Alena Witzlack-Makarevich (Kiels Universitet)

Professor Alena Witzlack-Makarevich er typolog med speciale i grammatiske relationer og alignment patterns, og i foredraget taler hun om tværsproglig undersøgelse af kasusmarkering kombineret med neurofysiologiske eksperimenter, se abstractet nedenfor.

Efter foredraget vil der være middag med Alena Witzlack-Makarevich. Lingvistkredsens medlemmer er velkomne til at deltage – for egen regning. Tilmelding til Jan Heegård, janhp@hum.ku.dk senest d. 28. november kl. 12.00.

Abstract:

Typological variation of grammatical relations: How to capture it and what it tells us

Alena Witzlack-Makarevich (University of Kiel)

Cross-linguistic research on grammatical relations – such as subjects and objects – and on alignment patterns of individual constructions is challenging and a number of variables need to be taken into account to make a comparison possible and to account for language internal variation. This talk gives a systematic overview of the variables in questions, presents a method that allows non-reductionist comparison of alignment patterns across languages and outlines a few areas of application of this method.

In the second part of the talk the question of skewed distribution of individual alignment types of case marking in the languages of the world will be addressed. I will present the results of a study combining neurophysiological experiments with a typological survey of case marking. This study shows that a particular processing principle is operating species-wide and is independent of the structural properties of individual languages. This principle causes languages to disfavor a grammar with an ergative marker.