LINGUIST List 2.492

Tue 10 Sep 1991

Confs: Acquisition, Prehistory

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. R. Tracy, conference info
2. Alexis Manaster Ramer, Language in Prehistory at the Internatl Congress of Linguists in Quebe

			 Announcement
		 of an International Conference
 Crossing Boundaries: Formal and Functional Determinants of
			Language Acquisition
 Organized by the Research Program "Spracherwerb" (Language
	Acquisition) of the German Research Foundation (DFG)
		 T~Abingen, October 2. - 5. 1991
	 (The Conference Language will be English)
 Over the last 30 years linguistic and psycholinguistic research
 has become more and more interested in child language acquisition.
 In 1986 the German Research Foundation funded a special program
 which, so far, has supported twenty different projects on language
 acquisition.
 These projects focus on different structural domains (e.g. word
 order, morphology, phonology, semantics, discourse, narrative ca-
 pacities, interaction between children and adults), different
 types of acquisition (e.g. monolingual, bilingual, language im-
 paired and dysphasic acquisition), and different theoretical ap-
 proaches (e.g. linguistic, psychological and sociolinguistic, for-
 mal or functional). On the whole the program reflects the full
 range of different approaches also to be found in child language
 research in general.
 The conference in T~Abingen is intended to provide an international
 forum for the presentation of empirical and theoretical results of
 the research program and to discuss these in a broader context.
 A special interest lies in the question: what can different ap-
 proaches achieve, what are their limits, and in what respects
 could they turn out to be complementary.
 The following workshops are planned:
 (1) Acquisition of Phonology
 (2) The Acquisition of Discourse Units
 (3) Interaction: On the Development of Children's Discourse
 Abilities
 (4) The Acquisition of Morphology
 (5) The Development of Clause Structure
 Apart from the projects funded by the German Research Foundation
 invited speakers will participate in these workshops. There will
 be plenary talks (E. Bates, M. Bowerman, W. Deutsch, A. Mills, K.
 Wexler) addressing the central topics of the conference, namely
								 2
 the need for more interdisciplinary work and for glances "over the
 fence" towards complementary explanatory approaches.
 If you are interested in attending this conference, please send
 your registration to:
	Cleo Becker
	DFG-Projekt Tracy
	Englisches Seminar
	Universit~Dt T~Abingen
	Wilhelmstr. 50
	W 7400 T~Abingen-1
	Federal Republic of Germany
 Conference fee: DM 30.00 for students and DM 70.00 for other par-
 ticipants, to be paid at the registration desk in T~Abingen.
 Beginning: October 2nd, 230 p.m. in the lobby of the
 Neuphilologie, Wilhelmstraae 50, T~Abingen.
 Hotel booking: Please send your room request to the Tourist In-
 formation Office in T~Abingen
	Verkehrsverein T~Abingen
	An der Neckarbr~Acke
	Postfach 2623
	W 7400 T~Abingen-1
	Federal Republic of Germany
[Moderators' note: additional information relevant to this posting is
available on the server. To get the file, send a message to:
 listservuniwa.uwa.oz.au
The message should consist of the single line:
 get acquisition-conf
You will then receive the complete program.]

It is not too late to submit an abstract for the workshop on Language
in Prehistory. Please respond by email to this address by Sept. 20.