28.683, Calls: Gen Ling, Hist Ling, Ling Theories, Typology/Italy

Sat Feb 4 00:00:27 UTC 2017

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-683. Fri Feb 03 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.683, Calls: Gen Ling, Hist Ling, Ling Theories, Typology/Italy

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                                   Michael Czerniakowski)
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Editor for this issue: Kenneth Steimel <ken at linguistlist.org>
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Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2017 19:00:16
From: Silvia Rossi [rsylvia81 at gmail.com]
Subject: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to Microvariation

Full Title: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to Microvariation 
Short Title: TEAM 2017 

Date: 22-Jun-2017 - 24-Jun-2017
Location: Padua, Italy 
Contact Person: Camilla Covazzi
Meeting Email: teamdisllpd at gmail.com
Web Site: https://sites.google.com/site/padovateam/ 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Typology 

Call Deadline: 31-Mar-2017 

Meeting Description:

Over the past decades micro-comparative studies have greatly contributed to
theoretical linguistics, allowing scholars not only to test hypotheses on
language structures and language properties on a much larger empirical basis
but also to refine them in a non-trivial fashion. Minimally different related
languages offer a valuable test-bed for the identification of the primitive
principles of grammar: keeping the major linguistic variables (fairly)
coherent across languages, we come closer to the best possible experimental
setting and can better single out clusters of correlating properties and how
they fit together in terms of inclusion, exclusion, coincidence or
intersection. Dialects have been used in recent decades as a magnifying lens
to pin down differences and variation patterns that escape us in a broad
typological framework which constitutes the other side of the medal of
language variation.  We intend to capitalize on this amount of research and
discuss to what extent macro and micro variation are similar and test the idea
that macro and micro variation are different not only quantitatively but also
in a qualitative sense.  At present we have important tools that allow us to
deal with big data and can help us to better understand what the internal
mechanisms of variation really are. This conference is set to be a meeting
point for scholars who work on micro- and macro-variation and compare their
methodologies and results to achieve a more precise picture of how the
internal mechanisms of variation work. 

Italo-Romance was the first domain onto which the micro-comparative
methodology was developed in the early 90s, but since then other linguistic
groups like Dutch, Norwegian, English, Basque etc. have been systematically
investigated and parallel observations have been made which should be more
systematically explored. In order to do this, this year we intend to compare
Italo-Romance with variation in the Slavic languages, although papers on the
phonology, morphology syntax and semantics of  all languages are welcome. 
Since we find that methodology is an important issue when considering big
data, a further aim of this conference is to discuss some empirical
problematic aspects in gathering, tagging and retrieving very large sets of
minimally different data. Therefore, we plan a methodological round table
where we invite experts to discuss which the most profitable technical
IT-tools are to exploit the big amount of data we now have at our disposal.

Invited Speaker:

Richard S. Kayne (New York University)

Invited speakers for the Session on Slavic Microvariation:

Boban Arsenijević (University of Niš)
Franc Marušič (University of Nova Gorica)

Final Roundtable: “Big Data, big problems?”, moderator Giorgio M. Di Nunzio
(DEI-Università di Padova)

Organising Committee

Davide Bertocci - Università di Padova
Stefano Canalis - Università di Padova
Camilla Covazzi - Università di Padova
Jacopo Garzonio - Università di Padova
Francesco Pinzin - Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia/ Università di Padova
Cecilia Poletto - Università di Padova/Goethe Universität Frankfurt
Silvia Rossi - Università di Padova
Emanuela Sanfelici - Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Laura Vanelli - Università di Padova

Call for Papers: 

Abstracts should not exceed two pages in length (including examples and
references):

- A4 format
- 12-point Times New Roman
- 2,5 cm (1 in.) margins

Submissions are limited to 1 individual and 1 joint abstract per author, or 2
joint abstracts per author.

Abstracts are to be submitted via EasyChair:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=team2017

Deadline for submissions: 31 March 2017

A notification of acceptance will be sent by the beginning of May 2017.

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