[Lingtyp] Call for papers: volume on rarities in phonetics and phonology

Shelece Easterday shelece at hawaii.edu
Thu Sep 30 22:33:12 UTC 2021


(apologies for cross-posting)

CALL FOR PAPERS

***Submission of abstracts (500 words excluding references): 1 November
2021***

**** All inquiries and abstracts to:* <phonological.diversity at gmail.com> ***

For the volume Rarities in phonetics and phonology: evolutionary,
structural, typological and social dimensions

To be published in the open-access Language Science Press series *Topics in
Phonological Diversity*, co-edited by Cormac Anderson (MPI-SHH Jena),
Natalia Kuznetsova (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore - ILS RAS),
Shelece Easterday (University of Hawai'i at Mānoa)

The patterns of sounds of the world's languages are many and varied.
Although the human articulatory, auditory, and perceptual apparatus limits
and shapes the ways in which languages harness sound to convey meaning,
considerable diversity can be observed in phonological systems
cross-linguistically.

Rare phenomena play a key role in forming and challenging linguistic
theory. In formal approaches, the identification of rare phenomena has been
one of the primary means of expanding and modifying the theoretical acquis.
While linguistic typology has often worked rather with larger cross
linguistic samples, a focus on rare phenomena has emerged since the
beginning of this millennium (Plank 2000; Simon & Wiese 2011; Wohlgemuth &
Cysouw 2010a, 2010b; Golovko et al. 2015).

Rarities can be ignored by linguistic theory, be reanalysed as regular, or
be incorporated by changing the theory (Simon & Wiese 2011). Within
phonology, a number of thematic studies taking the third approach have
recently appeared (Anderson 2016, Blevins 2018, Blevins et al. 2020,
Kuznetsova 2018, Easterday 2019, Edwards 2019). This work can be seen in
the context of an expansion of research on the evolutionary aspects of both
universals and rarities, with attempts to explain typical pathways of
emergence or disappearance (e.g. Blevins 2004, 2015; Round 2019).

For various reasons, rarities are often concentrated in lesser-studied
languages (Whalen & McDonough 2019; Tucker & Wright 2020), which with
greater investigation may challenge our understanding of what is rare or
typical, possible or impossible. Suggested reasons include a
sociolinguistic distance observed between those varieties and big languages
(Mansfield & Stanford 2017), or an especially strong motivation for their
speakers to be different (Bird & Kell 2017). Statistically, fewer contexts
for language use might also increase the probability for preserving the
quirks of random drift (Jäger, forthcoming).

After a successful workshop (http://wa.amu.edu.pl/plm/2020/PLM2021_Programme)
on the topic, we are happy to announce a call for submissions to an edited
volume, to be published in the open-access series *Topics in Phonological
Diversity* at Language Science Press. We invite submissions for papers
investigating synchronic and diachronic rarities in phonetics and
phonology. These might include individual studies or thematic surveys of
specific sounds, features, systems, structures, or phenomena. Proposals
focusing on synchronic rarities in a single language will be considered,
but a broad typological or evolutionary perspective is preferred. We
particularly encourage submissions dealing with lesser-studied languages.

The topics include, but are not limited to, the study of:

   - phonological rarities;
   - phonetic rarities;
   - rarities and phonological typology;
   - possible reasons for rarities (structural, acoustic, articulatory,
   perceptual, cognitive, statistical, sociolinguistic, etc);
   - evolution (rise and fall) of rarities;
   - sociolinguistic aspects of rarities.

The diversity of phonological patterns has been matched by the multitude of
different ways linguists have attempted to account for them. Some of these
ways may also be rare and interesting. For this reason, we aim to see a
variety of theoretical frameworks represented at the volume and also
welcome submissions that focus on rare types of phonological analysis.

*Timeline:*

   - Submission of abstracts (500 words excluding references): 1 November
   2021
   - Submission of full papers: 1 May 2022
   - Provisional time of publication: late 2022 – early 2023

*All inquiries and abstracts to:* <phonological.diversity at gmail.com>


-- 
Shelece Easterday, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
shelece at hawaii.edu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20210930/fa27552d/attachment.htm>


More information about the Lingtyp mailing list