LINGUIST List 18.3379
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Thu Nov 15 2007
Calls: Applied Ling/UK; General,Historical Ling,Linguistic Theories/UK
Editor for this issue: Ania Kubisz
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Directory
1. Erik
Schleef,
British Association for Applied Linguistics
2. Gunther
De Vogelaer,
Dialects as a Testing Ground for Theories of Change
Message 1: British Association for Applied Linguistics
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Date: 15-Nov-2007
From: Erik Schleef <erik.schleefed.ac.uk>
Subject: British Association for Applied Linguistics
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Full Title: British Association for Applied Linguistics
Short Title: BAAL 2008
Date: 11-Sep-2008 - 13-Sep-2008
Location: Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom
Contact Person: Tess Fitzpatrick
Meeting Email: t.fitzpatrickswansea.ac.uk
Web Site: http://www.baal.org.uk/confs.htm
Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
Call Deadline: 31-Mar-2008
Meeting Description:
41st Annual Meeting of the British Association for Applied Linguistics
Theme: 'Taking the Measure of Applied Linguistics'
11 - 13 September 2008
Swansea University, Swansea, Wales, UK
BAAL 2008 will be held in Wales' second city of Swansea, situated on the South
Wales coast. The University campus is located in coastal parkland, between the
five-mile-long beach of Swansea bay and 100 acres of parks and gardens. In 2005,
Swansea University received the Times Higher Education Supplement Award for the
UK's Best Student Experience. The Department of Applied Linguistics at Swansea
is a dynamic research centre, and has had a long association with BAAL. The
vibrant city centre, with its new cultural and culinary waterfront developments,
is within reach of the campus by foot or by bus. The nearest airport, outside
Cardiff, is served by regular flights with low-cost airlines from cities across
Britain and Europe, including Belfast, Glasgow, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Cork, and
Dublin.
Plenary speakers:
Charles Alderson, Lancaster University
Ben Rampton, King's College London
Alison Wray, Cardiff University
Conference Organisers:
Tess Fitzpatrick (t.fitzpatrickswansea.ac.uk)
Jim Milton (j.l.miltonswansea.ac.uk)
Department of Applied Linguistics
Tel: +44 1792 602540
Fax: +44 1792 602545
Nanele Lewis (accommodation & organisation): conferencesswansea.ac.uk
BAAL conferences webpage: http://www.baal.org.uk/confs.htm
Abstracts are welcome in any area of Applied Linguistics that fits within the
theme of the conference - ''Taking the Measure of Applied Linguistics''. This
theme is deliberately intended to be inclusive and might include papers which
take stock of Applied Linguistics generally, consider attempts to quantify
language and language learning which is one important element of Applied
Linguistics, or make the case that non-quantified language descriptions can be
equally valid and useful in linguistic applications.
Deadline for receipt of Abstracts: 31 March 2008
Please send one electronic copy to BAAL08ling.ed.ac.uk in an email entitled
''BAAL08_oneinitialsurname'', e.g. ''BAAL08_dsmith'', in an attachment also
entitled ''BAAL08_oneinitialsurname''. An e-mail confirmation of receipt of
abstract will be sent within a week.
If you prefer to submit your abstract by post, please send four copies of your
abstract to: Erik Schleef, Linguistics and English Language, 40 George Square,
University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9LL, Scotland, UK.
Label and format your abstract like this:
- Title in bold
- Name, affiliation, address, telephone number and email (if sending paper
copies, put this information on only one copy)
- Text 300 words maximum (including the title and references)
- Single-spaced
- Justified
- Times New Roman 12
Indicate the type of abstract that you are submitting: individual presentation,
poster, SIG presentation, or colloquium.
- 20-minute individual presentation for the parallel sessions.
- Poster. We strongly encourage the submission of abstracts for posters. We aim
to raise the profile of posters at our conference since we value them as equal
to other forms of presentation and we believe that they tend to receive more
feedback than individual papers. All posters and presentations will be listed in
the book of abstracts and there will be a dedicated area and time slot for
discussion of poster presentations.
- Presentation for a Special Interest Group (SIG) track. If you believe your
paper is of interest to a SIG track, please clearly annotate it: 'of interest to
X SIG'. The SIG may then wish to include your paper in a track at the annual
meeting. BAAL has eight Special Interest Groups. They are UK Linguistic
Ethnography Forum, Corpus Linguistics, Psycholinguistics, Multimodality,
Language Learning and Teaching, Language in Africa, Gender and Language, Assessment
- Proposed colloquium paper (this is submitted along with the other papers in
the colloquium, and the title of the colloquium on the conference theme).
Guidelines:
1. Individual papers have 25 minutes: 20 for the presentation, 5 for questions.
2. SIG tracks and colloquia have half a day and a minimum of four papers.
3. Colloquia proposers should plan their half day in four slots, in step with
the individual paper slots. If they wish to have a larger number of papers, they
may fit two papers into what would normally be a single slot. Colloquia papers
should cohere. The order of the papers should not be changed after acceptance.
4. All abstracts will be reviewed anonymously.
5. Each individual paper, colloquium and poster is rated by three reviewers: one
Executive Committee and two Local Organising Committee members.
6. SIG track papers are also rated by three reviewers: two from the SIG and one
Executive Committee member.
Indicate whether you want a scholarship:
Send your scholarship application along with your abstract by 31 March 2008.
Forms are available here: http://www.baal.org.uk/join_funding.htm.
BAAL offers ten UK student scholarships which cover registration and accommodation.
BAAL offers two International scholarships, one of which is the Chris Brumfit
International Scholarship. These are worth £1,000, which goes towards
registration, accommodation, meals and travel.
Message 2: Dialects as a Testing Ground for Theories of Change
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Date: 14-Nov-2007
From: Gunther De Vogelaer <gunther.devogelaerugent.be>
Subject: Dialects as a Testing Ground for Theories of Change
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Full Title: Dialects as a Testing Ground for Theories of Change
Date: 04-Aug-2008 - 08-Aug-2008
Location: Leeds, United Kingdom
Contact Person: Gunther De Vogelaer
Meeting Email: gunther.devogelaerugent.be
Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Linguistic
Theories
Call Deadline: 01-Dec-2007
Meeting Description
Much theorizing in language change research is made without taking into account
dialect data. However, we believe that the study of dialect variation has the
potential to play a central role in the process of finding answers to the
fundamental questions of theoretical historical linguistics. Unlike most
cross-linguistic and diachronic data, dialect data are unusually high in
resolution, and they seem to be superior data to build a theory of linguistic
change on.
In the present one-day workshop we invite contributions which relate a clearly
formulated theoretical question of historical linguistic interest with a
well-defined, solid empirical base. The following provides a (non-exhaustive)
list of suggested research questions:
- Which is the contribution of current linguistic theory for the explanation of
spatial variation and variant spread?
- Which is the contribution of dialect data for the further development of
theories of linguistic change?
- What are the driving forces of variant selection? Are these factors social or
linguistic?
- Is variation the result or the cause of change, or both?
We welcome papers dealing with all domains of grammar (phonology, morphology,
syntax, semantics), and we intend to cover a wide variety of languages. In
particular, we encourage papers adopting a dialect geographical approach.
Second Call for a Session at Methods in Dialectology XIII
In recent years, historical linguists have highlighted the importance of
grammatical variation and variant spread for our understanding of the
fundamental mechanisms of linguistic change. Many approaches distinguish between
the emergence of novel variants vs. the selection of variants in the course of
speakers' use (cf., e.g., Weinreich, Labov & Herzog's 1968 distinction between
the 'actuation' and 'transition problem'). This is most obvious in evolutionary
inspired approaches. But the perhaps most central ingredient of a model for
linguistic change is still relatively little understood, and therefore
controversial: Which factors are responsible for variant selection and spread?
For instance, Croft (2000) assumes language-internal factors to be relevant only
for the emergence of novel variants, but variant selection is claimed to be
guided exclusively by social, extra-linguistic factors. Others (Haspelmath 1999,
Seiler 2005, De Vogelaer 2006) have claimed that language-internal factors play
a role in variant selection, too.
It is our opinion that the study of dialect variation has the potential to play
a central role in the process of finding answers to such fundamental questions
(see Kortmann 2002, Horvath 2004, and Filppula et al. 2005:vii for similar
observations). There are several reasons for this: First, dialects are
relatively free of standardization and therefore more tolerant against variant
competition in grammar. Second, variants gradually spread not only on the
temporal, but also on the spatial dimension. By a careful study of subtle
dialect differences in space we therefore might expect to uncover the minimal
differences of implementational steps that have taken place in the course of
linguistic history. Furthermore, we think it is the right time for
dialectologists to engage in debates on variation and change since there are
several large research projects on dialect variation being conducted in a number
of European countries (cf. the recently launched website
http://www.dialectsyntax.org/). The following provides a (non-exhaustive) list
of suggested research questions:
- Which is the contribution of current linguistic theory for the explanation of
spatial variation and variant spread?
- Which is the contribution of dialect data for the further development of
theories of linguistic change?
- What are the driving forces of variant selection? Are these factors social or
linguistic?
- Is variation the result or the cause of change, or both?
In particular, we encourage papers adopting a dialect geographical approach.
Additional questions that emerge when taking a dialect geographical approach
have to do with the existence of transitional zones, where competing variants
co-occur. This poses a potential problem for many models of grammar: what does
the existence of transitional zones mean for our modeling of linguistic
competence, i.e., can the linguistic competence of individuals living in
transitional zones best be described in terms of competing grammars, the
interaction of categorical rules or constraints, or do we need a probabilistic
model? Other relevant questions include the following:
- Do geolinguistic data provide evidence for and/or against particular models of
change?
- What can we conclude from the mechanisms of variant spread with regard to our
understanding of linguistic competence?
- Can we find a speaker-based explanation for the fact that some variants spread
at the expense of others?
Organizers
Gunther De Vogelaer (FWO Flanders / Ghent), Guido Seiler (Konstanz / Zurich).
Keynote speaker
William Labov (University of Pennsylvania)
Practical information:
The workshop is part of the Methods in Dialectology-conference. More information
concerning travelling, lodging etc. can be found on the Methods XIII-homepage:
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/english/methods.htm
Publication
Since it is our intention to publish a volume with papers from the section, we
will prefer unpublished research over papers presenting data that have been
published elsewhere.
Format
Presentations are allotted 20 minutes plus 10 minutes for discussion. Abstracts
should be as specific as possible, with a statement of topic, approach and
conclusions, and may be at most 400 words (not including data and references,
which may be placed on an optional second page). Please submit your abstract
anonymously as an email attachment (only Microsoft Word or PDF formats) to
Gunther De Vogelaer (gunther.devogelaerugent.be) or Guido Seiler
(gseilerds.unizh.ch). The body text of the email message must contain the
following information:
(1) paper title
(2) name(s) of author(s)
(3) affiliation(s) of author(s)
(4) address where notification of acceptance should be sent
(5) phone number for each author
(6) email address for each author
(7) subfield (syntax, phonology, etc.)
Important Dates
The submission deadline is December 1st, 2007. Notification of acceptance will
be sent by January 20th, 2008.
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