HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS: Descriptive approach to Alghero: diachrony and synchrony
Andreu Bosch i Rodoreda (Universitat de Barcelona)
Language of the course: Catalan
Brief course description
In the 1st session, the synchronic description of Alguerès will be addressed, with a profusion of examples (documentation projected in PPT), at the various levels of the language. The linguistic changes evidenced by documents such as the damage records and livestock records of the Alguer Barracelleria (from the 17th-19th centuries, entirely in Catalan) and other archival sources (Municipal Historical Archive of Alguer and other funds) will be commented on in particular. focusing on phonetic changes (both phenomena shared by other eastern languages and interference phenomena from Sardinian) and lexical changes (substitution of genuine words by Sardinians). The lexicographic and phonetic observations of Antoni Ciuffo at the 1st International Congress of the Catalan Language (1906) and those of Joan Palomba will be discussed, with his grammar from Alghero, which was praised by Pompeu Fabra.
The 2nd session will deal with the synchronic description of Alguerès (from the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st), from phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax, and the lexicon, based on ethnotexts from Histories of Alghero, between the navy and the campaign (1996), Tintin in the land of black gold (1995), Mataresies and the Oral Corpus of Alguerès (UPF).
In the practical session, activities will be proposed to identify and describe phenomena that characterize Alguerès, based on ethnotexts and recordings, and will also comment on images of the use of Alguerès in road, commercial, institutional and tourism, where the issue of the Alghero standard and other codification problems will be addressed, with various publications adapted to Alghero from the Center for Pedagogical Resources Maria Montessori (1994-2012).
Also, based on the interests of the students, the proposal may focus on some of these aspects or others that derive from them.
SYNTAX: The cartography of locative expressions: reflections from the prepositional system in Catalan
Cristina Real-Puigdollers (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Language of the course: English
Brief course description
In this course, we provide an introduction to the syntax of locative expressions in Catalan. In the first part of the course, we will provide an introduction to the theoretical foundations of the syntactic structure and semantic interpretation of locative expressions. We will define the building blocks of locative expressions based on concepts from cognitive linguistics, such as figure and ground as introduced by Talmy (1975), as well as the concepts of path and location, as defined by Jackendoff (1987). Subsequently, we will explore cartographic proposals, like the ones developed in the works of Koopman (2010), Den Dikken (2010), Svenonius (2003, 2006, 2010), and Pantcheva (2011). These works essentially argue that prepositional phrases have an internal structure with several functional categories, present in all languages, hierarchically organized, each of which yield the interpretation of locations and paths compositionally.
In the second part of the course, our attention will be directed towards three specific functional categories assumed within the cartographic approach, namely Aspect Phrase, Deictic Phrase, and AxPart Phrase. We will analyse these categories in the Catalan system of locative expressions. Our aim is to critically review the cartographic approach in order to develop a more minimalist syntactic analysis, in line with what is proposed in Real-Puigdollers (2021) and Acedo-Matellán and Real Puigdollers (2022). We will focus on three types of expressions: simple locative prepositions, a and en, locative adverbials (like aquí, ací, allà, among others), and prepositional phrases containing axial terms (e.g., a dins de lit.at inside of‘inside’, al costat de lit.at.the side of ‘next to’, a prop de lit.at close of‘near’, etc.).
The practical part of the course is divided into two blocks. In the first block, we will engage in exercises involving the analysis of locative expressions in Catalan using the cartographic approach introduced in the first lesson, with the aim to critically evaluate its limitations. In the second block, we will examine various empirical phenomena, including: (1) the semantic interpretation of the complement of the prepositions a and en and their interaction with the universal quantifier tot ‘all’; (2) the analysis of locative adverbials in Catalan, and (3) the analysis of complex prepositions. The objective of this second block is to demonstrate that certain cartographic projections (although not all of them) are dispensable, as they can be derived from the general properties of noun phrases (NPs).
SOCIOLINGUISTICS: Linguistic ideologies and ethnographic work
Ivan Solivellas (Universitat de les Illes Balears)
Language of the course: Catalan
Brief course description
The course aims to provide an initial introduction to linguistic ideologies and ethnographic work. In this sense, the theoretical part will be oriented, first of all, to define what linguistic ideologies are, according to the contributions of different renowned authors, and to account for some unknowns that are observed in this field of study ( the border between ideology and attitude, the different conceptions of the term, etc.). Secondly, different tools will also be shown that allow us to study this phenomenon, either through quantitative resources such as, above all, qualitative ones, with a focus mainly on ethnographic work and resources such as discussion groups, interviews or interviews observation (participant and non-participant).
Now, beyond this theoretical dimension, which is important to know what ideologies are and how they can be studied, the course also wants to offer resources so that participants can get started in this field of study. So, in the practical session, a guide will be offered to design works on linguistic ideologies, from which the attendees – individually or in pairs – will have to design a research proposal applied to a specific area. In this way, it will be possible to put into practice the theoretical part (which perspective they take on the concept of ideology, which resources they will use, etc.) and the practical part (design process, topic proposal, etc.).
Finally, the tutoring session will make it possible to comment in depth on all the aspects that have not been resolved both in theory and in practice. Thus, the students will be able to resolve some doubts, make contributions, comment on the designed work, etc. The final intention, in fact, is to ensure that some of the attendees have sufficient motivation to carry out the research they have proposed, whether as TFG, TFM, doctoral theses, etc. In this sense, both in the practical session and in the tutorial, the teacher will propose some names of researchers and study centers from all over the Catalan-speaking territories that could guide the different works.
PHONOLOGY: Typological exploration with OT-Help: the case of obstruent voice assimilation in Catalan
Francesc Torres-Tamarit (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Language of the course: English
Brief course description
This course is structured into three blocks distributed over two plenary sessions, which are theoretical in nature, and one practical session.
In the first block, the processes of voice neutralization and assimilation affecting obstruent consonants in different dialects of Catalan will be described (Jiménez and Lloret 2008). The second block will introduce Optimality Theory.
During the first part of Plenary Session II, Stratal OT, a serial model alternative to Optimality Theory, will be presented. According to Stratal OT, phonological evaluation applies recursively to three phonological domains determined by the morphosyntactic structure of linguistic expressions (the stem, the word, and the phrase). The second part of the session will involve a simplified analysis of obstruent voice neutralization and assimilation in Stratal OT based on Bermúdez-Otero (2001). The basic idea of the analysis is that the laryngeal node, which dominates the monovalent feature [voice] in voiced obstruents, is only licensed in onset position. The process of obstruent voice neutralization, explained by the loss of the laryngeal node, affects obstruents in coda position and is a lexical process. At the level of phrasal phonology, underspecified obstruents can acquire the laryngeal node from the following consonant or vowel or acquire an inserted laryngeal node if they are in absolute final position. The spreading of the laryngeal node is subject to constraints based on the similarity of segments sharing the laryngeal node; these constraints are related to each other by implicational relations (Bermúdez-Otero 2001, Jiménez and Lloret 2008). The more different the segments are from each other, the more marked the structure with a shared laryngeal node. In central Catalan, only fricatives, but not stops, in the final position of a word can share the laryngeal node with the initial vowel of a following word (po[k] amable, but go[z] amic). However, in the Catalan of Alacant (València), any obstruent can share the laryngeal node (po[ɣ] amable, go[z] amic). In some other varieties of Valencian, only spreading from consonant to obstruent is possible, not from vowel to obstruent (po[k] amable, go[s] amic, but go[z] guardià).
During the practical session, we will work with the freely accessible software OT-Help. This program is used to check whether an analysis in Optimality Theory works, and, above all, to explore its typological predictions. In this session, the spreadsheet in tableau format that is loaded into OT-Help will be filled out, and the program’s navigation options will be demonstrated. A set of exercises will also be proposed and solved in a collaborative manner with the aim of encouraging students to reflect on the typological predictions of the analysis developed in Plenary Session II. Students are required to bring their laptops. Detailed instructions on how to install OT-Help will be sent before the start of the course.