Symposium to honour Peter Harder

On the occasion of professor Peter Harder’s retirement this symposium will take up two central themes in his research, the status of grammar and grammaticalization, and the role of language in society.

Programme

09:30 – 09:45  Peter’s role in establishing and promoting Danish
                         Functional Grammar
                         Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen, University of Copenhagen

Grammaticalization and grammar

09:45 – 10:30  Grammaticalization and the efficiency theory of asymmetric
                         coding
                         Martin Haspelmath, Universität Leipzig

10:30 – 10:50  Coffee/tea

10:50 – 11:35  How do old morphological patterns mature? And how
                         does morphological theory have to account for them?
                         Björn Wiemer, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz

11:35 – 12:20  Psycho- and neurolinguistic implications of a functional theory
                         of what grammar is
                         Kasper Boye, University of Copenhagen

12:20 – 13:30  Lunch

Language and society

13:30 – 14:15  Language as Culture – On the biology of ‘function’ and
                         ‘structure’ in conventional communication
                         Arie Verhagen, Universiteit Leiden

14:15 – 15:00  The Language of Digital Disinformation
                         Rebecca Adler-Nissen, University of Copenhagen

15:00 – 15:30  Coffe/tea

15:30 – 16:15  Doing Politics with Words: Saving Speech Act Theory from
                         the Speech Act Theorists
                         Ole Wæver, University of Copenhagen

16:15 – 17:00  Towards the grand multiplex synthesis? How to get a coherent
                         picture of language (and other social phenomena) as objects
                         of description
                         Peter Harder, University of Copenhagen