Extravagant Morphology

The workshop explores extravagance in morphological processes and investigates its impact on linguistic variation and change. The maxim of extravagance, as coined by Haspelmath (1999: 1055) in his account of the unidirectionality typical of grammaticalization processes, essentially picks up one of Keller's dynamic maxims, namely "Talk in such a way that you are noticed", which is active in the workings of the 'invisible hand' in language change (1994: 101). Thus, speakers, in their intent to be "socially successful with their speech" (Haspelmath 1999: 1057f.), may not only be particularly expressive but deviate noticeably and considerably from established language norms by using an expression in an innovative sense, in an "imaginative and vivid" way (ibid.), or any other clearly attention-attracting fashion. Extravagance may therefore be regarded as a trigger for language variation and change, with such ostensibly deviating and non-conforming language use ultimately initiating the formation of new patterns. It also shows considerable overlap with the notion of linguistic creativity, i.e. "the native speaker's ability to extend the language system in a motivated, but unpredictable (non-rule-governed) way" (Bauer 1983: 63). At the same time, extravagance goes beyond creativity in that it is conceptualized as an integral part of language change processes. Against this backdrop, the workshop seeks to re-address the notion of extravagance in an attempt to operationalize the concept to a larger degree, investigate extravagant phenomena empirically and shed further theoretical light on the role of extravagance in language variation and change. To a certain extent, extravagance shares features of what Zwicky & Pullum (1983) have referred to as 'expressive morphology', a notion that predominantly refers to adhoc formations with characteristics such as a "specific pragmatic effect", "imperfect control" (i.e. speakers lacking the ability to apply the word-formation pattern productively) or the restricted occurrence of such expressive formations in particular syntactic contexts (Zwicky & Pullum 1983: 335-8). However, in contrast to expressive morphology, our reconceptualization of extravagance seeks to go beyond the individual speaker's innovative language use and takes into account the eventual effect that innovations have on the language system and its structures, i.e. by discussing the concomitant effect of extravagance on linguistic variation and change and its theoretical ramifications. Understood literally in the sense of the underlying Latin etymon extra-vagans 'wandering outside, out of bounds', extravagance in the present context refers to morphological phenomena that display divergent tendencies, with a specific interest in the following: