[Lingtyp] Call for papers: Amazonicas VI

Wed Oct 14 07:24:11 UTC 2015

Dear Lingtyp,

Please, help me inform ALT members of this forthcoming conference.

Thanks,
Pilar Valenzuela
AMAZONICAS Permanent Committee Member

==
CALL FOR PAPERS: INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM “AMAZONICAS VI”
Leticia, Colombia, May 24-28, 2016

The international colloquium "AMAZONICAS : The Structure of Amazonian Languages: Phonology and Syntax"  is a biennial itinerant event, organized alternately in different Amazonian countries, with the goal of functioning as a platform for the exchange and cooperation among linguists devoted to the study of indigenous Amazonian languages.

Amazonicas VI will take place from May 24 to 28, 2016, in the city of Leticia, Colombia, at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia – sede Amazonia. The event contains three symposia:

(1) Phonology: “Historical Phonology and Sound Change in Amazonian Languages”
Org. Martin Kohlberger and Simon Overall
Contact: amazonicasvi.phonology at gmail.com

(2) Syntax: “Negation in Amazonian Languages”
Org. Mily Crevels and Hein van der Voort
Contact: amazonicas.negation at gmail.com

(3) Linguistic family: Families in focus: Tukanoan and Makú (Nadahup/Kakua-Nukak/Puinave)
Org. Elsa Gomez-Imbert, Patience Epps, Kristine Stenzel
Contact: amazonicas.tukano-maku at gmail.com

Important dates:
December 1, 2015 — deadline for submitting abstracts
December 15, 2015 — notification of acceptance
May 24–28, 2016 — conference

PHONOLOGY SYMPOSIUM

“Historical Phonology and Sound Change in Amazonian Languages”

Organizers: Martin Kohlberger and Simon Overall

Diachronic phonological and phonetic analysis provides great insight into language change, whether it be due to general articulatory/perceptual pressures, specific language-internal processes, sociocultural motivations or language contact.  Identifying historical sound changes is also a crucial component of the comparative method, which has been widely used to reconstruct unattested common ancestors of related languages.

In the Amazonian context, there have been numerous publications dealing with this topic over the decades (see for example Davis (1966) on Proto-Jê, Rodrigues (1984/85) on Proto-Tupi-Guarani, Girard (1971) on Proto-Takanan, Payne (1991) on Proto-Arawak, Martins (2005) on Proto-Eastern Maku, Chacon (2014) on Proto-Tukanoan, inter alia).  However, this will be the first forum dedicated to historical phonology and sound change in the Amazon, with special attention to methodological and analytical issues encountered in this region.

We invite contributions relating to any subfield of historical phonology and sound change in Amazonian languages.  In particular, we welcome research that highlights linguistic processes that are unique/typical of the Amazon, as well as methodological concerns which are often encountered by linguists working with Amazonian languages (approaches based purely on synchronic data; phonological reconstruction in small language families; insufficient phonetic data).

Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words (excluding examples and references), and should be submitted in Word and PDF format. They may be written in English, Spanish or Portuguese.  They must be anonymous. Abstracts should be sent as an attachment in an e-mail (see address below).  Please include the title of the presentation, your name and your academic affiliation in the body of the e-mail.

E-mail address:                       amazonicasvi.phonology at gmail.com<mailto:amazonicasvi.phonology at gmail.com>

Submission deadline:             1 December 2015

Notification of acceptance:    15 December 2015

References

Chacon, T. 2014. A Revised Proposal of Proto-Tukanoan Consonants and Tukanoan Family Classification. International Journal of American Linguistics 80: 275-322.

Davis, I. 1966. Proto Jê Phonology. Estudos Lingüísticos. Revista Brasileira de Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada 1(2): 10-24.

Girard, V. 1971. Proto-Takanan Phonology. University of California Publications in Linguistics 70. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Valteir M. 2005. Reconstrução Fonológica do Protomaku Oriental. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. LOT Dissertation Series. 104. Utrecht: LOT Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics: Utrecht: LOT.

Payne, D. 1991. A classification of Maipuran (Arawakan) languages based on shared lexical retentions. In Derbyshire, D.C. & Pullum, G. K (eds.), Handbook of Amazonian languages, vol. 3. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 355-499.

Rodrigues, A. 1984/85. Relações internas na família linguística Tupi-Guarani. Revista de Antropologia 27/28: 33-53.

SYNTAX SYMPOSIUM

“Negation in Amazonian Languages”

Organizers: Mily Crevels and Hein van der Voort

The past two decades have seen many new publications on Amazonian languages, but few deep treatments of negation. A notable exception is Michael & Granadillo (2014) with case studies of negation in nine Arawakan languages, describing standard negation, prohibitives, existential negation, negative indefinites, and free negation, as well as language-specific negation phenomena such as morphological privatives, the interaction of negation with verbal inflectional categories, and negation in clause-linking constructions. In addition there are some typological volumes on negation, such as Kahrel & Van den Berg (1993) and Miestamo (2005) in which several Amazonian languages are featured.
            From these sources, as well as from the general discussion in language descriptions and a few independent articles on the topic, it becomes clear that the expression of negation is manifold and that it may entail unexpected ramifications in the Amazonian languages with regard to syntax, morpheme ordering, TAM, etc.
The focus of this symposium will lie on the issue of negation in an attempt to bring together linguists working on different Amazonian languages and language families, who can make a special contribution on the topic. In order to improve comparability and enhance discussion, we will provide a questionnaire to the participants of the symposium.

References
Kahrel, Peter, and René van den Berg (1993). Typological studies on negation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Michael, Lev, and Tania Granadillo (2014). Negation in Arawak languages [Brill’s Studies in the Indigenous Languages of the Americas 6]. Leiden/Boston: Brill.
Miestamo, Matti (2005). Standard negation. The negation of declarative verbal main clauses in a typological perspective. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Instructions for the submission of abstracts:

Abstracts (excl. references):                           between 200 and 400 words

Formatting (Word and PDF):                         Times New Roman 12, single space

Language:                                                       Spanish, Portuguese, or English

Deadline for submission:                                1 December 2015

Notification of acceptance:                            15 December 2015

The abstract should be submitted as an anonymous email attachment to:

amazonicas.negation at gmail.com

In the accompanying email, the title of the presentation should be specified, along with the name and the institution of the author.

LINGUISTIC FAMILIES SYMPOSIUM

Tukanoan and Makú
(Nadahup/Kakua-Nukak/Puinave)

Organizers: Elsa Gomez-Imbert, Patience Epps, Kristine Stenzel

Two sets of languages have been chosen for the family-focused symposium at AMAZONICAS 6 in Letícia: the Tukanoan family and the Makú grouping (Nadahup / Kakua-Nukak/Puinave, which may or may not form a single family). Both groups of languages are well represented in Colombia. Together with several Arawakan neighbors, they make up an areal complex in which mutual influences have given rise to numerous interesting typological features (such as tone systems, nasal prosody, differential case-marking, evidentiality, serial verb constructions, and nominal classifiers). For these reasons, and because they involve relatively small families, these languages will be addressed together at AMAZONICAS 6.

The symposium seeks to provide an open forum to explore the state-of-art in the study of Tukanoan and the Makú (Nadahup / Kakua-Nukak/Puinave) languages. Priority will be given to those papers which present new approaches or new analyses—those which have not been previously published and which make original contributions to the knowledge of these languages.

Topics of submissions are encouraged in any of the following areas:

•         Diachronic linguistics, including classification and reconstruction

•         Language contact

•         Phonetics and Phonology

•         Syntax and Morphology

•         Semantics and Lexicon

•         Discourse

Instructions for the submission of abstracts:

Abstracts (excl. references):               Between 200 and 400 words

Formatting (Word and PDF):             Times New Roman 12, single space

Language:                                           Spanish, Portuguese, or English

Deadline for submission:                    1 November 2015

Notification of acceptance:                15 December 2015

The abstract should be submitted as an anonymous email attachment to:

amazonicas.tukano-maku at gmail.com

In the accompanying email, the title of the presentation should be specified, along with the name and the institution of the author.