Call for papers for MEASURING LEXICAL VARIATION AND CHANGE - A Symposium on Quantitative Sociolexicology

[Stefan Grondelaers]

Apologies for multiple postings


Call for papers

MEASURING LEXICAL VARIATION AND CHANGE
A Symposium on Quantitative Sociolexicology

University of Leuven, Belgium
October 24-25, 2002

Organised by the research unit “Quantitative lexicology and variational 
linguistics” of the University of Leuven

Made possible by the Fund for Scientific Research - Flanders (FWO)
(Onderzoeksgemeenschap Cognitieve Linguïstiek)


Aim

This workshop intends to bring together those researchers in the field of 
variational lexicology and diachronic vocabulary studies that use 
quantitative methods. Although such methods have been used less intensively 
in the study of lexical variation and change than they have been employed 
in the field of phonetics, morphology, or other linguistic variables, there 
is a growing body of quantitative research on the distribution of words 
over language varieties and the diffusion of lexical changes over time. The 
symposium intends to create a forum for the confrontation and the 
comparison of the different approaches involved.


Structure & schedule

The workshop will take place on Thursday October 24 and Friday October 25, 
and it will consist of 5 plenary sessions (1 hour) and a limited number of 
regular sessions (40’).

Invited speakers include:

Nigel Armstrong (University of Leeds)
Harald Baayen (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen & 
University of Nijmegen)
John Nerbonne (University of Groningen)
Terttu Nevalainen (University of Helsinki)

In order to ensure a highly focused event with maximal interaction between 
the participants, the number of regular presentations will be limited to 15 
at most, and there will be no parallel sessions.


Submission

If you are interested in presenting a lecture at the symposium, please 
submit a one page abstract by June 1 at the latest. Notification of 
acceptance will follow by June 15.

Abstracts should be submitted electronically to Dirk Geeraerts, Stefan 
Grondelaers & Dirk Speelman at the following address:

sociolex at listserv.cc.kuleuven.ac.be


Topics

Relevant topics include:

1. Lexical standardization and the diffusion of standard vocabularies
2. The lexicon in pluricentric languages
3. Lexical innovation, lexical loss, and the rate of vocabulary change
4. Lexical dialectometry and stylometry
5. The relationship between lexical and non-lexical variables as markers of 
language varieties
6. Empirical methods (corpus analysis, statistical techniques) for studying 
lexical variation and change

You may focus either on past research in connection with the workshop 
theme, or introduce new data or methodologies pertaining to the theme. 
Observe that the topic of the conference is to be taken in a prototypical 
sense. We are primarily interested in studies that combine three features: 
a lexical focus, a quantitative method, and a variational or diachronic 
perspective. Time permitting, however, we may accommodate papers that 
combine just a few of these features, like quantitative studies of 
variation and change that are not primarily lexical, or diachronic and 
variational lexical studies that do not employ quantitative methods.


Additional information

Information about the organisers, the conference venue, and accommodation & 
fees can be found at our conference website 
http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/sociolex


Dirk Geeraerts - Stefan Grondelaers - Dirk Speelman
Research unit “Quantitative lexicology and variational linguistics”
Department of Linguistics
University of Leuven
Blijde-Inkomststraat 21
B-3000 Leuven
Belgium



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