphology@gmail.com. In a separate file, send us a cover sheet including your name, affiliation, title and presentation preference (oral paper or poster). The new extended deadline for submissions is November 10, 2023, notification of acceptance will be sent out by December 1, 2023.
On March 13, Stefan Hartmann (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf) will offer a (hybrid) tutorial for PhD students on visualisation of morphological data (do's and don'ts of data visualisation, introduction to R graphics, basic plot types). If you are interested in participating in this tutorial, please send a short motivation letter (max. 300 words) to the conference address. (This also applies to PhD students who submit an abstract to the workshop.)
The workshop and the tutorial are free of charge.
Amiot, Dany & Dejan Stosic. 2022. Evaluative morphology: From evaluation to approximation and semi-categorization. In Vassiliadou, Hélène & Marie Lammert (Eds.), Clear and Approximate Categorization. A crosslinguistic Perspective, 53–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cappelle, Bert, Robert Daugs & Stefan Hartmann. 2023. The English privative prefixes near-, pseudo- and quasi-: Approximation and ‘disproximation’. Journal of Word Formation 7(1), 52-75.
Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Lavinia M. Barbaresi. 1994. Morphopragmatics. Diminutives and intensifiers in Italian, German, and other languages. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Eitelmann, Matthias, Kari Haugland & Dagmar Haumann. 2020. From engl-isc to whatever-ish: a corpus-based investigation of –ish derivation in the history of English. English Language and Linguistics 24(4). 801–831.
Frankowsky, Maximilian. 2022. Extravagant expressions denoting quite normal entities. Identical constituent compounds in German. In Eitelmann, Matthias & Dagmar Haumann (Eds.), Extravagant Morphology Studies in rule-bending, pattern-extending and theory-challenging morphology, 155-180. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Grandi, Nicola & Livia Körtvelyessy. 2015. Introduction: Why evaluative morphology? In Nicola Grandi & Lívia Körtvélyessy (Eds.), The Edinburgh handbook of evaluative morphology, 3–20. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Masini, Francesca & M. Silvia Micheli. 2020. The morphological expression of approximation: the emerging simil-construction in Italian. Word Structure 13(3), 371–402.
Masini, Francesca, Muriel Norde & Kristel Van Goethem (eds.) 2023. Approximation in morphology. Special issue of Journal of Word Formation 7(1).
Norde, Muriel & Kristel Van Goethem. 2018. Debonding and clipping of prefixoids in Germanic: Constructionalization or constructional Change? In Booij, Geert (Ed.) The Construction of Words, 475-518. Cham etc.: Springer.
Rainer, Franz. 2015. Intensification. In Müller, Peter O., Ingeborg Ohnheiser, Susan Olsen & Franz Rainer (Eds.), Word-formation: An international handbook of the languages of Europe, vol. 2, 1339–1351. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter.
Van Goethem, Kristel & Muriel Norde. 2020. Extravagant “fake” morphemes in Dutch. Morphological productivity, semantic profiles and categorical flexibility. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 16(3), 425-458.
Vassiliadou, Hélène, Francine Gerhard-Krait, Georgia Fotiadou & Marie Lammert. 2023. Pseudo(-) in French and Greek: Categorization and approximation. Journal of Word Formation 7(1), 234-262.