“Externalizing Words: Mono- and Multilingual Perspectives”

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together scholars interested in arriving at a better understanding of the structure of words (a.k.a. lexical items) and the operations and processes that govern their well-formedness in storage, production, and comprehension. We adopt a separationist, realizational approach to `morphology' which calls for the externalization of ‘morphology,’ i.e., the theoretical position that morphological information is conditioned, yet separate (to some degree), by syntactic structure. Although there exists a number of closely related frameworks (e.g., Distributed Morphology, Nanosyntax, and Exoskeletal syntax) that embrace some version of this separatist and realizational view of morphology, a number of questions remain in connection with the descriptive and explanatory adequacy of these approaches. The focus of the presentations and discussions in this workshop are dedicated to arriving at a better understanding of the advances and challenges associated with externalization.

Our invited speakers are a collection of nationally and internationally renowned experts actively conducting cutting-edge research in these domains. This workshop not only revisits traditional challenges, but also extends the empirical domain of coverage by including experimental/psycholinguistic findings and multilingual data obtained through a variety of contexts (e.g., L2/n acquisition, code-switching, L1/2 attrition, etc.). In this workshop, discussions of experimental approaches and bi/multilingual data are integrated throughout the conference, rather than confined to separate conference sessions.

Event Contact: Michael T. Putnam