ALT News No. 40

Mon Nov 20 12:00:18 UTC 2006

ALT News No. 40 
November 2006 

1. ALT VII, Paris 2007 
a. General call for papers 
b. ALT VII scholarships 
c. Workshops

2. The Joseph Greenberg Award 2007

3. A new grammar prize
4. Nominating committee

5. Publications received

1. ALT VII, Paris 2007 

Below we put together the calls for papers that have been posted at various
places in connection with ALT VII. Special attention is drawn to item (1b),
which has not been posted anywhere else yet. 

a. General call for papers 

The seventh International Conference of the Association for Linguistic
Typology (ALT VII) will be held in Paris at the Ministry of Research, from
Tuesday September 25 to Friday September 28, 2007. The conference will be
organized by the French Fédération Typologie et Universaux Linguistiques of
the CNRS. The local organizers for ALT VII will be Stéphane Robert, Isabelle
Bril, Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest and Martine Vanhove.

Members and non-members wishing to present a paper at ALT VII are asked to
e-mail a one-page abstract to the chair of the program committee, David Gil,
to reach him no later than January 15, 2007. A second page may be included
with the abstract listing data.  The abstract itself should contain no
identification of the author.  A separate page should indicate the title of
the abstract, the name(s) of the author(s), and one mailing address, with
telephone, fax, and e-mail address as available. The conference will be held
in English and French; abstracts may be submitted in either language. After
the decision of acceptance of the abstracts has been conveyed, authors will
be asked to send their abstracts in both languages.

Submissions should be sent to:

David Gil
Fax +49 341-9952119
gil at eva.mpg.de

The committee strongly encourages submissions by e-mail (preferably with the
abstract in pdf format and author information as part of the e-mail text),
but abstracts may also be sent by fax.  Authors are asked to check their pdf
files carefully to ensure that special characters are embedded properly.

The time allotted for presentation and discussion is 30 minutes.
Participants may not be involved in more than two abstracts, of which at
most one may be single-authored.

Members and non-members are also encouraged to present posters at ALT VII
(final format should be 2m high and 1m wide). An abstract should be
submitted under the same conditions as for papers (see above).

By March 1, 2007, the program committee will convey its decision on
acceptance of papers to those submitting abstracts. The committee consists
of David Gil (chair), Nick Evans, M.M. Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest, Ekkehard
Koenig, Brian Migliazza, Edith Moravcsik, and Martine Vanhove.

Details concerning registration and accommodation for the conference will
follow. There is also a dedicated website: http://www.alt7.cnrs.fr/ 

b. ALT VII scholarships

ALT has a limited amount of funds to provide partial support for a small
number of ALT members attending the ALT VII Conference. Financial support
for ALT VII will be awarded on the basis of the following two factors: (a)
high quality of abstract; and (b) financial need of applicant.

ALT members wishing to apply for financial support should include an
application for financial support when submitting their abstract. The
application should consist of a brief (one paragraph) statement explaining
why the applicant considers himself/herself to be in need of financial
assistance. No applications for financial support will be considered after
the January 15 deadline.

The ALT funds are intended for scholars from developing countries and for
students anywhere. Currently-employed professional linguists from affluent
developed countries should not apply. 

c.  Adjacent to ALT VII there will be 4 and possibly 5 workshops:

Sept 21-24: Language contact and morphosyntactic variation and change

Sept 24: French corpora: tools and models

Sept 24 - 25 (morning): Typology and documentation (to be confirmed)

Sept 24 - 25 (morning): Typology of African languages

Sept 29: Semantic maps: methods and applications

For three of these there are calls for papers. They are listed below:

i. Call for papers for an International workshop on Language contact and
morphosyntactic variation and change, 
Paris, September 20th, 21st and 24th, 2007 

At the occasion of the 7th conference of the Association for Linguistic
Typology (ALT VII) organized by the Fédération Typologie et Universaux du
CNRS [French National Centre for Scientific Research] a 3 day workshop on
morphosyntactic variation and change in situations of language contact will
be held. 

The workshop investigates the mechanisms of linguistic variation and change
in the light of current research on language contact with a focus on
variation and typological change in the area of morphosyntax. It explores
the connections between work on language variation and change, which
traditionally focuses on innovation and reorganization within a single
system, and research in contact linguistics, which deals with linguistic
change resulting from the interaction between different grammatical systems.

The following questions will be at the centre of the discussion: 

-    In situations of language contact, do the mechanisms of linguistic
change differ from those that have ‘typically’ been invoked in work on
language evolution? 
-    In language contact, is morphosyntactic change always preceded by
variation? Is the period of variation longer or shorter than in cases of
language-internally motivated change? 
-    Are the linguistic results and processes of language contact different
from those of Internal linguistic change (grammaticalization, reanalysis
)? 
-    How can contact-induced variation and change be differentiated from
language-internally motivated variation and change in settings involving
contact? 
-    How do the findings from current contact linguistic research affect
current frameworks and methodological approaches to language-internally
motivated variation and change? Can these two lines of research be
integrated or is it necessary to devise a new model? 

Topics for the plenary talks are as follows: 

•    Sarah Thomason (Michigan) – on internal and external processes of
change in contact situations from a diachronic perspective. 
•    Yaron Matras (Manchester) – on the influence of sociocultural and
typological factors in contact-induced change. 
•    Miriam Meyerhoff (Edinburgh) – comparing syntactic variation and
language change in the variationist framework and in contact linguistics. 
•    Zarina Estrada (Sonora, Mexico) – on contact-induced change involving
closely related languages. 

Talks will be 30 minutes long followed by 10 minutes for discussion. 

Submissions are also invited for posters. 

Preference will be given to papers dealing with a diachronic and/or dynamic
synchronic perspective presenting: 

-    morphosyntactic data showing linguistic variation or change, either
completed or in process, leading, in particular, to typological
reorganization 
-    analyses of linguistic processes at work 
-    critical discussion of existing theoretical frameworks (language
variation and change, typological change, etc.) 
-    proposals for (new) models about the nature of linguistic change in
situations of language contact. 

Selected papers and posters from the conference will be published in a
volume dealing with issues of variation and change in situations of contact.

Abstracts should present the data and outline the analysis and the research
questions (500 words followed by a maximum of 5 bibliographical references)
and should be sent as attachments (.doc or .rtf) by December 15th 2006 to: 

leglise at vjf.cnrs.fr and claudine at correo.unam.mx 

In the body of your message please indicate the name and address of the
author(s), title of the presentation, affiliation and whether you intend to
give a talk or poster. 

Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously. 

Notification of acceptance: March 5th, 2007. 

Workshop languages: French, English, Spanish. 

Isabelle Léglise and Claudine Chamoreau 
Workshop “Contact et changement linguistique” 
UMR CNRS CELIA 
BP8 
7, rue Guy Moquet 
94801 Villejuif 

ii. Call for papers for an International Workshop on the Typology of African
Languages.

On Monday, September 24, and Tuesday morning, there will be a Workshop on
the typology of African Languages organized by Guillaume Segerer and Bernard
Caron. African languages show a great typological diversity as well as
specific features that cross genetic boundaries and contrast with other
languages of the world. Four sessions will be dedicated to papers on the
following topics, with a State-of-the-Art paper followed by a case study for
each of them. The four topics are

(i) Information structure and prosody. Invited Speaker : Laura Downing

(ii) A typology of linguistic change. Invited Speaker : Konstantin
Pozdniakov

(iii) Linguistic typology and genealogy. Invited Speaker : Zygmund
Frajzyngier

(iv) Areal typology in Africa. Invited Speaker : Tom Güldemann

Anyone wishing to present a paper is invited to send an abstract (max 400
words) before January 15, 2007 to the address below. Abstracts sent by
e-mail should be included in the message (i.e. not appended as an
attachment). The scientific committtee is composed of the Invited Speakers
and the Organizers.

The Proceedings of the workshop will be published.

Address for workshop abstracts:

Guillaume Segerer

Workshop on African Languages

LLACAN  CNRS  B.P. 8

7, rue Guy Môquet

94801 Villejuif Cedex

France

email: segerer at vjf.cnrs.fr

fax: ++33 1 49 58 38  

iii. Call for papers for an International Workshop on Semantic maps: methods
and applications, to be held adjacent to the seventh meeting of the
Association for Linguistic Typology on Saturday, 29 September 2007 in the
Centre André-Georges Haudricourt (CNRS linguistic research units), Villejuif
(Paris Metro area). 

Organized by: 
Michael Cysouw, Martin Haspelmath, and Andrej Malchukov 
Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 

=== Theme === 

In recent years the semantic map methodology has enjoyed increased
popularity in cross-linguistic studies. Although there are various ways to
make semantic maps, they all are attempts to visually represent
cross-linguistic regularity in semantic structure. It has become
increasingly clear that these attempts to map out linguistic categorization
provide an empirically testable tool to the study of semantic variation
across languages. The semantic map approach has further shown convergence
with grammaticalization theory, as well as with the research using
(implicational) hierarchies, as found in functional typology and optimality
theory. 

Some general discussion and references on the (recieved) method of building
semantic maps can be found in Croft 2001 and Haspelmath 2003. Further,
different kinds of semantic maps have been proposed for diverse parts of
linguistic structure, including tense/aspect (e.g., Anderson 1982; Croft
fc.), modality (Anderson 1986; van der Auwera & Plungian 1998), voice
(Kemmer 1993; Croft 2001), pronouns (Haspelmath 1997a; Cysouw fc.),
case-marking (Haspelmath 2003; Narrog & Ito 2006), clause linkage (Kortmann
1997; Malchukov 2004), spatial and temporal domain (Haspelmath 1997b;
Levinson & Meira 2003), as well as to a number of syntactic domains, such as
intransitive predication (Stassen 1997) and secondary predication (van der
Auwera & Malchukov 2005). 

Yet various aspects of the semantic maps approach remain unsettled and open
to discussion: it is the goal of the workshop to address these topics, in
order to contribute - both empirically and theoretically - to the
development of the semantic map methodology. 

=== Topics === 

This workshop invites contributions related to the further understanding of
the semantic map method. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: 

- Status of semantic maps in linguistic theory 
- Methods of building semantic maps from data 
- Limits of the semantic map approach 
- Possibilities for and problems of the interpretation of semantic map 
- Relation between semantic maps and grammaticalization chains 
- Presentation and discussion of particular semantic maps 
- Scalability of the method to build semantic maps (e.g. the problem of the
“vacuous” semantic maps, which might arise when more empirical data is
included) 
– Implications of cross-linguistically rare phenomena for semantic maps 
- In what way can the semantic map approach guide and be guided by the
deductive (decompositional) approaches in (formal) semantics; 
- Relation between semantic maps and psycholinguistic research (i.e. issues
of mental reality of the structures discovered by the semantic map
methodology) 

Send your one-page abstract to Michael Cysouw at the address below,
preferably by email (in plain text or in PDF format) or as hard copy, to
arrive no later than January 31st, 2007. Notification of acceptance is by
March 1st, 2007. 

The normal time allotted for presentation is 30 minutes plus 15 minutes for
discussion. 

=== Further information === 

Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de 
Andrej Malchukov (andrej_malchukov at eva.mpg.de)
Michael Cysouw (cysouw at eva.mpg.de) 

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology 
Deutscher Platz 6 
D-04103 Leipzig 
Germany 

Webpage of this workshop: http://www.eva.mpg.de/~cysouw/meetings/
<http://www.eva.mpg.de/%7Ecysouw/meetings/>  

2. The Joseph Greenberg Award 2007

ALT will be continuing its Junior Award for the best piece of typological
research embodied in a doctoral dissertation or equivalent, but will be
renaming it the 'Joseph Greenberg Award for the best doctoral dissertation
or equivalent in Linguistic Typology'. The next round of these awards, to be
decided for the Paris meeting of the ALT next year, will be for a thesis
accepted between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2006. The award will consist
of payment of travel, per diem expenses and registration fee to attend the
ALT VII Conference, to be held in Paris, September 25 to September 28, 2007,
and to present a synopsis or element of the prize-winning work as a plenary
lecture at that meeting. From 2007 this Award will be known as the Joseph
Greenberg Award, in honour of the late Joseph Greenberg's fundamental
contributions to typology and the interest he showed in encouraging young
researchers.

Those wishing to be considered for this award are asked to submit their
dissertation by email in pdf format, with all non-standard fonts in Unicode,
to the Chair of the Jury, to arrive no later than February 1 2007. If this
proves technically difficult, the candidate is asked to discuss the problem
with the chair. 

A jury, consisting of 5 ALT members, will be appointed by ALT's President,
appropriate to the work submitted. The chair will be

Eva Schultze-Berndt 
Linguistics
Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
Merangasse 70
A-8010 Graz
Austria

Schultze-Berndt at ling.uni-graz.at

3. A new grammar prize

We are proud to announce the establishment of a new grammar prize to
encourage and honour achievements in the field of documenting the world’s
linguistic diversity through the writing of reference grammars. To be
eligible, a grammar must provide a systematic, accessible, comprehensive,
original, insightful and typologically well-informed account of the workings
of the language being described, generously exemplified with natural data.
Though the normal expectation is that it would deal with a hitherto
little-described language, outstanding grammars of better-known languages or
dialects thereof may also be considered if they achieve major breakthroughs
in a comprehensive understanding of the language. Grammars may be written in
any major language, subject to the availability of a sufficient and
geographically balanced set of jury members able to read the language.  

Entries will be judged by a committee of half-a-dozen distinguished
linguists, including a number of judges who have themselves written major
reference grammars but also typologists and other categories of
grammar-reader. The chair of the jury will be nominated before the
submission date by the President of the ALT, in consultation with the
Executive committee, and the chair and the president will then constitute
the jury once the full set of submissions is known.

The ALT grammar prize will be awarded every two years, with the winner
announced in time for them to present a plenary lecture or language tutorial
at the next ALT Conference, setting out the most typologically interesting
aspects of the language. 

There will be two categories of prize, on alternating four year cycles –
one, to be known as the Panini Grammar Award, for grammars written as
dissertations, and one, to be known as the Georg von der Gabelentz Grammar
Award, for published grammars.

For each category, any grammar (respectively) passed as a dissertation or
published in the four year period leading up to December 31st in the year
preceding the ALT Conference, will be eligible provided that it meets the
conditions above and that the author is a member of the ALT. Grammars which
win the Panini award cannot be submitted at a later date for the Gabelentz
award. Six copies of the entry must be submitted to the Chair of the Jury by
February 1st of the year following the four year period. In the case of the
Panini award only, entries may be submitted as a pdf file with embedded
fonts, except that submission of bound copies is preferred in the case of
countries such as the Netherlands where a form of non-commercial publication
is a requirement. Submitted copies remain the property of the members of the
jury. It will normally be the responsibility of the applicant to cover the
costs of submitting their work, but the Chair will consider applications for
assistance in the case of demonstrable financial hardship. It is planned
that the initial award would be made in 2007, in the Dissertation category.
Marianne Mithun has kindly agreed to chair the first Panini award, and
anyone wishing to be considered should send their entries to her address:

Marianne Mithun

Dept of Linguistics

University of California at Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara, CA 93106
USA

mithun at linguistics.ucsb.edu

An anonymous donation will enable ALT to get this award started in time for
the next ALT meeting, and we will be opening a special account to which
others wishing to support this initiative can donate funds; details will be
announced in the next Newsletter.

Prize winners for the Panini award will receive a paid fare to and
accommodation and registration at the ALT conference at which they will
present their plenary, as well as a collection of reference grammars and
other works donated by major publishers in the area. Because of current
financial limitations on the ALT Budget, Prizewinners for the Gabelentz
award will not receive a paid fare to the ALT conference, but other
conditions will be identical. 

4. Nominating committee

We would like to welcome the two new members of the Nominating Committee,
Kees Hengeveld and Jae Jung Song, and thank the two departing members,
Claude Hagège and Tasaku Tsunoda, for their contributions.

5. Publications received

See PDF attachment.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o- 

Nick Evans[President] 
Linguistics 
University of Melbourne                tel +61 3 8344 8988 
Parkville Victoria                     fax +61 3 8344 8990 
Australia 
E-mail:                                 nrd at unimelb.edu.au 

Frans Plank [Editor-in-chief, Linguistic Typology] 
Sprachwissenschaft 
Universität Konstanz 
D-78457 Konstanz                   tel + 49 7531 88 26 56 
Germany                            fax + 49 7531 88 27 41 
E-mail:                       frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de 

Johan van der Auwera [Secretary-Treasurer] 
Linguistiek 
Universiteit Antwerpen 
B-2610 Antwerpen                     tel + 32 3 820 27 76 
Belgium                              fax + 32 3 820 27 62 
E-mail:                       johan.vanderauwera at ua.ac.be 

On the WEB:  http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/organisations/alt/ 
Webmaster : Peter Kahrel         p.kahrel at lancaster.ac.uk

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