We are delighted to invite you to the upcoming WA Wednesday Lunch Talk, which will take place on March 12th at 13:15 in Aula Hrynakowskiego.
This session will feature two presentations:
- Prof. Marcin Krygier: “Paradigmatic shifts in Early English”The Late Old English/Early Middle English process of gradual reorganisation of nominal inflectional patterns which led to their eventual demise produced a number of side effects. One of these was the loss of cohesion in those Old English paradigms that had been characterised by increased allomorphy. Whereas the usual response to this development consisted in analogical levelling of the most salient form, in a limited number of cases the result was a lexical split organised amongst most distinctive allomorphs. The present study will build upon a set of microstudies focusing on various pathways taken by a selected number of lexical items conducive to paradigmatic splitting (DAY, SHADE, MEDE, NEAR) in order to potentially arrive at more general conclusions concerning the factors governing the outcome of the process.Very selective references:
- Adamczyk, Elżbieta. 2018. Reshaping of the nominal inflection in early Northern West Germanic [external link]. John Benjamins.
- Albright, Adam. 2005. The morphological basis of paradigm leveling [external link]. In Laura J. Downing, Tracy A. Hall & Renate Raffelsiefen (eds.), Paradigms in phonological theory. Oxford University Press. 17–43.
- Bybee, Joan. 1980. Morphophonemic change from inside and outside the paradigm [external link]. Lingua 50. 45–59.
- Fertig, David. 2016. Mechanisms of paradigm leveling and the role of universal preferences in morphophonological change [external link]. Diachronica 33(4). 423–460.
- Garrett, Andrew. 2008. Paradigmatic uniformity and markedness [external link]. In Jeff Good (ed.), Linguistic universals and language change, Oxford University Press. 125–143.
- Steriade, Donca. 2000. Paradigm uniformity and the phonetics-phonology boundary. In Michael B. Broe & Janet B. Pierrehumbert (eds.), Papers in laboratory phonology V: Acquisition and the lexicon, Cambridge University Press. 313–334.
- Dr Małgorzata Olsza: “Family portraits reconceived: Reproductive bodies and reproductive justice in American comics”During this talk I look at reproductive bodies in American comics as objects of political decisions, that is as determined by laws which curtail reproductive freedom. Focus is placed on non-heteronormative pregnancies. I propose to juxtapose, to read both alongside and in contrast with one another, American comics which come from the past and the widely defined present. These are Mary Wings’ “Conception comix,” from her semi-autobiographical collection Dyke shorts (1978), Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to watch out for (1983-2008), and A.K. Summers’ graphic memoir Pregnant butch: Nine long months spent in drag (2014). The goal of such a juxtaposition is to mark and explore the spacetime continuum of the politics of reproduction in the U.S. Choosing the 1970s as the starting point is meant to highlight the convergences between comix, comics, politics, and reproductive rights. As a second-wave feminist text, “Conception comix” partakes in the debate on reproductive rights and their limitations, pointing to the importance of the feminist comix tradition of the 1970s in this regard, which Bechdel’s and Summers’ comics expand.
We look forward to seeing you there!