27.4464, Calls: Lithuanian, Anthro Ling, Historical Ling, Socioling/Switzerland

Wed Nov 2 19:37:21 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4464. Wed Nov 02 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.4464, Calls: Lithuanian, Anthro Ling, Historical Ling, Socioling/Switzerland

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Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2016 15:37:04
From: Christa Schneider [christa.schneider at germ.unibe.ch]
Subject: Linguistic Variation in Lithuania Now and Then

Full Title: Linguistic Variation in Lithuania Now and Then 

Date: 10-Sep-2017 - 13-Sep-2017
Location: Zurich, Switzerland 
Contact Person: Christa Schneider
Meeting Email: christa.schneider at germ.unibe.ch

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Sociolinguistics 

Subject Language(s): Lithuanian (lit)

Call Deadline: 20-Nov-2016 

Meeting Description:

This workshop aims to bring together scholars working on Lithuanian from
different theoretical approaches in order to focus on linguistic variation
from both a historical and a synchronic perspective.

Lithuanian is a language of quite recent attestation, as its first book was
printed in 1547. The history of Lithuanian is characterized by the presence of
all the dimensions of variation which form the ‘architecture of language’:
diatopic, diaphasic, diastratic and diachronic. This is largely due to the
context in which this language developed, a context in which polyglossia has
always played a crucial role. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania (13th-18th cent.)
immediately comes to mind. Here, different social classes in different
communicative settings spoke Latin, German, Ruthenic, Polish and Lithuanian.
At that time ethnographical Lithuania was divided into two political entities,
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and East Prussia. Language standardization
processes in these areas differed considerably. Later events provoked the
growing influence of Polish in the Grand Duchy after the Union of Lublin and
the strong impact of Russian during the Tsarist and the Soviet occupations.
All this provides an interesting setting for the study of linguistic variation
across all of its dimensions.

Attempts to establish the principles of multilingual communication in
ethnically complex speech communities can be made for the present state of the
language, as well as for the past. In the latter case, one needs to extract
data from the old linguistic monuments or from the sociolinguistic accounts
provided by the palaeocomparativists.

Central European approaches in traditional dialectology reached Lithuania in
the middle of the 19th century. Lithuanian dialectology points to a
macro-distinction between two main linguistic variants
(Aukštaitian/Samogitian), which have been described in the 1860s.
Subsequently, many dialect descriptions have been conducted and Baltic
onomastics and toponomastics have been developed, fields which are of course
closely linked to language variation.

The emergence of the Lithuanian standard language in 1922 drew a sharper line
between dialect and standard and encouraged some Lithuanian dialectologists to
explore local language variation more closely. The first dialect
classification, which also included a dialect map, was proposed in 1946 and
has been later revised.

This was the time when W. Labov proposed for the first time a theoretically
motivated integration of social factors into accounts of language variation
and change and helped to found contemporary sociolinguistics, an approach that
reached Lithuania only some years later. In the 1980s attention was also paid
to the interplay of Baltic variants and their mutual influences, especially in
border areas, but this remains a less studied aspect. After the collapse of
the USSR, language variation has been studied in a variety of different ways
in Lithuania.

With this workshop, we want do draw attention to language variation in the
Baltic area and we would like to bring together scholars working in these
fields. Today Baltic/Lithuanian linguistics is mostly to be found within the
Baltic States. Only a few institutions in Europe are officially concerned with
such topics. Nevertheless, there are a number of qualified linguists working
on this linguistic area. Therefore, the research potential in Baltic and
Lithuanian linguistics as a whole will hopefully be highlighted in our
session.

Call for Papers:

The workshop is planned to be held at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas
Linguistica Europaea (SLE) (Zurich, 10-13 September 2017). Preliminary
abstracts of 300 words (excluding references, 20 minute presentations in
English) and a short academic vita should be sent to Dr. Adriano Cerri
(adrianocerri at gmail.com) or Christa Schneider
(christa.schneider at germ.unibe.ch).

The deadline for submission is: 

Nov 20, 2016. 

The submitted proposals will be selected and serve to prepare a workshop
proposal to be submitted to the SLE.

Important Dates:

20 November 2016: Deadline for submission of 300-word abstracts to the
workshop organizers (submission addresses: Dr. Adriano Cerri
adrianocerri at gmail.com or Christa Schneider christa.schneider at germ.unibe.ch)
25 November 2016: Notification of acceptance by the workshop organizers and
submission of the workshop proposals to SLE 
25 December 2016: Notification of acceptance of workshop proposals from SLE
15 January 2017: Deadline for submission of full abstracts to SLE for review
31 March 2017: Notification of paper acceptance
10-13 September 2017: SLE conference

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