Kleparski, Grzegorz A.

Nerlich, Brigitte

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 242Z E S Z Y T Y N A U K O W E   UNIWERSYTETU RZESZOWSKIEGO  SERIA FILOLOGICZNA ZESZYT 6/2002   STUDIA ANGLICA RESOVIENSIA 1Brigitte NERLICH, Grzegorz A KLEPARSKI  REPORT ON 34TH CONFERENCE OF THE SOCIETAS LINGUISTICA EUROPEA: LANGUAGE STUDY IN EUROPE AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM. TOWARDS THE INTEGRATION OF COGNITIVE, HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE.  Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, August 28–31, 2001. The conference, attended by over 300 participants from all over the world, was most efficiently organised by Bert Cornillie and Nicole Delbecque. It took place in the idyllic setting of the university town of Leuven. The participants were  generously  plied  with  coffee  and  biscuits  to  keep  them  going  and  the conference  dinner  brought  all  the  participants  together  in  a  very  convivial atmosphere of wine, food and merriment. It all began with a welcoming address given by Nicole Delbecque, followed by  a  presidential  address  by  Pieter  Seuren  on  The  Cognitive  Dimension  in Language Study. All the presentations were given in nine parallels. Apart from that  there  were  also  workshops  on  a  variety  of  topics.  This  meant  that  the average attendance at each talk was about 20–30 participants, often less, as the days  went  by.  There  were  six  plenary  lectures  of  varying  quality  and entertainment value.  It is obviously impossible to report on all the papers, workshops and plenary lectures given at the conference, so we will merely list and – to a limited degree –  comment  upon  those  lectures  which  broadly  dealt  with  historical/cognitive linguistics – the linguistic disciplines which are of special interest to the authors of this report.1  Christine  Michaux:  What  linguistics  has  to  say  about  smells:  A  cognitive perspective.  1  For  more  information  you  can  access  the  following  very  complete  web-site: http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/sle2001/default.htm.  243Olga Molchanova: Componential categories and their application to colour-terms in English and Polish. Olga  Latina:  Black  and  white:  A  study  in  cognitive  semantics.  This  paper focused  on  the  relation  between  metaphor  and  culture  and  attempted  to demonstrate  that  broadly-understood  culture  plays  a  significant  role  in  the processes of conceptualisation. Inke  Dubois:  A  diachronic  view  on  code-switching  and  implications  on  the multiple embedding of German immigrant identities. This paper showed that the employment of code-switching, the juxtaposition of two or more languages in discourse,  among  German  citizens  residing  in  an  English  speaking  country, needs  to  be  viewed  as  a  diachronic  phenomenon  in  which  second  language acquisition, first language attrition and the creation of a ‘mixed code’ all play a role. Heli Tissari: Love in words: Experience and conceptualisation in the modern English  lexicon  of  love.  This  paper  dealt  with  words  classified  under  the heading  LOVE  in  The  Historical  Thesaurus  of  English.  It  concentrated  on words  entering  the  English  language  after  1500,  asking  which  domains  of human  experience  they  belong  to  and  which  cognitive  metaphors  they represent.  Augusto  Soares  da  Silva:  Verbs  of  Letting:  Some  cognitive  and  historical aspects.  This  paper  started  from  the  premise  that  ‘letting’  is  a  complex conceptual category. The author distinguished between three dynamic concepts of ‘letting’: ‘not prevent’, ‘let go, release’, and ‘allow, permit’. He claimed that these  concepts  are  found  semasiologically  united  in  one  single  verb,  but  are onomasiologically differentiated in different groups of verbs, and related to or incorporated  into  other  concepts.  The  author  studied  some  aspects  of  the conceptualisation  and  the  historical  formation  of  these  concepts  in  their distribution into different groups of (mainly Romance) verbs.  Monika Bielinska: Zur Phraseologie aus konfrontativer Sicht am Beispiel des Deutschen und Polnischen. Dejan Stosic: Sémantique de l’espace à travers une étude du préverbe ‘pro-’ en serbo-croate. Axel Fleisch: Lexicalised emotions and diachronic semantics in southern Bantu languages. The author made an attempt to address issues of diachronic semantics (the  semantics  of  emotional  terms)  in  African  languages  (Bantu)  where diachronic  documents  are  not  available.  Among  others,  the  author  tried  to address the following questions: 1) By which semantic strategies are emotions expressed verbally, what metaphors and metonyms are used? 2) Are these similar among related languages, or is the use of specific strategies rather randomly distributed? 3) What is the linguistic history of these expressions? 4) What role do  culture-specific  features  play?  5) What  about a real  contact  and semantic change?  244Wladimir  D.  Klimonov:  Die  Entwicklung  der  ‘-yva-/-iva-’  Bildungen  im Russischen: Evidenzen für den natürlichen grammatischen Wandel. Kerstin  Kazzazi:  Of  brides  and  goddesses.  Determining  the  semantic differences between the terms for a young woman in the Rgveda. This paper dealt with historical semantics in Vedic, more specifically, with one lexical field. In the Rgveda, there are several words associated with the domain GIRL/YOUNG WOMAN such as, for example: kanyå-, yuvatí-, yósâ-, vadhý-. They form a subset  within  the  lexical  field  WOMAN.  The  exact  semantic  differences between them have hitherto not been clearly understood. The paper aimed to illustrate means of distinguishing the meanings of these words more precisely from each other by close text analysis. Willem  Hollmann:  The  rise  of  causative  [NP1-GET-NP2-STEM/INF]: A cognitive perspective. Hubert  Cuyckens  and  Jean-Christophe  Verstraete:  Subjectification  in  the conjunctive discourse marker ‘but’. In this study, the diachronic development of but from subordinating conjunction over coordinating conjunction to discourse marker was used as a case study to tease out the different ways in which the notion of subjectification could be (and in fact has been) used in diachronic semantics. It was argued that it is important to distinguish these different uses of the  term,  because  each  constitutes  a  conceptually  distinct  aspect  of  semantic change.  Bram  Renmans:  Analogical  change  of  meaning.  By  means  of  a  detailed comparison  of  Stephen  Ullmann’s  structuralist  stance  on  analogical  meaning change with Dirk Geeraerts’s analysis of the same subject, followed by some well-founded criticism of both authors, the author developed a new approach to dependent changes of meaning. Izumi Tahara: French simple past and narrative point of view in fiction. Nerlich, Brigitte and Pedro Chamizo Dominguez: The use of ‘literally’: Vice or virtue? A cognitive and historical study of a stance adverb. In this paper the authors combined various approaches, from diachronic semantics to conversation analysis, in order to study the development and use of the adverb literally. Rafael  Cala  Carvajal:  A  propos  de  la  lexicalisation  du  suffixe  ‘-illo’  en espagnol:  Quelques  observations  sur  la  polysémie  et  la  métaphore  dans  la sémantique  cognitive.  This  paper  was  based  on  a  corpus  derived  from  the Spanish  academic  dictionary  and  applied  insights  from  Ullmann  and  Roudet (1921). Alexander Bergs: The individual in linguistic theory: Past and present. Martin Hummel: Prototype effects without prototypes. In this paper the author tried to show that there may be words without a mental prototype, and there may  be  others  where  a  mental  prototype  cooperates  functionally  with invariable features and even other types of information available in the word’s semantic frame. The paper pleaded for a more complex conception of word  245meaning which reflects extralinguistic diversity and heterogeneity. It claimed that the task of the linguist is to identify which features, be they prototypical or not, are functionally most important, in order to specify the core meaning of a word. Heide Wegener:  Kinder and  Kids  – development and  motivation  of  German plural forms – a challenge for markedness theory. Beatrice  Godart-Wendling:  The  treatment  of  semantics  in  contemporary categorical grammars. Caroline Gevaerts: The Anger is Heat question: Detecting cultural influence on the conceptualisation of anger through diachronic corpus analysis. Clara Molina: On the reasons for historical break-up of an ongoing merger. This  paper  explored  the  diachronic  processes  leading  to  the  break-up  in  late medieval  times  of  a  semantic  merger  in  progress  ever  since  Old  English, involving  the  nouns  sore (OE  sár)  and  sorrow  (OE  sorg).  It  showed  that  in addition  to  their  formal  resemblance,  both  terms  belonged  to  the  same conceptual  domain,  and  indeed  displayed  a  considerable  degree  of  semantic overlap.  Hans-Olav Enger: Three changes in the gender system of Scandinavian. Urszula Okulska: The disintegration of possessive pronouns in early modern English. The case of the attributive mine – thine – vs – my – thy. Gisela Harras and Kristel Proost: The lexicalisation of speech act evaluations in English, Dutch and German. Maurice Vliegen: ‘Versprechen’/‘beloven’ and ‘drohen’/‘dreigen’: Lexikalische und epistemische Bedeutung.  In this brief overview we have said nothing about the workshops which went on in parallel with the papers because Brigitte Nerlich did not attend any of them and concentrated on the papers instead. However, for those interested in them, here is just a list of the topics.  Microvariation in the Syntax of Auxiliaries Early phases in the acquisition of lexicon and morphology by children Immersion and the issue of linguistic accuracy Translatorisches Handeln und interkulturelle Kommunikation  Luxemburgisch – Synchronie und Diachronie Hard Science Linguistics Empirical methods in the new millennium: Linguistically Interpreted Corpora On top-down functionalism and bottom-up corpus research: Can they meet?  These  notes  merely  provide  sweeping  glimpses  of  a  fully-fledged international conference that addressed all the wider issues of how to integrate  246cognitive,  historical  and  cultural  approaches  to  language.  It  remains  to  be hoped that the readers will feel enticed to visit the web-site for further details: http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/sle2001/programme.htm. The aims of the conference had been to present recent progress on a variety of issues related to cognitive, historical and cultural approaches to language and to  encourage  the  interaction  between  scholars  from  different  theoretical  and cultural backgrounds. These objectives have surely been achieved. We hope that this review will contribute to a continuation of such international exchanges.    

Report on 34th conference of the "Societas Linguistica Europea" : language study in Europe at the turn of the millennium. Towards the integration of cognitive, historical und cultural approaches to language, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, august 28-31, 2001.

Report on 34th conference of the "Societas Linguistica Europea" : language study in Europe at the turn of the millennium. Towards the integration of cognitive, historical und cultural approaches to language, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, august 28-31, 2001.

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