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DIGS VII (2001)

Maryland MAYFEST 2000

Sponsored by:

Syntactic Effects of Changes in Inflectional Systems

May 22 to 24, 2000
University of Maryland at College Park

Every year, the Linguistics Department organizes MAYFEST, a colloquium where speakers are invited to report on a variety of issues related to one theme.

Mayfest 2000 will host DIGS VI -- The sixth meeting of the Diachronic Generative Syntax series. Invited speakers are Cynthia Allen, Ted Briscoe, Susan Pintzuk, Ian Roberts and Dianne Jonas.

    The goal of this meeting is to provide a forum for the discussion of recent work on historical change in syntactic systems in the context of generative grammar. Historical change constitutes a particular form of variation. One can find cases where grammars vary only minimally: there may be just a single difference in two abstract systems. If one can isolate points of variation in this way, one can then ask why the new system should have emerged in children at a certain point in time, and this may illuminate the way in which children acquire their syntactic capacities. Within this perspective, the study of language change is fused with work on language variation and the acquisition of language.
    The meeting will focus on the syntactic effects of changes in inflectional systems, for example examining the effects of the loss of morphological case systems. It is an old intuition that languages with rich inflection have a different kind of syntax from languages with poor inflection. Now work within the Minimalist Program posits a tight connection between syntactic operations and morphological features: movement of any element (head or phrasal category) to any functional position takes place only when required to check morphological features. This raises the question of how strong/weak distinctions match morphological properties.
    So the meeting will address a major question in syntactic theory and extend the dialogue between historical linguists and acquisitionists, on the assumption that their work is mutually enlightening.

Below you find the program as it stands now; alternates will be added next week. You can also download the program as RTF-file or PDF-file. (You should be able to open the RTF-file in your word processing application; PDF-files can be opened with Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free download.)

Almeida Jacqueline Toribio (Pennsylvania State U.)
Inflectional variation and syntactic innovation: A synchronic perspective

Richard Ingham (Reading U.)
Expletive negatives and Neg movement in Middle English

In order to register for DIGS VI/Mayfest 2000, please print out the following registration form and mail it with your payment to:

DIGS VI/Registration
Dept. of Linguistics
University of Maryland
1401 Marie Mount Hall
College Park MD 20742-7505 - USA

Please donwload the registration form in either RTF-format or PDF-format.

• Conference Pre-registration (**payment has to be received by May 10th**): US$ 15.
Registration covers the Conference abstract booklet and other materials, continental buffet breakfast for the 3 days of the conference, beverages and snacks during the posted breaks.

• Conference Registration after May 10th (by mail or on-site): US$ 25.

• Conference dinner (May 23rd at 7:00PM): US$ 20.
We strongly encourage you to register in advance for the dinner, since there is only a limited number of seats available.

Payment should be made by check or money order drawn on a US bank and payable to 'DIGS VI'. Receipt and conference materials will be available at the registration desk.

Questions on registration by email to Cilene Rodrigues at cilene@wam.umd.edu.

The focus of the meeting will be on syntactic effects of changes in inflectional systems. However, one-page abstracts are invited for 20-minute presentations on any aspect of syntactic change within the context of generative grammars.

    Deadline for receipt of abstracts is 1 February 2000. Five copies (four anonymous and one with author's name) should be sent to:
Prof David Lightfoot, Department of Linguistics, College Park, MD 20742-7505, USA.

Directions to campus, parking, maps, area restaurants etc.
Marie Mount Hall location map (site of 2nd day of conference)
Stamp Student Union location map (site of 1st and 3rd days of conference)

Because Commencement is on May 25th, some of the local hotels are fully booked. So we offered the alternative below:

Towncenter Hotel, in Silver Spring (8727 Colesville Road, Silver Spring, MD 20910; tel 301-589-5200; fax 301-588-1841)

This is some distance from the University but it has virtues: rooms are $80 (tell them you are with DIGS), it has a very good Italian restaurant in the basement (Sergio's), it has easy access to the metro going to DC, and it is on the shuttle line to the University.
[ The shuttle bus stop is a 5-10 minute walk from the hotel, leaving from the Silver Spring metro stop: from the hotel turn left as you go on to Colesville Road, left on to Georgia, right on to Bonifant, and the bus (clearly marked "University of Maryland") leaves from under the parking garage and drops you at the Student Union, where DIGS VI will be. Buses leave Silver Spring at 10 and 40 minutes past the hour; the last bus from the University back to Silver Spring is at 10:15pm. You will need a letter to use the service, which you will be able to pick up at the hotel front desk from Sunday evening on, by identifying yourself as a conference participant.]

Hotel webpages (with services, pictures and maps)
Hotel toll free numbers and distances to the campus
Hotel available discounts (you have to mention that you are affiliated with the University of Maryland)

If you want to receive updated information about DIGS VI and future DIGS conferences, please send an email to pires@wam.umd.edu with the subject 'Subscribe DIGS'. Optionally, include your name, mail address and phone in the body of the message.
    If you want to unsubscribe, send a mail to pires@wam.umd.edu with the subject 'Unsubscribe DIGS'.

David Lightfoot (dlight@deans.umd.edu) phone: 301-405 4929
Acrisio Pires (pires@wam.umd.edu) phone: 301-405 3082 (voice mail)
Cilene Rodrigues (cilene@wam.umd.edu)

snail mail:
Mayfest 2000/DIGS VI
Department of Linguistics
University of Maryland
1401 Marie Mount Hall
College Park, MD 20742