The diachrony of flagging (Cas et adpositions en diachronie)

The diachrony of flagging (Cas et adpositions en diachronie)

Paris, 5-6 September 2024

(organization Gilles Authier, EPHE, PSL)

Colloque soutenu par l’EPHE et la Fondation Hugot du Collège de France

The joint diachronic study adpositions and cases is justified by the observation that the latter are most often derived from the former, and both types form a continuum under cover terms such as ‘dependent marking’ (Nichols 1986, 1992) or ‘flagging’ (Haspelmath 2013, 2019).
The goal of the workshop is to confront views on the grammaticalisation of dependant markers or ‘flags’ and the evolution of linguistic systems from specialists working first-hand on the historical grammar of lesser studied languages and the reconstruction of protolanguages.
Contributions will address (among others) the following topics:

• historical typology of languages and linguistic families from the point of view of dependent marking;
• lexical sources of adpositions and cases in individual languages/language families (grammaticalisation of relational nouns in adpositions, clitics and bound cases);
• non-nominal origins for adpositions and cases;
• historical studies on the distribution of cases and adpositions;
• lexical (semantic, phonological or arbitrary) restrictions in the distribution of cases and adpositions;
• family-internal or areal cross-linguistic analyses of the distribution of cases and adpositions;
• diachronic stability of cases and adpositions within individual languages and families;
• loss of cases and adpositions;
• the role of contact and areal convergence in the evolution of dependent marking systems.