Call for Papers: Formal Approaches to Creole Studies

[Harold Schiffman]

Formal Approaches to Creole Studies

Date: 14-Nov-2008 - 15-Nov-2008
Location: Tromsø, Norway
Contact Person: Marleen van de Vate
Meeting Email: creolehum.uit.no
Web Site: http://www.hum.uit.no/creole/index.html

Language Family(ies): Creole

Call Deadline: 20-Jun-2008

Meeting Description:

The goal of this workshop is to bring together scholars who share an
interest in
the formal study of creole languages.

Call for Papers

Invited speakers:
Hans den Besten
Alain Kihm

Early generative approaches to creoles were often hampered by the lack of
available data, which may have led to premature conclusions. However, only few
scholars have pursued this line of research since its heyday in the early 1980s
(see e.g. Muysken 1981). Instead, there was an increased focus on the
description of individual creole languages and sociolinguistic factors
surrounding creole formation, which helped us to gain a much better
understanding of the factors involved in creole formation.

We believe that the time is ripe for a renewed approach to pidgin and creole
languages from a theoretical and/or generative perspective. Both linguistic
theory and the empirical exploration of creole languages have advanced
considerably since the 1980s, allowing us to take a fresh perspective on what
seems to be an old topic. Shifting the spotlight to the more formal issues
surrounding creole formation may help us in furthering our understanding how
pidgin and creole languages come into being and why their grammatical
properties
are the way they are. At the same time, it may foster the interaction between
theoretical linguists and researchers 'in the field'.

We therefore invite abstracts that address theoretical and formal aspects in
Creole Studies, from all the subfields of generative research, syntax,
semantics, phonology, and morphology. Questions that we think still need to be
addressed include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Which contribution can creoles make to linguistic theory and theoretical
developments?
- Are creoles 'special' languages, from a structural perspective?
- Are there structural similarities that are common to all creoles,
irrespective
of their origin, their substrates and their lexifiers? If so what are they and
how can we account for them?
- How does the claim that creoles are the simplest languages of the world
(McWhorter 2005) hold up to formal scrutiny?
- What are the formal factors in creole formation, and how do these formal
factors interact with sociolinguistic factors?

We invite submissions of abstracts for 35-minute presentations (plus 10-minute
discussions). Abstracts should be no longer than one page US Letter or A4 with
one inch (2.5 cm) margins, single spaced, with a font size no smaller
than 12pt,
and with normal character spacing. A second page may be used for examples,
figures, tables or references. The preferred submission format is pdf, but you
can also send your abstract in .doc, .txt or .rtf format.
Please send two copies of your abstract. One should be anonymous (all abstracts
will be reviewed anonymously), one should include your name, affiliation and
e-mail address directly below the title. The two files should be named
and , e.g. title-schuchardt.pdf and
title-anon.pdf. Abstracts should be sent to creolehum.uit.no

Modest financial aid is available to a limited number of researchers with
limited financial resources whose abstracts are accepted. Request for funding
ought to be submitted together with the abstract.

Deadline for submission: June 20, 2008.
Notifications will be sent out by early August

For details and further information, please consult the workshop website at
http://www.hum.uit.no/creole/index.html

Organisers:
Marleen van de Vate, University of Tromsø
Christian Uffmann, University of Sussex

http://linguistlist.org/issues/19/19-1403.html

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