Overview

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, & 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 national- 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. 
Targeted Themes:
The following 3 themes will guide our discussions and debates related to EXTERNALIZATION throughout the workshop: 
  • Theme 1 - Getting back to our √roots: What atomic elements are found at the core of lexical items/words (Alexiadou & Lohndal, 2017; Borer, 2013; De Belder & Van Craenenbroeck, 2015; Harley, 2014; Ramchand, 2008)? How can we best distinguish and demarcate the division of labor that separates lexicalization & categorization (Panagiotidis, 2014)? 
  • Theme 2 - The nature of syntactic structure: How much structure is required in the 'narrow syntax' and what sorts of elements are housed in these functional sequences? Are all heads and features semantically motivated (Manzini, 2021; Wiltschko, 2014)? How has the advent of experimental work such as online processing, contributed to theoretical debates (Goodwin Davies, 2018; Gwilliams, 2019; Marantz, 2013)? 
  • Theme 3 - Exponents and phonology: How much syntactic information persists beyond 'narrow syntax'? How many 'morphological problems' are best resolved via phonology (rather than syntax) (De Belder, 2020; Fisher, Natvig, Pretorius, Putnam, & Schuhmann, 2022; Newell & Ulfsbjorninn, 2021; Scheer, 2020)? Which sorts of derived structures best constrain this mapping relationship, i.e., phases (Embick, 2010; Weber, 2021), spans (Blix, 2021; Svenonius, 2016, 2020), or something else? 

Workshop Speakers


Artemis Alexiadou | Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS) & Humboldt Universität zu Berlin 
Matthew Carlson | Penn State University 
Amy Crosson | Penn State University 
Laura Kalin | Princeton University 
Ruth Kramer | Georgetown University 
John Lipski | Penn State University
Carol Rose Little | University of Oklahoma
Terje Lohndal | NTNU & UiT The Arctic University of Norway
​David Natvig | University of Stavanger
Heather Newell | Université du Québec à Montréal
Mike Putnam | Penn State University & University of Greenwich
​Sylvia Schreiner | George Mason University
Tran Truong | Penn State University 
Natalie Weber | Yale University 
Jim Wood | Yale University
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