Call for abstracts: Morphological Variation and Change in Languag es of the Caucasus

[Amiridze, Nino]

[Apologies for multiple posting]

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  MORPHOLOGICAL VARIATION AND CHANGE IN LANGUAGES OF THE CAUCASUS

      Workshop at the 13th International Morphology Meeting
                 February 2008, Vienna, Austria

http://www.let.uu.nl/~nino.amiridze/personal/organization/mvclc.html
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Call for Abstracts
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A great diversity of languages is spoken in the Caucasus, most of
which have rich inflectional systems, on the noun (e.g. North-East
Caucasian), on the verb (e.g. North-West Caucasian), or both (e.g.
South Caucasian).

The Caucasus offers rich material for studying genetically diverse
languages being in close contact for centuries, e.g. Georgian (South
Caucasian) with Abkhaz (North-West Caucasian); Ossetian
(Indo-European) and Batsbi (North-East Caucasian); Armenian
(Indo-European) with Azeri (Turkic); or Kumyk (Turkic) with major
North-East Caucasian languages of Daghestan; or, for a much shorter
period, the languages indigenous to the region being in contact with
the unrelated Russian and Turkish. While much is known about the
contemporary grammar of individual languages of the Caucasus, much
less can be said with regard to the various contact situations and
their impact on the morphosyntax of individual languages. Our
workshop aims to broaden the knowledge on this subject.

We invite researchers working on morphological variation and change
in the languages spoken in the Caucasus to submit abstracts for
participation in the workshop, planned to be held at the 13th
International Morphology Meeting. We would like to invite
contributions dealing with contact-induced morphological changes in
any language of the Caucasus region. This includes investigations of
changes driven by influence from any other language of the region,
irrespective of the genetic affiliation of the languages in contact.
Of great interest are not only inter-family, but also somewhat more
subtle intra-family contacts, such as contacts between various
North-East Caucasian languages spoken in adjacent areas or
neighboring villages. Contributions exploring morphological
variation and language-internal morphological changes are also
welcome.

Important Dates
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Abstract submission:                  September 17, 2007
Notification:                           October 31, 2007
Workshop:            In the first week of February, 2008
                (The exact date will be announced later)

Organizers
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    * Nino Amiridze, Utrecht University (The Netherlands)
    * Michael Daniel, Moscow State University (Russia)
    * Silvia Kutscher, University of Cologne (Germany)

Publication
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If after the workshop there will be interest in publishing either a
proceedings or a special journal issue, then the organizers will
take responsibility of finding a suitable forum and will act as
editors.

Submission
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Abstracts (maximum 3 pages, including data and references) have to
be submitted electronically as portable document format (.pdf) or
Microsoft Word (.doc) files via the EasyChair conference management
system: http://www.easychair.org/MVCLC2008/.

If you do not have an EasyChair account, click on the button "I have
no EasyChair Account" on that page and follow the instructions. When
you receive a password, you can enter the site and upload your
abstract.

Workshop Web Page
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http://www.let.uu.nl/~nino.amiridze/personal/organization/mvclc.html