Call for papers: Language Documentation

Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory: 75 years of Linguistics at SOAS, 5 years of the Endangered Languages Project

7-8th December 2007
School of Oriental and African Studies, London

In 2007 the Department of Linguistics at School of Oriental and African Studies celebrates its 75th anniversary. Founded in 1932 as the first department of general linguistics in Britain, the research carried out by linguistics within the department has made a significant and lasting impact on the fields of language documentation and description and linguistic theory.

This conference commemorates both the 75 year tradition of linguistics within the School and the 5th anniversary of the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project, comprising the Endangered Languages Academic Programme (ELAP), the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR), and the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP).

The conference aims to bring together researchers working on linguistic theory and language documentation and description, with a particular focus on innovative work on underdescribed or endangered languages, especially those of Asia and Africa. Our goal is to provide a forum to discuss the ways that linguists and others, especially community members, can respond to the current challenges to linguistic diversity and build on experiences of the past.

Themes:
1. implications of language documentation and description for linguistic theory
2. implications of linguistic theory for language documentation and description
3. experiences of language documentation and description and linguistic theory at SOAS
4. new techniques and opportunities for documenting and describing languages
5. community-oriented outcomes of endangered languages research

Abstracts:
Abstracts are invited for 20-minute talks (plus 10 minutes of discussion) on any of the themes identified above. Submissions are limited to one individual and one joint abstract per author.

Abstracts should take the form of a PDF document, submitted by email and limited to one page (using 2.5cm margins on all sides and 12pt Times font) including references, and a further one page of examples and data. Any non-standard fonts should be embedded in the PDF document. Authors should submit two versions of their abstract, one with their name and affiliation included and a second without these details.

Abstract submissions should be sent electronically to abstract@hrelp.org. The deadline for abstract submissions is 17th August 2007. Acceptance will be notified by 30th August 2007 and a PDF comprising a 5-10 page outline of the paper to be presented (including examples and references) will be due on 19th November 2007. We will print all the outlines of accepted papers in a book that will be given to registrants at the conference.

Important dates:

Deadline for abstract submission: 17th August 2007
Notification of acceptance: 30th August 2007
‘Early bird’ registration deadline: 8th October 2007
Deadline for submission of 5-10 page outlines/Final registration deadline: 19th November 2007
Conference: 7-8th December 2007

Conference fees:

Early bird registration (by 8th October 2007)
- full £ 45
- student/unwaged £ 25

Registration (19th November 2007)
- full £ 60
- student/unwaged £ 35

Registration includes conference pack (including a book of paper outlines), morning/afternoon teas.

Conference dinner 7th December 2007 £ 25

Further details and conference registration forms will be available in August at http://www.soas.ac.uk/departments/departmentinfo.cfm?navid=892.

All other enquiries should be directed to Jacqui Freeman: conference@hrelp.org.

Prof Peter K. Austin
Marit Rausing Chair in Field Linguistics
Director, Endangered Languages Academic Program
Department of Linguistics, SOAS
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
London WC1H 0XG
United Kingdom

web: http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/index.php?cd=pa

2003 Paradisec Conference

From Transient Languages and Cultures, the proceedings of the 2003 PARADISEC workshop on Researchers, communities, institutions and sound recordings. There are many papers directly and indirectly relevant to fieldwork with Indigenous Australian languages.

Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork

Conference held at the University of Sydney.

• Conference page is here.
• Conference review at ELAC.
• DSpace collection of papers resulting from the workshop.

Language of Poetry and Song

CALL FOR PAPERS

Language of poetry and song
Australian Linguistics Society Conference 2007
Adelaide, September 26-28

The ‘Language of poetry and song’ is a one-day cross-disciplinary workshop at the annual Australian Linguistics Society Conference held at the University of Adelaide, September 26-28, 2007.

The workshop is an opportunity for researchers working on either recent or traditional musical genres within linguistics, ethnomusicology or anthropology to explore linguistic features of song/poetry with others working in this field.

Papers should address issues such as

* How do musical form and linguistic form interact?
* Are there restrictions on the types of grammatical structures found in song/poetry?
* Can words be shortened or extended to fit song metre?
* What sorts of special vocabulary do they contain? If there are ‘fillers’ what are their metrical purposes?
* How do the intended meanings of song/poetry differ, or go beyond, the meanings in speech?
* How do the meanings and broader significances of song/poetry relate to the local social context?

Papers addressing other issues relating to the language of song or poetry are also welcome. Presentations should be 20 minutes long with 10 minutes for questions.

Abstracts must not be longer than 300 words and be submitted by March 16th, 2007 in word or PDF format to:
christina.eira AT adelaide.edu.au

Sydney eScholarship Repository

via Transient Languages and Cultures, the Sydney University eScholarship repository has a number of items of interest to Australianists, including Tom Honeyman’s thesis Topic and Focus in Ngardi.

Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork

Many academic disciplines depend on analysis of primary data captured during fieldwork. Increasingly, researchers today are using digital methods for the whole life cycle of their primary data, from capture to organisation, submission to a repository or archive, and later access and dissemination in publications, teaching resources and conference presentations. This conference and workshop will showcase a number of projects that have been developing innovative and sustainable ways of managing such data.

The conference will be in three parts: Academic papers on the theme “Fieldwork: from creation to archive and back”; demonstrations of tools and platforms for submitting and disseminating digital ethnographic material; and a hands-on workshop to introduce researchers to relevant recommended tools.

Held at  the University of Sydney

Organised by PARADISEC (http://paradisec.org.au)

December 4 - 6, 2006

Abstract Deadline: August 30, 2006
Paper Deadline: October 20, 2006
For further details see: http://conferences.arts.usyd.edu.au/index.php?cf=11

Workshop on Australian Languages

SOAS, May 19th. Program is at http://www.hrelp.org/events/seminars/abstracts/aboriginal_lang_prog.doc

LFG06

LFG 2006 will be held in June in Konstanz (Germany). The program will be available at the website (here) shortly. It includes a talk by Rachel Nordlinger and Louise Sadler on Apposition as Coordination in Australian Languages.

suspended affixation

SUSPENDED AFFIXATION DAY

Konstanz
24 June 2006

CALL FOR PAPERS

Suspended Affixation Day is not to be confused with Ascension Day, which is
on Thursday, 25 May, while the former will only be held on Saturday, 24
June.  We'd like to invite phonologists, morphologists, syntacticians, and
semanticists (and why not pragmaticists too) to join us in paying homage to
the marvels of suspended affixation on that day.

Suspended affixation is what you see, or indeed don't see, in this Turkish
sentence:

Tebrik ve teSekkür-ler-im-i sunaržm.
congratulation and thank-PL-1SG-ACC I.offer
'I offer my congratulations and thanks'

In a syntactic construction (coordination) where two members (nouns) can
potentially be affixed for the same inflectional categories (number, person
and number of possessor, case), one (the first) isn't.  Though it could be
(tebrik-ler-im-i …), with no great semantic or pragmatic difference in
this particular case.  As everybody knows, however, it does make a
difference whether you suspend or don't in cases like this:

Laurel('s) and Hardy's films

The term "suspended affixation" was probably coined by G. L. Lewis in his
Turkish Grammar (1967), and has subsequently found particular favour in
Turkic linguistics (see further
http://ling.uni-konstanz.de/pages/home/kabak/papers/Kabak2007saff.pdf).
However, the phenomenon as such had been much discussed in morphological
typology, most notably, in the Humboldt/Steinthal tradition, by Franz
Nikolaus Finck in his Die Haupttypen des Sprachbaus (1910), where it is
subsumed under the notion of "group inflection".  (What's nowadays called
"phrase marking", as opposed to "word marking".  See the introduction to
Double Case, if you find the original sources too heavy-going.)

At any rate, suspended affixation is not something limited to inflection;
on certain conditions, derivational affixes can be suspended, too:

This stuff is neither eat- nor drink-able.

If you need further background, drop us a line.

For Suspended Affixation Day we invite papers on questions such as the
following, and whichever others you feel bear on the issue:

*  In which languages can affixation be suspended?
(surely not in all …)

*  What kinds of syntactic constructions admit suspended affixation in the
relevant languages?
(coordination, tight/loose apposition, subordinative constructions, …)

*  What does suspended affixation tell us about the nature of constructions?

*  Which kinds of morphological milieus are conducive to affix suspension?
(agglutination, with affixes separatist, invariant, loosely-bound, not
flexion, with affixes cumulative, variant, tightly-bound?)

*  What kinds of semantic and pragmatic constraints curb suspended
affixation in circumstances where it would be possible on morphosyntactic
and phonological grounds?
(semantic unity, scope, frequency, …)

*  What kinds of prosodic constraints curb suspended affixation?
(phonological wordhood of bases, prosodic weight of affixes, …)

*  What notions of "word" and "phrase" are relevant for accounting for
suspended affixation?
(phonological, morphological, syntactic …)

*  What is the relation of suspended affixation to phrase marking?
(to patterns such as these:  N-case;  N-ADJ-case)

Unlike Ascension, Suspended Affixation Day will be an informal affair.  If
interested in giving a paper (length within reason:  do send a title,
preferably with an abstract), or just to listen in and join in the
discussion, let us know asap, and we'll be in touch.

The presenters and discussants will minimally include the three undersigned
locals and two local affiliates, Amanda Pounder (Calgary) and Olya Gurevich
(Berkeley).

Unfortunately we can't cover travel costs.  We'd be at your assistance,
though, helping you find (i) your way to Konstanz and (ii) reasonable
accommodation.

Frans Plank (frans.plank@uni-konstanz.de)
Baržs Kabak (baris.kabak@uni-konstanz.de)
Bernhard Wälchli (bernhard.waelchli@uni-konstanz.de)

Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft & Sonderforschungsbereich 471,
Universität Konstanz
Konstanz, Germany