Call for papers: Workshop on Structure & Constituency in the Lang uages of the Americas -- DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION 12 JANUARY 2001

[Scott McGinnis]

Information on the 6th Workshop on Structure and Constituency in the
Languages of the Americas is presented below.  The website is located
at:

http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~wscla6/


WSCLA 6 - Call for Papers March 23-25, 2001
Contact the organizers: wscla6 at mun.ca

The main goal of this workshop is to bring together linguists working,
together on formal analyses of indigenous languages of North, Central,
and
South America. We invite papers which address the theme of this year's
conference:

The Role of Hierarchies in Linguistic Analysis.

Among the typological properties which distinguish many languages of the
Americas from the Indo-European type is the apparent use of grammatical
'hierarchies' as a basis for sentence grammar. Some of the better known
examples of such phenomena include the Algonquian 'participant
hierarchy'
and the Athapaskan 'animacy hierarchy', both of which influence the use
of
verbal voice and inflection by speakers of languages in these families.
Typically, the effects of these grammatical hierarchies are pervasive in
the grammars of the languages in which they are found. Linguistic theory
has not yet provided a clear picture of the foundation on which such
hierarchies are constructed, or of the way that use of grammatical
hierarchies and the hierarchies themselves may differ across languages.
Several alternatives have been considered in the literature: the
hierarchies might be based in lexical semantics, in morphology, in
morpho-semantic features, in phrase structure, in constraint rankings
and/or alignment, in pragmatics/deference customs, or in mapping
relations
which connect disparate modules of the grammar. It is also possible that
the hierarchies themselves arise epiphenomenally from the interactions
of
more fundamental constraints located in one or more of these areas of
the
grammar. Evaluating these various alternatives involves broader
theoretical
questions as well, concerning the role of competing constraints in
grammatical derivations. Such questions are in fact central to recent
debates concerning abstractness and economy in Optimality Theory and in
Minimalist Syntax. This is an opportune moment to bring together these
theoretical issues with the range of data familiar to linguists who work
on
languages of the Americas. The theme of this conference will be: "What
is
the role of hierarchies in linguistic analysis?".

We will invite papers dealing with the foundations and functions of
hierarchies in analysis of languages of the Americas, including all
aspects
of the grammar: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and language
acquisition and language use.

Invited speakers:
* Judith Aissen, University of California at Santa Cruz
* Julie Brittain, MIT
* Alana Johns, University of Toronto

Invited student speaker: * Doug Wharram, University of Connecticut

Papers in the core areas of formal linguistics (phonetics, phonology,
morphology, syntax, semantics) within any formal theoretical framework
will
also be considered.

Following the tradition of this workshop, we dedicate the final day to a
linking between our research and important work being done on language
preservation and revitalization. This year the session will be on
incorporating linguistic knowledge into Native language curriculum.
Invited speaker: * Robert Leavitt, Faculty of Education, University of
New
Brunswick

This talk will be followed by a roundtable discussion on this topic by
all
workshop participants.

Please submit a one page abstract (a second page with references and
extra
examples may be included). Abstracts should be submitted in four copies,
at
least one of which should be camera-ready. Abstracts may be submitted by
e-mail, but these must not contain diacritics that e-mail cannot handle.

Abstracts being submitted by email should be sent as attachments,
preferably in Word, Rich Text Format, or WordPerfect formats, in
descending
order of preference.

All submissions should provide the following items of information on a
card
separate from the abstract itself:
i. name
ii. address
iii. affiliation
iv. telephone number
v. e-mail address
vi. faculty/graduate student/postdoctoral fellow/independent scholar
status

Abstracts should be sent by snail-mail to:
WSCLA6
Department of Linguistics
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Box 4200
St. John's, Newfoundland,
Canada A1C 5S7
or by e-mail to: wscla6 at mun.ca

The deadline for abstracts to be received is Friday January 12, 2001.
The
program will be announced in mid February.

Proceedings (preliminary information):

The proceedings of WSCLA 6 will be published by the University of
British
Columbia WP in Linguistics. For further information, look for updates on
this site, or e-mail the UBCWPL editors (Eun-Sook Kim or Suzanne
Gessner).
(See the website, http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~wscla6/ for their e-mail
addresses.)

One-time-only arrangements have been made to produce a thematic issue of
Linguistica Atlantica, the journal of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistic
Association (APLA). Selected papers on the theme of WSCLA6 will be
published in this refereed venue. Further information and a style sheet
will be forthcoming.

___________________________

Carrie Dyck
Department of Linguistics
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St. John's NF  A1B 3X9

My office:  SN-3041
My office phone:  709-737-8170
My home phone:  709-726-8817
Department office phone:  709-737-8134
Department fax:  709-737-4000