Call for papers (second): Workshop on Structure and Constituency in the Languages of the Americas -- DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS 01/11/02

[Scott McGinnis]

WSCLA 7 - Workshop on Structure and Constituency in the Languages of
the Americas

University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
March 22 - 24, 2002
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~linguist/WSCLA.htm

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

The main goal of this workshop is to bring together linguists doing
theoretical work on the indigenous languages of North, Central, and
South America. Papers in all core areas of linguistics (phonetics,
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics) within any theoretical
framework will be considered, but we especially invite papers which
address the theme of this year's conference:

Convergence and Divergence: Language Variation within and across
Language Families

While the bulk of theoretical work in linguistics has by and large
relied on the convenient fiction that languages are stable, uniform
synchronic systems that are consistent and self-contained across
communities of speakers, linguists working on the languages of the
Americas-the majority of which are unwritten and have no normative or
"standard" form-have often been confronted with a startling degree of
variation within what speakers consider to be a single language.
Conversely, researchers working in well-established linguistic areas
or Sprachb=FCnde such as the Northwest Coast have found that what are
patently different and genetically unrelated languages share a
tremendous number of phonological and grammatical features.

>>From the point of view of the theoretical linguist, both types of
variation represent challenges to the view of a language as a
discrete and homogeneous grammatical system and raise a number of
important questions. To what extent and over what parameters can
linguistic systems vary and remain mutually intelligible -- hence
qualifying as dialects of a single language? If languages can, as
amply illustrated by the languages of the Americas, borrow a wide
range of phonological and grammatical features from other languages,
what are the restrictions on this type of borrowing and how might
these restrictions be related to the grammatical and typological
properties of source and donor languages? And how do borrowed or
innovative features created by dialectal variation interact with
pre-existing features of the language, and what can this tell us
about the nature of human language as a whole?

Invited speakers:

    *     Sarah Thomason, University of Michigan
           "Prominence Marking in Verbal Arguments in Salish and
Algonquian"

    *     Leslie Saxon, University of Victoria
           "Athapaskan Clause Structure and the Positions of Subjects
and Objects"

    *     Cecil Brown, Northern Illinois University
           "How Mesoamerica Became a Linguistic Area"

    *      Paul Kroeber, Indiana University
           "Pre-verbal positions in Tillamook and its neighbours"

    *      Ronald W. Langacker, University of California, San  Deigo

            "Unity and Diversity in Possessive Constructions"

Invited student speaker:

    *      Kiel Christianson, Michigan State University
           "Stress, pitch accent, and language variation: Ojibwa vs.
Odawa"

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:

    *      Ofelia Zepeda, University of Arizona
            "American Indian Language Development Institute"

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

GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSIONS

Please submit a one page abstract (a second page with references and
extra examples may be included). Abstracts may be submitted
electronically in the body of an e-mail message (if they include no
special characters) or as e-mail attachments. The latter should be in
PDF, Word, Rich Text Format, or WordPerfect formats, in descending
order of preference; please specify and/or include any special fonts
used. Paper abstracts may be submitted in four copies, at least one
of which should be camera-ready. All submissions should provide the
following items of information, separate from the abstract itself:

     1.  name
     2.  address
     3.  affiliation
     4.  telephone number and FAX number
     5.  e-mail address
     6.  faculty / graduate student / postdoctoral fellow / independent
scholar status

Limited funds may be available to offset travel expenses for graduate
students. Please indicate if you wish to be considered for a travel
subsidy.

Abstracts should be sent to:

      wscla7 at ualberta.ca

or by snail mail to:

      LANGUAGES OF THE AMERICAS WORKSHOP
      Department of Linguistics
      University of Alberta
      4-32 Assiniboia Hall
      Edmonton, AB  T6E 2G7
      Canada

The deadline for abstracts to be received is Friday, January 11,
2002. The program will be announced in mid-February.

Conference website at
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~linguist/WSCLA.htm
-

David Beck
Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics
University of Alberta
4-45 Assiniboia Hall
Edmonton, AB T6G 2E7
office: (780) 492-0807
>FAX:    (780) 492-0806
e-mail: dbeck at ualberta.ca
homepage: http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbeck

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