The Diachronic Generative Syntax conference has been running since 1990: at first every two years, then annually since 2008. It's a forum for people to present work on diachronic and historical syntax that is informed by, and informs, generative syntactic theory.
Though the conference goes back to 1990, the acronym, DiGS, was not in use until the 1995 Montreal workshop. In earlier (pre-2004) conferences it was common to have discussants at least for the invited talks. That tradition has now lapsed, but since 2014 a new tradition has emerged: a one-day pre-workshop on a related topic, often with its own invited speaker(s).
Since there's no clear record of the conference's past anywhere on the interwebs, as far as I can see, I decided to create this page as a little summary for posterity. See now also the historical notes in Crisma & Longobardi (2021).
DiGS has no governing board. Decisions as to venues are made two years in advance at the conference's business meeting. Venues further in the future are proposals, but not yet confirmed. Please don't email me (George) asking to host DiGS or asking me to make a decision about hosting it; I'm just the guy with the website!
Anne Breitbarth has published a piece on gender balance and gender bias in the history of DiGS:
- Breitbarth, Anne. 2021. '1989.' In Marianne Van Remoortel, Leah Budke, & Eloise Forestier (eds.), Dates with gender and diversity: Huldeboek voor Marysa Demoor, 188-191. Gent: Skribis.
Here is an obituary for Anthony (Tony) Kroch, 1946-2021, one of the founders of the DiGS conference series. Here's another obituary at the UPenn website.
History of DiGS
| Year | Location | Date | Programme | Invited speakers | Pre-workshop | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2027 | Boğaziçi University, Istanbul | - | - | - | - | - |
| 2026 | Università di Padova | - | - | - | - | - |
| 2025 | University of Oxford | 23rd-26th June | website | Anne Breitbarth, Pierre Larrivée, Ana Maria Martins, Jenneke van der Wal | Investigating diachronic syntax with less-documented and unwritten languages | - |
| 2024 | Universität Mannheim | 25th-28th June | programme | Beatrice Santorini, Jordan Kodner, Eric Fuß, Michelle Troberg | The legacy of the Penn historical corpora | - |
| 2023 | Université Paris Cité | 4th-7th July | programme | Metin Bağriaçik, Emanuela Sanfelici, Alexandra Simonenko, George Walkden | Formal approaches to language contact | - |
| 2022 | New York University | 8th-10th June | programme | Lieven Danckaert, |
Child learners in syntactic change: theory and methods | Special issue of Journal of Historical Syntax (TBA) |
| 2021 | Universität Konstanz (online; rescheduled from 2020) | 19th-22nd May | programme | Anne Breitbarth, Ashwini Deo, Ian Roberts, Sali Tagliamonte, David Willis | Syntactic change in progress | Walkden, George, Miriam Butt & Georg A. Kaiser. 2023. Proceedings of DiGS 2021. Journal of Historical Syntax 7 (6-19). |
| 2019 | Arizona State University | 4th-7th June | programme | Paul Kiparsky, Pamela Munro, Will Oxford, Bridget Samuels | Comparative approaches to the diachronic morphosyntax of the indigenous languages of North and Central America | Wood, Johanna (ed.). 2021. Proceedings of DiGS 2019. Journal of Historical Syntax 5 (16-25). |
| 2018 | University of York | 18th-21st June | programme | Edith Aldridge, Theresa Biberauer, Cecilia Poletto, George Walkden | Syntax and reconstruction | Crisma, Paola, & Giuseppe Longobardi (eds.). 2021. Proceedings of DiGS 2018. Journal of Historical Syntax 5 (1-13). |
| 2017 | Stellenbosch University | 5th-8th September | programme | Charlotte Galves, Pieter Muysken, Jenneke van der Wal, Enoch Aboh, David Lightfoot | Language variation and change in contact situations | - |
| 2016 | Universiteit Gent | 28th June-1st July | programme | Sheila Watts, Joel Wallenberg, Ioanna Sitaridou, Elly van Gelderen, Cecilia Poletto | The determinants of diachronic stability (see 2019 book) | Bouzouita, Miriam, Anne Breitbarth, Lieven Danckaert, & Elisabeth Witzenhausen (eds.). 2019. Cycles in language change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| 2015 | Háskóli Íslands (Reykjavík) | 28th-31st May | programme | Charles Yang, Ulrike Demske, David Willis | Formal Ways of Analyzing Variation 2 (FWAV 2) | Eythórsson, Thórhallur, & Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson (eds.). 2021. Syntactic features and the limits of syntactic change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| 2014 | Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest) | 2nd-5th July | programme | David Lightfoot, Anthony Kroch & Beatrice Santorini, Roumyana Pancheva | Converging corpora: how to standardize historical corpora of typologically and genetically different languages | Egedi, Barbara, & Veronika Hegedűs (eds.). 2022. Functional heads across time: syntactic reanalysis and change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| 2013 | University of Ottawa | 1st-3rd Aug | programme | Edith Aldridge, John Whitman, Joel Wallenberg, Ailis Cournane, Marie Labelle & Paul Hirschbühler | - | Mathieu, Eric, & Robert Truswell (eds.). 2017. Micro-change and macro-change in diachronic syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| 2012 | Universidade de Lisboa | 3rd-6th July | programme | Adam Ledgeway, Esther Rinke, Susan Pintzuk, Paola Crisma, Anthony Kroch | - | Martins, Ana Maria, & Adriana Cardoso (eds.). 2018. Word order change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| 2011 | University of Pennsylvania | 2nd-5th June | programme | David Lightfoot, Ana Maria Martins, Enoch Aboh, Caroline Heycock, Thomas McFadden, Ian Roberts | Using annotated corpora for diachronic research | - |
| 2010 | University of Cambridge | 14th-16th July | programme | Marit Julien, Roland Hinterhölzl, Ann Taylor & Susan Pintzuk, Katalin E. Kiss, Adam Ledgeway, Paul Kiparsky | - | Biberauer, Theresa, & George Walkden (eds.). 2015. Syntax over time: lexical, morphological and information-structural interactions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| 2009 | Universidade Estadual de Campinas | 22nd-24th July | programme | Jürgen Meisel, Mary Kato, Giuseppe Longobardi, Ana Maria Martins, Michel DeGraff, Ian Roberts | - | Galves, Charlotte, Sonia Cyrino, Ruth Lopes, Filomena Sandalo, & Juanito Avelar (eds.). 2012. Parameter theory and linguistic change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| 2008 | Cornell University | 7th-9th Aug | programme | Ans van Kemenade, Katrin Axel, Ian Roberts, Anthony Kroch, Mark Hale | - | - |
| 2006 | Università degli Studi di Trieste | 8th-10th June | programme | Edward Keenan, Abdelkader Fassi Fehri, Richard Kayne | - | Crisma, Paola, & Giuseppe Longobardi (eds.). 2009. Historical syntax and linguistic theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| 2004 | Yale University | 24th-27th June | programme | David Lightfoot, Alison Henry, Jan Terje Faarlund, David Willis, John Whitman, Paul Kiparsky, Alice Harris | - | Jonas, Dianne, John Whitman, & Andrew Garrett (eds.). 2012. Grammatical change: origins, nature, outcomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| 2002 | Universitat de Girona | 27th-29th June | programme | Ian Roberts, David Lightfoot, Anthony Kroch, Giuseppe Longobardi, Susan Pintzuk | - | Batllori, Montse, Maria-Lluïsa Hernanz, Carme Picallo, & Francesc Roca (eds.). 2005. Grammaticalization and parametric variation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| 2000 | University of Maryland | 22nd-24th May | programme | Ian Roberts, Susan Pintzuk, Cynthia Allen, Ted Briscoe, Dianne Jonas | - | Lightfoot, David (ed.). 2002. Syntactic effects of morphological change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| 1998 | University of York | 30th May-1st June | programme | Monique Dufresne & Fernande Dupuis, Ans van Kemenade, Anthony Kroch, David Lightfoot, Ian Roberts, Nigel Vincent | - | Pintzuk, Susan, George Tsoulas, & Anthony Warner (eds.). 2000. Diachronic syntax: models and mechanisms. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| 1995 | Université du Quebec à Montreal | 31st Oct-2nd Nov | programme | Jean-Yves Pollock, Giuseppe Longobardi, Ian Roberts, John Lumsden, Anthony Kroch, Ans van Kemenade, Hilda Koopman, Marisa Rivero | - | - |
| 1994 | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam | 30th March-1st April | programme | - | - | van Kemenade, Ans, & Nigel Vincent (eds.). 1997. Parameters of morphosyntactic change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. |
| 1992 | University of Pennsylvania | 5th-8th November | programme | - | - | - |
| 1990 | University of York | 10th-11th April | participants | - | - | Battye, Adrian, & Ian Roberts (eds.). 1995. Clause structure and language change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
If you can help fill in any of the gaps, or have any further information, please email me! Thanks in particular to Susan Pintzuk, Ian Roberts and Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson for help so far.
My main website is here.
