Modelling Dialogue and Language Change: a Dynamic Syntax Account

ESSLLI 08, Hamburg (Germany)

Lecturers: Ruth Kempson and Ronnie Cann
Course Type: Language and Computation, Advanced
Schedule: 4-8 August 2008, week 1: 17:15-18:45
Course website: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/groups/ds/essllicourse.html

Course Description

This series addresses issues involving the interaction of syntax and pragmatics: intrinsic language variation, dialogue-alignment effects and clitic clustering. Having been introduced to the framework of Dynamic Syntax via an incremental model of Latin processing despite its free word order (scrambling), students will be shown how this account can be used to model generation, ellipsis, dialogue-alignment and routinisation effects. We shall show how inherent variability within the grammatical system and routinisation of sequences of actions can explain the development of the clitic systems (including clustering effects) within the Romance languages: in particular, we show that the range of patterns that clitics display in Romance corresponds to the range of strategies used in flexible word-order systems for incrementally establishing content. The result will be a case-study model of why optionality/variation is intrinsic to language, how preferences in variation arise, and how change is not always in the direction of increasing transparency.