DESCRIPTION OF THE EVENT

The main aim of this workshop is to widen our understanding of the empirical phenomena displaying linguistic variation, their relevance for the design of the overall grammatical architecture and the current status of parameter-based perspectives on variation.

Descriptive-formal generative approaches to variation are founded on the hypothesis that language variation is channeled by an input-based decision-making process leading to a cascade of binary options (parameters), ultimately yielding a network. Typically, such approaches offer a rather limited scenario of networks (cf. Baker 2008, Biberauer & Roberts 2015, a.o.), whose complexity may reflect constraints imposed to the Faculty of Language, be these of the 3^rd Factor type (cf. Chomsky 2005) or anchored to the various interfaces. This relatively wide view allows us to address both language “variation” and language “contact” among phylogenetically and non-phylogenetically related varieties in a comprehensive fashion.

We welcome contributions that, with such a broad-spectrum taken in mind, focus on the lexicon-syntax and syntax-discourse interfaces, the syntax-semantics interface, the syntax-morphology interface, and language contact and language variation phenomena.