Conferences and Workshops

November 10-12, 2010, University of Florence

In the framework of the 11th International Congress for Finno-Ugric Studies, to be held at Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Piliscsaba (near Budapest) between 9-14th August, 2010, we organize a workshop devoted to the formal analysis of the syntax of Finno-Ugric languages, focusing on how their particular features relate to Universal Grammar.

Analyses of Finno-Ugric languages have made a number of important contributions to the theory of Universal Grammar, over the years, extending the limits of syntactic variation allowed by UG. They demonstrated the presence of a rich, articulated left periphery in sentence structure, involving, for example, a contrastive position in Finnish, and, in Hungarian, exhaustive structural focus as well as landing sites for overt quantifier raising. Other issues raised by Finno-Ugric languages included freedom of word order in certain sections of the sentence (but strict word order in the left periphery). They showed the need for divorcing the predicate-external argument from the grammatical function 'subject'. The complex Finno-Ugric possessive construction served as argument for assuming layers of functional projections in the noun phrase. The rich system of cases - among them the partitive case of Finnish and Estonian - remain a challenge to standard case theory. The problems raised by the partitive case include its interaction with the specificity of the internal argument, with aspect, epistemic modality, and with verb-object agreement. In Ostyak, the mapping of theta-roles on case positions appears to interact both with specificity and with discourse functions. Finno-Ugric negation also has its particular properties to be accounted for, including a negative auxiliary in Finnish and Sami, the abessive/caritive negation, and intricate negative concord phenomena in several languages. The partial pro-drop characteristic of Finnish has necessitated a modification of the theory of pro-drop, and the Estonian impersonal and genitive agents are instances of current debate. Among the phenomena in Finno-Ugric languages which deserve to be more widely known in the linguistic research community is the great variety of non-finite constructions, often with intricate agreement and case patterns. Another is the variety of question particles, focus particles, and modal particles. For example, Estonian has both a sentence-initial and sentence-final Q-particles, while Finnish has a 'second-position' Q-particle which can be deeply embedded in a fronted phrase. The mix of head-final and head-initial properties found particularly in the Western Finno-Ugric languages poses challenges to theories of linearization (including the LCA).

The workshop "The Syntax of Finno-Ugric Languages and Universal Grammar" will treat issues of these types, providing formal analyses of empirical phenomena against the background of standard universal assumptions. The workshop will consist of 30-minute presentations followed by 10-minute discussions, a round table for Finnish, and a poster presentation.

For additional information, please contact the organizers:

Katalin É. Kiss (Pázmány Péter University) ekiss at nytud.hu

Anders Holmberg (Newcastle University) anders.holmberg at newcastle.ac.uk

Anne Tamm (Research Institute of Linguistics, Budapest) anne.tamm at unifi.it

Mood and Modality in the Uralic Languages