27.4191, Calls: Gen Ling, Lang Acquisition/USA

Tue Oct 18 18:54:02 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4191. Tue Oct 18 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.4191, Calls: Gen Ling, Lang Acquisition/USA

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Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:53:51
From: Jeremy Wegner [jlw280 at georgetown.edu]
Subject: Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics

Full Title: Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 
Short Title: GURT 

Date: 10-Mar-2017 - 12-Mar-2017
Location: Washington, DC, USA 
Contact Person: David Lightfoot
Meeting Email: lightd at georgetown.edu
Web Site: http://gurt.georgetown.edu/GURT%202017 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Language Acquisition 

Call Deadline: 31-Oct-2016 

Meeting Description:

The Georgetown University Round Table (GURT) on Languages and Linguistics was
first held in 1949 and has been held every year since, covering a wide range
of topics differing from year to year. As in previous years, GURT 2017 will be
embellished by Washington's Cherry Blossom Festival, all being well, and lead
to a volume of papers published by Georgetown University Press.

GURT 2017 will focus on variable properties in language, of all kinds, and
particularly on how they are acquired. It will be held on 10-12 March 2017
and will consider the full range of variable properties, how they are acquired
by young children or adults, and how they may change across generations of
speakers. A primary goal of GURT 2017 is to foster interaction and potential
collaboration among researchers investigating language from the perspective of
different subfields and using a range of methodologies. The conference aims to
make progress toward a biologically coherent account of the full range of
variation, bridging the silos that keep sociolinguists from interacting with
students of syntactic variation, and keep historical linguists apart from
phoneticians working on variability. GURT 2017 aims to change the dialogue,
and to provide opportunities for experienced scholars to mentor young
scholars, including graduate students and postdocs, working on variation,
encouraging them to work across domains.

The kind of variation that language embodies is biologically unusual; it is
not found in other species nor in other aspects of human cognition. Navajo
speakers have grammatical structures different from those of Nupe speakers.
The phonological and syntactic peculiarities specific to particular languages
or groups of languages will be addressed during the conference, for example,
particular phonological or syntactic categories occurring only in some
languages. Variation includes the variation that yields structural contrasts:
variations in the pronunciation of words that are still recognized to be the
same, variation that occurs in particular speech communities or in particular
styles of speech, and variation in production influenced by interaction with
and accommodation to particular interlocutors. All variation raises questions
about how such properties can be discovered and accommodated by young children
and by adults. And since all variation results from change, scholars need an
account of how variable properties might have first arisen and were first
acquired.

Final Call for Papers:

The deadline for proposals for posters, peers, and colloquia has been extended
to 31 October 2016.

GURT2017 is seeking proposals for individual papers, posters, and colloquia
that deal with any aspect of variable properties in language and how they may
have originated either in children during language acquisition or in adults at
some point in their lives.

Our main goal is to find a new, more comprehensive way of talking about
linguistic variation.  The meeting will deal with variable properties in all
areas of the field:  syntax, phonology, lexical,  first and second language
acquisition, discourse strategies, and others.  The unifying focus will be to
see what can be said about the acquisition of these variable properties,
hoping by the end of the meeting to find commonalities.  No other species and
no other human cognitive capacity manifests the kind of variation that human
language shows, which therefore begs for a coherent biological explanation.

If the goal is to change the dialogue, we need young people involved, graduate
students and postdocs, and we want more submissions from them.  As
encouragement, there will be a lunch for young people making presentations,
for them to meet and talk with the stellar invited speakers.  We hope to
provide financial support for those young people coming from out of town.

Check out our Twitter page: https://twitter.com/GURT2017
Our Facebook page can be found at https://www.facebook.com/gurt2017 
And the website, of course: https://gurt.georgetown.edu/GURT%202017

Please take advantage of this opportunity, help make the meeting a success,
and contribute to a better understanding of variable properties in language.

Proposals should be 300-word anonymous abstracts for posters or papers and
400-word abstracts for 1-hour or 2-hour colloquia. Proposals are due on 31
October (decisions will be announced in December).

Check the GURT website for submission details
(http://gurt.georgetown.edu/Submission).

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