LINGUIST List 17.1307

Fri Apr 28 2006

Calls: General Ling/South Africa;Historical Ling/France

Editor for this issue: Kevin Burrows <kevinlinguistlist.org>

Directory         1.    Kate van Gass, Cradle of Language Conference
         2.    Tobias Scheer, Gallo-Romance Diachronics: Phonological and Morphological Evolution of French, Francoprovençal and Occitan
Message 1: Cradle of Language Conference
Date: 26-Apr-2006
From: Kate van Gass <clcsun.ac.za>
Subject: Cradle of Language Conference



Full Title: Cradle of Language Conference Short Title: CLC
Date: 07-Nov-2006 - 10-Nov-2006 Location: Stellenbosch, South Africa Contact Person: Rudie Botha
Meeting Email: < click here to access email >
Web Site: http://www.clc.sun.ac.za
Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics

Call Deadline: 01-May-2006

Meeting Description:

Conference on the evolutionary emergence of human language in Africa.

This is a reminder that abstracts of papers for oral presentations and proposals for poster presentations for the Cradle of Language conference should be submitted by May 1st, 2006.

Notification of acceptance/rejection will be sent to authors by July 1st, 2006.

Duration of papers:Half an hour, with 10 minutes for discussion.

Keynote addresses will have a duration of 50 minutes, with a further 10 minutes for discussion.

Format of abstracts/poster proposals:Authors can submit an abstract for a standard oral presentation or a proposal for the content of a poster presentation (max. length 300 words, excl. references) in the form of a word document (.doc) or as a PDF.

Submission method:Authors may submit their abstracts by sending them as e-mail attachments to the Conference Commitee at clcsun.ac.za

Please include the following information in the e-mail:Title of Paper/PosterName of Author(s) and Affiliation(s)Type of submission (i.e. an abstract for a paper or a proposal for a poster)

Please see the website www.clc.sun.ac.za for more information about the conference.


Message 2: Gallo-Romance Diachronics: Phonological and Morphological Evolution of French, Francoprovençal and Occitan
Date: 26-Apr-2006
From: Tobias Scheer <scheerunice.fr>
Subject: Gallo-Romance Diachronics: Phonological and Morphological Evolution of French, Francoprovençal and Occitan



Full Title: Gallo-Romance Diachronics: Phonological and Morphological Evolution of French, Francoprovençal and Occitan Short Title: GalRom07
Date: 12-Jan-2007 - 13-Jan-2007 Location: Nice, France Contact Person: Tobias Scheer
Meeting Email: < click here to access email >
Web Site: http://www.unice.fr/dsl/galrom07.htm
Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Morphology; Phonology

Subject Language(s): Auvergnat; Gascon; Languedocien; Limousin; Old Provençal

Language Family(ies): Romance

Call Deadline: 15-Sep-2006

Meeting Description:

The laboratory BCL ('Bases, Corpus, Langage', Nice) and the team LDOR ofthe laboratory ERSS ('Equipe de Recherche en Syntaxe et Sémantique',Toulouse) organize a conference on Gallo-Roman diachronics which isconcerned with the phonological and the morphological evolution ofFrench, Francoprovençal and Occitan.

BackgroundThe idea for this conference roots in the observation of severaldeficiencies of the Gallo-Roman domain:- the paucity of contemporary studies that continue the tradition of thePhonétique Historique- the minor role that dialects have played in the construction ofclassical diachronic knowledge- the minor role played by modern theories in diachronic studies

We believe that our understanding of the evolution of Gallo-Romance willgreatly benefit from the confrontation of the classical knowledge withdiatopic variation and modern theories.

Indeed, knowledge from various sources have failed to be interwovenbecause- the classical work in Gallo-Roman diachronics as well as moderntheories have been largely built on the grounds of standard forms oflanguages;- for a long time, diachronic material and dialectal variation have beenneglected (sometimes rejected) as empirical evidence in generativephonology;- the progress in diachronic and geolinguistic documentation (FEW,Atlases) has often been accomplished either in absence of concern forformal models of language, or in overt suspicion towards them.In this context, it is useful to recall that linguistics was fed withdiachronic and geolinguistic data (particularly Gallo-Romance dataactually) at its beginnings in the 19th century.

The conference is designed as a contribution to the task of restoring thecontinuity of exchange among dialectology, diachronics and theoreticallinguistics. These disciplines having been too long estranged from eachother socially, institutionally and culturally, we believe that a renewedcollaboration represents substantial prospect for all them. Concretebenefits are also to be awaited on the institutional side: while Frenchdiachronics to day play an important role in the French education ofteachers in secondary school (concours du Capes and de l'Agrégation),their teaching is not fed by active research anymore.

The conference specifically aims at overcoming a certain inclination tosolipsism that is characteristic of the study of French diachronics. Inorder to understand the development of French, all present and pastvarieties of oïl need to be taken into account as much as standard Frenchand its predecessors. Also, standard French and dialects of oïl need tobe confronted with the two neighbouring Romance languages,Francoprovençal and Occitan.

All submissions that concern present or past varieties of the threelanguages identified are welcome. They may concentrate on one language orbuild on comparative material, focus on an idiolect or a larger dialectalarea, and concern literarily elaborated or exclusively oral forms.

The limitation of the conference to the Gallo-Romance space is deliberatebut of course arbitrary. The reference to this specific geographic domainsingles out a clearly identifiable portion of Romance and corresponds toa certain academic tradition which the conference aims at criticallycontinuating. This frame being set, it will have an open interpretation:all submissions that have some affinity with it will be considered. Inparticular, reference to other Romance and non-Romance languages iswelcome as long as Gallo-Romance material is considered.