27.314, Calls: English, Hist Ling/Poland

Mon Jan 18 18:00:19 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-314. Mon Jan 18 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.314, Calls: English, Hist Ling/Poland

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Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2016 13:00:05
From: Robert Fuchs [robert.fuchs at uni-muenster.de]
Subject: Workshop on Diachronic Change in New Englishes: Prospects and Challenges

Full Title: Workshop on Diachronic Change in New Englishes: Prospects and Challenges 

Date: 18-Sep-2016 - 18-Sep-2016
Location: Poznan, Poland 
Contact Person: Robert Fuchs
Meeting Email: robert.fuchs at uni-muenster.de
Web Site: http://wa.amu.edu.pl/isle4/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics 

Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Call Deadline: 15-Mar-2016 

Meeting Description:

The last two decades have seen a dramatic upsurge in corpus-based research on
New Englishes, largely thanks to the International Corpus of English project
(ICE, Greenbaum 1991). The two primary aims of this research program were,
arguably, to (1) uncover patterns of unity and diversity among these
varieties, i.e. how they differ from each other, and (2) explain differences
between varieties by identifying continuities with and departures from the
structure of their ancestor varieties (usually British English), frequently
referring to influence from first languages (L1 influence) and general
language learning mechanisms (e.g. Sharma 2005).

However, when trying to explain differences between varieties, researchers
often (necessarily) had to rely on drastic generalisations; Notable among
these is that present-day varieties are compared to uncover historical
developments. For example, the historical input to contemporary Indian English
was not contemporary British English, as tacitly assumed by Fuchs (2012) and
much other research, but 18th century (standard and non-standard) British
English. Such generalisations were necessary because empirical evidence on
postcolonial varieties in general, and esp. so-called Outer Circle varieties
of English (Kachru 1985), was largely lacking.

With diverse innovative sources of evidence now emerging, we are increasingly
in a position to question the assumptions that earlier research had to make,
and to refine our understanding of the pathways of linguistic continuity and
change that have shaped present-day postcolonial varieties of English. One
source of evidence comes from extensions of the Brown and ICE families of
corpora to earlier time-points in the development of postcolonial varieties of
English, such as Singapore, Hong Kong (Biewer et al. 2014), Philippine
(Borlongan 2015, Collins et al. 2014,b) and Ghanaian English (Brato 2014,
2015) as well as work by Rossouw and van Rooy (2012) on South African English
(see also the contributions in Collins 2015). Another source of evidence comes
from applications of the apparent-time method to present-day corpus data,
permitting researchers to take a glimpse at ongoing language change (Fuchs and
Gut 2015, Hansen 2015). While most of these approaches are still relatively
shallow in their time depth, they are already opening up exciting new
perspectives on diachronic change in postcolonial varieties of English.

Call for Papers:

This workshop (to be held during the ISLE4 conference) aims to bring together
researchers working in this area. Contributions are welcome on all aspects of
diachronic variation and change in one more varieties of New Englishes. We
particularly encourage contributions that:

- Attempt to disentangle the complex relationship between influence from the
substrate/L1, the heterogeneous superstrate (consisting of standard and
non-standard varieties), and general language learning mechanisms in the
historical development of New Englishes
- Test developmental models of postcolonial varieties of English (e.g.
Schneider 2007, Trudgill 2004)
- Test the assumptions of such models, such as the founder effect, i.e. the
assumed disproportionate influence of the earliest sizeable speaker
communities

Papers in the workshop will be allotted 20 minutes for presentation and 10
minutes for discussion, in keeping with the format of the conference. Please
submit your abstract (300-500 words, excluding the title, linguistic examples
and references) though the EasyChair system on the conference website
(http://wa.amu.edu.pl/isle4/). The deadline for submissions is 15 March 2016.
Notification of acceptance of papers is 25 April 2016.

NB The workshop will take place on a single day (yet to be determined) during
the ISLE 4 conference (18-21 September 2016).

Convenors: Robert Fuchs (University of Münster), Thorsten Brato (University of
Regensburg) and Ariane M. Borlongan (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)

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