Second Call Conference on Grammaticography, Hawai'i, February 2011

[Sebastian Nordhoff]

Date:  February 12-13, 2011
Location: Manoa, Hawai'i
Contact Person: Sebastian Nordhoff
Meeting Email: sebastian_nordhoff at eva.mpg.de
Web Site: http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/conference/11-grammaticography2011

== Meeting Description ==

This colloquium will bring together field linguists, computer 
scientists,and publishers with the aim of exploring production and 
dissemination of grammatical descriptions in electronic/hypertextual 
format.
It will be held under the umbrella of the 2nd International conference 
on Language Description and Documentation 
(http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ICLDC/2011), allowing interested researchers to 
participate and present in both events. Registration for ICLDC includes 
this colloquium.
The colloquium will take place on the afternoon of the 12th and the 
morning of the 13th.

== Call for Papers ==

For long a step-child of lexicography, the domain of grammaticography 
has received growing interest in the recent past, especially in what 
concerns lesser studied languages. At least three volumes contain parts 
dealing with this question (Ameka et al. 2006, Gippert et al. 2006, 
Payne & Weber 2007).

At the same time, advances in information technology mean that a number 
of techniques become available which can present linguistic information 
in novel ways. This holds true for multimedial content on the one hand 
(see e.g. Barwick & Thieberger 2007), but also so called 
content-management-systems (CMS) provide new possibilities to develop, 
structure and maintain linguistic information, which were unknown when 
the idea of an electronic grammar was first put to print in Zaefferer 
(1998).

Recent publications in grammaticography often allude to the 
possibilities of hypertext grammars (Weber 2006, Evans & Dench 2006), 
but these possibilities are only starting to get explored theoretically 
(Good 2004, Nordhoff 2008) and in practice (Nordhoff 2007).

This conference will bring together experts on grammar writing and 
information technology to discuss the theoretical and practical 
advantages hypertext grammars can offer. We invite papers dealing with 
the arts and crafts of grammar writing in a wide sense, preferably with 
an eye on electronic publishing. Topics of interest are:

-general formal properties of all grammatical descriptions (GDs) in 
general, and hypertext GDs in particular

-functional requirements for GDs and the responses of the traditional 
and the hypertext approach (cf. Nordhoff 2008)

-discussion or presentation of implementations dealing with the media 
transition from book to electronic publication

-opportunities and risks of hypertext grammars

-integration with fieldwork or typological work

-treatment of a particular linguistic subfield (phonology, syntax, ...) 
within a hypertext description

Presentations will be 20 minutes + 10 minutes discussion.

== Invited Speakers ==
Nick Evans (Australian National University)
Christian Lehmann (Universität Erfurt)
Jeff Good (University of Buffalo)

== Submission of Abstracts ==
(a) Length: up to one page of text plus up to one page containing 
possible tables and references

(b) Format: The abstract should include the title of the paper and the 
text of
the abstract but not the author's name or affiliation. The e-mail 
message to which it is attached should list the title, the author's 
name, and the author's affiliation. Please send the message to the 
following address:
sebastian_nordhoff AT eva DOT mpg DOT de

(c) Deadline:
!!Note that the deadline is now earlier than announced previously!!
The abstracts should reach us by THURSDAY, August 31.
Submitters will be notified by FRIDAY, October 01.

== References ==
Ameka, F. K., A. Dench & N. Evans (eds.) (2006). Catching language -- 
The Standing Challenge of Grammar Writing. Berlin, New York: Mouton de
Gruyter.

Barwick, L. & N. Thieberger (eds.) (2006). Sustainable data from digital 
fieldwork. Sydney: University of Sydney.

Gippert, J., N. Himmelmann & U. Mosel (eds.) (2006). Essentials of language
documentation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Good, J. (2004). "The descriptive grammar as a (meta)database". Paper
presented at the EMELD Language Digitization Project Conference 2004.
[paper]

Nordhoff, S. (2007). "Grammar writing in the Electronic Age". Paper 
presented at
the ALT VII conference in Paris.

Nordhoff, S. (2008). "Electronic reference grammars for typology -- 
challenges
and solutions". Journal for Language Documentation and Conservation, 
2(2):296-324.

Payne, T. E. & D. Weber (eds.) (2007). Perspectives on grammar writing. 
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Zaefferer, D. (ed.) (1998). Deskriptive Grammatik und allgemeiner 
Sprachvergleich. Tübingen: Niemeyer.