23.3091, Calls: Typology, Anthropological Linguistics/Germany

Tue Jul 17 17:57:41 UTC 2012

LINGUIST List: Vol-23-3091. Tue Jul 17 2012. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 23.3091, Calls: Typology, Anthropological Linguistics/Germany

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Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:56:18
From: Nicholas Enfield [Nick.Enfield at mpi.nl]
Subject: Mainland Southeast Asian Languages: The State of the Art in 2012

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Full Title: Mainland Southeast Asian Languages: The State of the Art in 2012 
Short Title: MSEALS 2012 

Date: 29-Nov-2012 - 01-Dec-2012
Location: Leipzig, Germany 
Contact Person: Bernard Comrie
Meeting Email: comrie at eva.mpg.de

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics; Typology 

Call Deadline: 24-Aug-2012 

Meeting Description:

The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig will host, in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (Nijmegen), a workshop on 'Mainland Southeast Asian Languages: The State of the Art in 2012' from 29 November through 1 December 2012 (three full days). 

The purpose of this workshop is to take stock of what has been discovered in the last decade or so about language diversity and linguistic typology in the mainland Southeast Asia area. Should we revise our views of the linguistics of the area? If so, how? It has long been known that Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) - with Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand at its centre, extending out into China, Myanmar, and Peninsular Malaysia - is a locus of an especially high degree of human diversity in world terms. This means diversity in all measures of distinction among human groups, including social structure, material culture, and genetic markers (cf. Enfield ed., Dynamics of Human Diversity: The Case of Mainland Southeast Asia, Pacific Linguistics 2011). The diversity of languages, however, has been regarded as relatively low (Comrie, 'Areal Typology of Mainland Southeast Asia: What We Learn from the WALS Maps,' Manusya 2007). In this meeting, we concentrate on typological diversity in language.

Guiding questions of the workshop:

1. Does recent empirical work in MSEA linguistics (in the last 10 years) require us to change our views on the typology of the area? What can we now say about the types of grammatical system that are (not) found in MSEA?
2. There have been new theoretical and methodological advances in descriptive, typological, areal and historical linguistics in the last 10 years: do these require us to change our established views on the typology of the area?
3. How diverse are the languages of MSEA? What is the nature of the diversity?
4. Is there such a thing as a 'typical' MSEA language? What is it like?
5. To what degree can the interpretation of the facts of MSEA languages vary, in turn affecting our view of the area's typology? For example, are MSEA phoneme inventories unusually large, or can/should they be described more parsimoniously?
6. It is known that certain biases are introduced by scholars' backgrounds in discipline, geographical area, language family, and political affiliations: How significantly do these biases affect the formulation of questions about language type and areal patterns, and the interpretation of facts?
7. What is the historical background to the above, i.e. what historical processes have led to linguistic convergence and diversification in MSEA? To what extent have languages with a longer presence in the area influenced languages entering subsequently? To what extent have the latter influenced the former?

The schedule will reserve ample time for group discussion. 

Call for Papers:

Approximately two-thirds of the workshop will be devoted to invited presentations. The conference organizers, Bernard Comrie and Nick Enfield, invite submission of abstracts of 30-minute papers from others interested in participating in the workshop.

One-page abstracts (pdf format) should be submitted no later than 24 August 2012 by email to both Bernard Comrie (comrie at eva.mpg.de) and Nick Enfield (nick.enfield at mpi.nl). Notification of acceptance will be by 31 August 2012.

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