March 28, 2025 - March 29, 2025
https://sites.google.com/view/champ3upf/home
Many aspects of language are sensitive to specific properties of the addressee. This includes phenomena that pertain to the gender of the addressee, and their social status (e.g., allocutive agreement in Basque), and the presumed knowledge state of the addressee (as in evidentials in Cuzco Quechua, egophoricity in Newar, and some discourse particles in German). Some of these addressee-related phenomena (e.g., honorificity) have long been treated as a socio-pragmatic phenomenon and have figured prominently in pragmatic studies of politeness, for example. In contrast, they have received little attention from a morphosyntactic point of view, as they were deemed to fall outside of syntax, or even grammar more generally.
However, over the past 20 years, there has been an emerging consensus that properties of the speech-act participants (i.e., speaker and addressee) are syntactically represented. This led to an increased interest in the above-mentioned phenomena, with new ways to analyze them. Much of the body of work in this domain has focussed on the question of how to analyze these addressee-oriented phenomena, including questions such as the following, which have been at the core of CHAMP 1 & 2.
i) What is the range of variation regarding honorificity and other addressee-sensitive phenomena?
ii) Is a unified analysis of honorificity possible?
iii) Is there a dedicated feature for honorificity [HON]?
iv) What accounts for differences in the embeddability of addressee-sensitive phenomena?
v) Is the meaning of addressee-sensitive phenomena part of the expressive dimension?
In CHAMP III, we continue this tradition in addition to extending the empirical and analytical questions. Specifically, current (morpho)syntactic analyses of addressee-sensitive phenomena rarely take into consideration the insights and generalizations from the existing socio-pragmatic scholarship. Thus, in the current reincarnation of the workshop, we wish to bridge this gap.
As a case in point, consider the use of honorifics and formal pronouns. Most morphosyntactic accounts of these phenomena include a grammatical encoding (e.g., via dedicated features) of the social relation between the interlocutors (i.e., relative status and familiarity) and/or the formality of the situation. What is often overlooked, however, is the fact that in classic politeness theory, there are three major sociocultural variables that enter the calculation of politeness: distance, power, and rank of imposition. While distance and power are accommodated in grammatical treatments (via the above-mentioned features), the third variable (rank of imposition) is not typically considered. Roughly, it concerns the level of politeness required depending on how much the speaker imposes on the addressee through their utterance (e.g., asking for tissues is less of an imposition than requesting the addressee to help with a move). The overarching framework that underlies the logic of these variables in human interaction relates to the concept of face, which is often considered to be universally applicable. Politeness strategies are used to mitigate potentially face-threatening acts by displaying adequate respect for the interlocutor (positive face) and by minimizing the blow of the imposition of the utterance (negative face).
What is relevant in the context of the exploration of honorifics and their kin is the fact that languages seem to differ as to whether they are sensitive to any or all of these sociocultural variables. For example, the T/V distinction familiar from Indo-European pronominal systems is not sensitive to rank of imposition while the use of honorific marking in Japanese and Korean is. This raises the question as to whether this variable should be included in grammatical representations and if so, how. More generally, it raises the question regarding the role of face in our grammatical knowledge.
To answer these questions, it is essential to have a firm grasp on the empirical landscape and to explore the correlation between the socio-cultural variables and honorific and addressee morpho-syntactic processes. Are there language-wide generalizations or do different phenomena within a given language differ in their sensitivity to these variables? Similar questions arise for other addressee-sensitive phenomena that, at first sight, appear to be purely pragmatic. Questions we hope to address include (but are not limited to) the following:
1. Which of the socio-cultural variables that enter into the calculation of politeness are grammatically mediated? And how can we tell?
2. Is the use of honorifics and their kin sensitive to the presence of another person in the context of the interaction (i.e., is there a bystander effect that affects the use of honorifics, and if so, how can this be modelled)?
3. Is the use of indirect speech acts for reasons of politeness syntactically mediated in similar ways as the use of honorifics is?
Thus, one of the core goals of CHAMP III is to chart the honorific and addressee morphosyntactic processes by considering classic politeness-theoretic notions that dictate their use. In this way, we aim to bridge the divide between approaching addressee-sensitive phenomena from a purely socio-pragmatic perspective and approaching them from a purely morphosyntactic perspective. In doing so, we hope to be able to develop criteria that will allow researchers to determine whether a given phenomenon should receive a purely pragmatic treatment or whether a morphosyntactic treatment is called for.
Hence, the purpose of CHAMP III is to bring together researchers with different backgrounds (both in terms of sub-discipline and theoretical stance) to engage in a dialogue regarding the empirical landscape of addressee-sensitive phenomena as well as their implications for our understanding of the division of labour of morpho-syntax and pragmatics. We aim to create an inclusive, stimulating, and constructive atmosphere where ideas can be discussed from a variety of perspectives. To this end, the final afternoon will be dedicated to a round-table discussion.
We invite abstracts for 20-minute oral presentations, as well as poster presentations, on any of the themes described above. Submissions that address the interplay between pragmatic politeness theory and their morphosyntactic expression are particularly encouraged. Contributions of any theoretical stance are welcome with the aim to promote a dialogue among different approaches towards addressee-oriented phenomena.
Invited Speakers:
Ruoan Wang (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Elin McCready (Aoyama Gakuin University)
Dániel Kádár (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics)
Submission instructions:
Each author may submit no more than one single-authored and one co-authored anonymous abstract.
Abstracts must be anonymous.
Abstracts should fit two A4 pages, including examples and references.
Please use 1-inch margins on all sides and a 12-point font.
Submissions open: Sept. 30, 2024 - Nov. 15, 2024
Abstract review period: Nov. 16, 2024 - Dec. 20, 2024