19.866, FYI: A Consortium for a Grant Proposal for EuroBABEL

Sat Mar 15 01:20:12 UTC 2008

LINGUIST List: Vol-19-866. Fri Mar 14 2008. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 19.866, FYI: A Consortium for a Grant Proposal for EuroBABEL

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1)
Date: 12-Mar-2008
From: Zsuzsa Várnai < varnai at nytud.hu >
Subject: A Consortium for a Grant Proposal for EuroBABEL

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 21:19:10
From: Zsuzsa Várnai [varnai at nytud.hu]
Subject: A Consortium for a Grant Proposal for EuroBABEL
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Dear Colleagues,

This is to let you know that people from the Department of Theoretical
Linguistics and the Department of Uralic Languages of the Budapest Research
Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (which also
hosts the Theoretical Linguistics Programme of ELTE University, Budapest)
plan to pull together

                  A CONSORTIUM FOR A GRANT PROPOSAL

for EuroBABEL, and submit the proposal in the beginning of May 2008.
We are looking for partners in the consortium.

EuroBABEL is a new EUROCORES Programme. Its main purpose is to promote
theoretical and empirical research using data from underdescribed
endangered languages. EuroBABEL programmes will run for 3-4 years starting
in March 2009, and it includes national research funding. The research has
to involve the collection of new data in the endangered languages chosen.
The research groups are encouraged to
involve researchers from the region where the languages under
investigation are spoken.  There are three possible types of grant; we plan
to apply in the first category, namely, ``Linguistic theory and endangered
languages''.  The deadline of the Outline Proposal is May 12, 2008. For
more information see the Call for Outline Proposals:
http://www.esf.org/activities/eurocores/programmes/eurobabel.html

As for the content of the proposal we are planning, here is a brief summary
of the ideas we would find interesting and for which we can offer competence:

-------------------------------------------------------------

Project title: Theory of writing grammars in a surface-only spirit

Keywords: theory of grammar writing, endangered languages,
non-generative grammar

Main objectives: innovative grammar-writing formalism for the purpose of
describing less studied endangered languages

Main ideas:
- grammar should specify correlations between surface form/function
pairs rather than rule systems deriving surface forms from `underlying' forms;
- analogy is the major force ensuring the cohesion of a synchronic
linguistic system;
- morpho-phonological transparency (agglutination) and syntactic
transparency (productive patterns) are extreme/limiting cases of structural
and functional parallelism, but not the model;  other types of sign
combination should not be considered deviant;
- concentrate on the investigation of those types of combination previously
considered deviant (e.g., non-agglutinative morphological patterns and
non-transparent syntactic patterns).

Expertise and interest in endangered languages by the Hungarian
participants: endangered Uralic (especially, Samoyedic) languages; Baiash
(which derives from an archaic Romanian dialect); Lovari (and other Romani
dialects spoken in our region).

Contact:
Zsuzsa Várnai (RIL HAS): varnai at nytud.hu
László Kálmán (RIL HAS, ELTE): kalman at nytud.hu 

Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories

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