Language and Society: Symposium to honour Peter Harder

On the occasion of professor Peter Harder’s retirement this symposium will take up two central themes in his research, the status of grammar and grammaticalization, and the role of language in society.

Programme

9:30 – 9:45 Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen, University of Copenhagen: Peter’s role in establishing and promoting Danish Functional Grammar

Grammaticalization and grammar

9:45 – 10:30 Martin Haspelmath, Universität Leipzig: Grammaticalization and the efficiency theory of asymmetric coding

10:30 – 10:50 Coffee/tea

10:50 – 11:35 Björn Wiemer, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz: How do old morphological patterns mature? And how does morphological theory have to account for them?

11:35 – 12:20 Kasper Boye, University of Copenhagen: Psycho- and neurolinguistic implications of a functional theory of what grammar is

12:20 – 13:30 Lunch

Language and society

13:30 – 14:15 Arie Verhagen, Universiteit Leiden: Language as Culture – On the biology of ‘function’ and ‘structure’ in conventional communication

14:15 – 15:00 Rebecca Adler-Nissen, University of Copenhagen: The Language of Digital Disinformation

15:00 – 15:30 Coffe/tea

15:30 – 16:15 Ole Wæver, University of Copenhagen: Doing Politics with Words: Saving Speech Act Theory from the Speech Act Theorists

16:15 – 17:00 Peter Harder, University of Copenhagen: Towards the grand multiplex synthesis? How to get a coherent picture of language (and other social phenomena) as objects of description

Register

The symposium is sponsored by The Linguistics Circle of Copenhagen and The Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics. Coffee/tea is free of charge, but if you wish to have coffee/tea, you need to register no later than February 20.