28.5270, Calls: Language Documentation/Slovakia

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-5270. Wed Dec 13 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.5270, Calls: Language Documentation/Slovakia

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Helen Aristar-Dry, Robert Coté,
                                   Michael Czerniakowski)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Kenneth Steimel <ken at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2017 11:22:51
From: Nina Sumbatova [nina.sumbatova at gmail.com]
Subject: Workshop on Elicitation and Text Studies in Field Research

 
Full Title: Workshop on Elicitation and Text Studies in Field Research 
Short Title: ETS 

Date: 29-Jun-2018 - 30-Jun-2018
Location: Kosice, Slovakia 
Contact Person: Nina Sumbatova
Meeting Email: nina.sumbatova at gmail.com
Web Site: http://kaa.ff.upjs.sk/en/event/33/word-formation-theories-iii-typology-and-universals-in-word-formation-iv 

Linguistic Field(s): Language Documentation 

Call Deadline: 15-Feb-2018 

Meeting Description:

Workshop on Elicitation and text studies in field research 
June 29-30, 2018, Košice (Slovakia) 

Organized as part of the conference Word-Formation Theories III. Typology and
Universals in Word-Formation IV
Conference venue: Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Department of
British and American Studies

Workshop Organizers: Nina Sumbatova, Valentin Vydrin

Like any science, linguistics obtains its primary data via observation and
experiment. In field linguistics, these two methods are represented by
recording spontaneous oral texts and elicitation. 

This workshop is not meant to compare the advantages and drawbacks of each
method. Rather, we are planning to discuss how we could combine and integrate
elicitation and work with text collections in order to obtain most impressive
results.

We are primarily interested in discussing field studies of derivational
morphology, which also face the same methodological problems (however, other
topics of field research will also be considered). For example, when studying
a derivational pattern, a field linguist, who relies on acceptability
judgments of the speakers, may obtain a list of derived lexemes. This list
will have at least two weak points: on the one hand, it does not distinguish
potential and actual words, which are indiscriminately produced by the
speaker; on the other hand, it sometimes lacks important actual words just
because the speakers fail to imagine an appropriate context. If the language
under study has a large electronic corpus, a range of methods is available for
measuring productivity of derivation models. However, it is not clear to what
extent these measures are applicable to less studied languages.


Call for Papers:

We suggest discussing the following issues:

The potential of each method:

What types of information can and cannot be obtained through elicitation on
the one hand and (spontaneous oral) texts on the other? It is obvious that the
corpus-oriented approach cannot provide negative evidence, but is this its
only limitation? What are the potential limits of elicitation?

Interpretation of frequency:

Whereas elicitation is meant to differentiate between acceptable and
inacceptable sentences, text collections provide the frequencies of linguistic
phenomena. Normally, the absence or rarity of a phenomenon does not imply its
ungrammaticality or unacceptability, but still requires an explanation.
Surprisingly, there is no agreement between the linguists on how the frequency
of a linguistic phenomenon in a corpus should be explained, especially if this
corpus is not big enough.
- How should we interpret the absence of a phenomenon in a text collection?
- How can we distinguish between a rare phenomenon and a mistake?
- What do the (relative) frequencies of certain phenomena in a text corpus
mean for understanding language mechanisms?

Data interpretation:

Different types of corpus-based observations can be interpreted and explained
by some other phenomena observed in the corpus or by certain phenomena of
essentially different nature.
- In which cases can the observed data be explained through other observations
- first of all, other corpus data?
- In what situations does the interpretation of corpus data require that the
researcher should switch to an experiment?
- And, vice versa, what types of elicited data should be verified and/or
explained with the help of corpus data?

Mutual verification:

- How can elicitation be used to check the results of a corpus-based study,
and how does corpus-based study serve to verify the results of elicitation?
- How helpful is each of these methods in formulating questions to the other
one?

Abstracts for papers should be anonymous, 500 words in length (excluding
references, but including tables) in both word (Times New Roman, 12 pts.) and
pdf format and should be sent to nina.sumbatova at gmail.com and
vydrine at yandex.ru by 15 February 2018.

Notification of acceptance: 10 April, 2018

Conference website:
http://kaa.ff.upjs.sk/en/event/33/word-formation-theories-iii-typology-and-uni
versals-in-word-formation-iv

Elsewhere on the LinguistList:
https://linguistlist.org/callconf/browse-conf-action.cfm?ConfID=269017




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

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-28-5270	
----------------------------------------------------------
Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated
from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:
          http://multitree.org/