LINGUIST List 12.3140

Wed Dec 19 2001

Calls: Languages/Americas, Societas Ling Europaea

Editor for this issue: Jody Huellmantel <jodylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. David Beck, Structure and Constituency in the Languages of the Americas (WSCLA 7)
2. Madlena Norberg, Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE2002)

WSCLA 7 - Workshop on Structure and Constituency in the Languages of 
the Americas

University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
March 22 - 24, 2002
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~linguist/WSCLA.htm

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

The main goal of this workshop is to bring together linguists doing 
theoretical work on the indigenous languages of North, Central, and 
South America. Papers in all core areas of linguistics (phonetics, 
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics) within any theoretical 
framework will be considered, but we especially invite papers which 
address the theme of this year's conference:

Convergence and Divergence: Language Variation within and across 
Language Families

While the bulk of theoretical work in linguistics has by and large 
relied on the convenient fiction that languages are stable, uniform 
synchronic systems that are consistent and self-contained across 
communities of speakers, linguists working on the languages of the 
Americas-the majority of which are unwritten and have no normative or 
"standard" form-have often been confronted with a startling degree of 
variation within what speakers consider to be a single language. 
Conversely, researchers working in well-established linguistic areas 
or Sprachb=FCnde such as the Northwest Coast have found that what are 
patently different and genetically unrelated languages share a 
tremendous number of phonological and grammatical features.

>From the point of view of the theoretical linguist, both types of 
variation represent challenges to the view of a language as a 
discrete and homogeneous grammatical system and raise a number of 
important questions. To what extent and over what parameters can 
linguistic systems vary and remain mutually intelligible -- hence 
qualifying as dialects of a single language? If languages can, as 
amply illustrated by the languages of the Americas, borrow a wide 
range of phonological and grammatical features from other languages, 
what are the restrictions on this type of borrowing and how might 
these restrictions be related to the grammatical and typological 
properties of source and donor languages? And how do borrowed or 
innovative features created by dialectal variation interact with 
pre-existing features of the language, and what can this tell us 
about the nature of human language as a whole?

Invited speakers:

 * Sarah Thomason, University of Michigan
 "Prominence Marking in Verbal Arguments in Salish and Algonquian"

 * Leslie Saxon, University of Victoria
 "Athapaskan Clause Structure and the Positions of Subjects 
and Objects"

 * Cecil Brown, Northern Illinois University
 "How Mesoamerica Became a Linguistic Area"

 * Paul Kroeber, Indiana University
 "Pre-verbal positions in Tillamook and its neighbours"

 * Ronald W. Langacker, University of California, San Deigo 
 "Unity and Diversity in Possessive Constructions"

Invited student speaker:

 * Kiel Christianson, Michigan State University
 "Stress, pitch accent, and language variation: Ojibwa vs. Odawa"

>Following the tradition of this workshop, we dedicate the final day 
to a linking between our research and important work being done on 
language preservation and revitalization. This year the session will 
be on incorporating linguistic knowledge into Native language 
curriculum.

Invited speaker:

 * Ofelia Zepeda, University of Arizona
 "American Indian Language Development Institute"

This talk will be followed by a roundtable discussion on this topic 
by all workshop participants.

GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSIONS

Please submit a one page abstract (a second page with references and 
extra examples may be included). Abstracts may be submitted 
electronically in the body of an e-mail message (if they include no 
special characters) or as e-mail attachments. The latter should be in 
PDF, Word, Rich Text Format, or WordPerfect formats, in descending 
order of preference; please specify and/or include any special fonts 
used. Paper abstracts may be submitted in four copies, at least one 
of which should be camera-ready. All submissions should provide the 
following items of information, separate from the abstract itself:

 1. name
 2. address
 3. affiliation
 4. telephone number and FAX number
 5. e-mail address
 6. faculty / graduate student / postdoctoral fellow / 
independent scholar status

Limited funds may be available to offset travel expenses for graduate 
students. Please indicate if you wish to be considered for a travel 
subsidy.

Abstracts should be sent to:

 wscla7ualberta.ca

or by snail mail to:

 LANGUAGES OF THE AMERICAS WORKSHOP
 Department of Linguistics
 University of Alberta
 4-32 Assiniboia Hall
 Edmonton, AB T6E 2G7
 Canada

The deadline for abstracts to be received is Friday, January 11, 
2002. The program will be announced in mid-February.

Conference website at 
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~linguist/WSCLA.htm
- 

David Beck
Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics
University of Alberta
4-45 Assiniboia Hall
Edmonton, AB T6G 2E7
office: (780) 492-0807
>FAX: (780) 492-0806
e-mail: dbeckualberta.ca
homepage: http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbeck

We are pleased to announce the 35th meeting of the Societas Linguistica
Europaea to be held in Potsdam, Germany, on 22-25 July 2002.
The focus of this year's conference will be on "Language and Mind"
Papers are invited on all aspects related to language and mind in its
synchronic or diachronic perspective, with respect to
theoretical reflections or empirical findings.
Please find further information in German, English, French and Spanish
on our conference web-page:

http://www.uni-potsdam.de/u/dekanat_philfak1/sle/index.htm