Vortrag: Linguistic Innovation

Trying to specify a thorny concept

There is a vast field of phenomena that have been subsumed under the term ‘linguistic innovation’: the emergence of a new word in a language’s corpus; a shift in articulation of some vowel /ᴂ/ in a specific area; a shift of meaning of a word like German “toll” from ‘crazy’ to ‘good’; the introduction of a (new) script to a minority language; the use of vernacular language instead of Latin in catholic church service – to name just a few. But even though linguistic innovation is a core concept in historical-comparative and sociolinguistics, definitions often remain superficial or taken for granted. The talk wants to spark a discussion that may reify some of the underlying presuppositions in the field of linguistic innovation. Our central task will be the review of several metaphors that have been (or could be) applied as heuristics to analyze diverse cases as the indicated above. Finally, we will provide a working definition on which further discussion can build upon.

There is a vast field of phenomena that have been subsumed under the term ‘linguistic innovation’: the emergence of a new word in a language’s corpus; a shift in articulation of some vowel /ᴂ/ in a specific area; a shift of meaning of a word like German “toll” from ‘crazy’ to ‘good’; the introduction of a (new) script to a minority language; the use of vernacular language instead of Latin in catholic church service – to name just a few. But even though linguistic innovation is a core concept in historical-comparative and sociolinguistics, definitions often remain superficial or taken for granted. The talk wants to spark a discussion that may reify some of the underlying presuppositions in the field of linguistic innovation. Our central task will be the review of several metaphors that have been (or could be) applied as heuristics to analyze diverse cases as the indicated above. Finally, we will provide a working definition on which further discussion can build upon.

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Tag: 21.05.2020
Anfangszeit: 15:30
Dauer: 00:30
Raum: Herring
Track: Diverse
Sprache: en

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