33.3475, Calls: Historical Linguistics/Greece

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-3475. Mon Nov 07 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.3475, Calls: Historical Linguistics/Greece

Moderators:

Editor for this issue: Everett Green <everett at linguistlist.org>
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Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2022 03:17:13
From: Andres Enrique Arias [andres.enrique at uib.es]
Subject: On the spatial diffusion of linguistic changes: new methods and theoretical perspectives

 
Full Title: On the spatial diffusion of linguistic changes: new methods and theoretical perspectives 

Date: 29-Aug-2023 - 01-Sep-2023
Location: Athens, Greece 
Contact Person: Andrés Enrique-Arias
Meeting Email: andres.enrique at uib.es
Web Site: https://societaslinguistica.eu/meetings/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 13-Nov-2022 

Meeting Description:

One of the first roles of dialectology was to inform diachronic linguistics,
by using spatial configurations of language variants to deduct patterns of
linguistic variation and change. An early example of such approach was
Schmidt’s (1872) Wave model (Wellentheorie), which constituted a valuable
alternative to the Tree model as it was better suited to account for
situations of dialect continua. Similarly, the distribution of linguistic
variants in the physical space can be used to detect the original focus of
linguistic innovations and determine the direction of changes (Bailey et al.
1993). The interaction between dialectology and sociolinguistics has also been
fruitful. It has been shown that changes ''from below'' extend through
contiguous areas and delimit precise zones, while changes ''from above'' draw
isolated areas following the so-called gravity model (cf. Chambers & Trudgill
1980; Nevalainen 2000; De Benito Moreno 2020).
Despite the initial connection between linguistic theory and dialectology,
both currents seem to have parted ways to a large extent. Whereas dialectology
has been slow to incorporate the advances of linguistics and sociolinguistics
(Trudgill, 1974), recent theoretical trends in historical linguistics, such as
grammaticalization, have disregarded the geographical distribution of variable
traits. Such dissociation is unfortunate, as localizing competing variants in
space has been shown to be crucial in the formulation of hypotheses about the
causes and conditioning factors of linguistic changes in grammaticalization
processes (Del Barrio 2016, Rodríguez Molina 2010).
At the present time, the study of language variation from a geographical
perspective is the subject of renewed interest. This trend has been
facilitated by various theoretical, methodological and technological
developments. Linguistic typology has highlighted the importance of linguistic
areas upon the observation that the centuries-old coexistence of languages in
the same geographical space results in their sharing structural properties. At
the same time, new developments in the study of language and dialect contact
and bilingualism have enriched the theoretical framework that must be used to
study linguistic changes across space. Likewise, the creation of new corpora
and databases that allow accessing historical data of individual languages
sorted by geographical origin is facilitating the creation of renewed
historical investigations that consider the spatial factor (i.e. corpora such
as CODEA for central Ibero-Romance dialects). Finally, the availability of
digital tools (such as OpenStreetMap) has facilitated the mapping of
linguistic data (i.e. resources such as WALS, APICS or the aforementioned
CODEA). Finally, the capabilities afforded by massive geolocalized data from
social media apps offer unprecedented possibilities for observing the
diffusion of changes (i.e. the emergence of new discourse markers) in real
time.
In sum, the aforementioned advances present great opportunities for taking a
new look at the interplay between geographical variation and diachrony; at the
same time, however, these developments raise new theoretical, empirical and
methodological challenges that we intend to address in this workshop


Call for Papers:

As part of the 56th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (29
August – 1 September, Athens) we invite submissions with original research
that considers the following issues or related ones:

- Methodological approaches that allow for the simultaneous examination of the
spatial distribution of several variables (as opposed to the isolated study of
single variables).
- Studies addressing clustered phenomena that might hint at joint evolutions,
or chain shifts.
- Investigations that integrate the role of both physical and political space
through history.
- Studies that aim to restore the balance between all levels of analysis
(including the lexical and discourse components), as opposed to traditional
approaches that privileged phonetic variables.
- Methodological approaches that address the interplay between register and
geographical variation in the study of diachronic change.
- Methodological approaches and visualization techniques that integrate
frequency of use in the study of geographical variation through history, as
opposed to categorical data (presence vs. absence of a variant).
- Studies based on synchronic data (e.g. from online social networks) that can
shed light onto historical processes.
- Any relevant research that addresses the diffusion of linguistic changes on
the physical space.

Researchers interested in participating in the workshop are invited to send a
short provisional abstract of max. 300 words by 13 November 2022 to
spatialdiffusionSLE23 at gmail.com. By 20 November 2022 the workshop proposal
must be sent to the SLE organizing committee. Note that, after the acceptance
of the workshop as such, you will still have to submit a revised 500-word
abstract according to the SLE guidelines to be reviewed anonymously by 15
January 2023. For further information please refer to
https://societaslinguistica.eu/sle2023/second-call-for-papers/.




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