31.2614, Calls: Gen Ling/Greece

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-31-2614. Wed Aug 19 2020. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 31.2614, Calls: Gen Ling/Greece

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Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 12:34:49
From: Iker Salaberri [ikersalaberri at gmail.com]
Subject: Investigating language isolates: typological and diachronic perspectives

 
Full Title: Investigating language isolates: typological and diachronic perspectives 

Date: 31-Aug-2021 - 03-Sep-2021
Location: Athens, Greece 
Contact Person: Iker Salaberri
Meeting Email: ikersalaberri at gmail.com
Web Site: https://zenodo.org/record/3985030#.Xz1KIM1oTIU 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 01-Nov-2020 

Meeting Description:

Recent years have witnessed advances in the study of language isolates (LIs)
(Campbell (ed.) 2017). However, and despite the fact that LIs represent nearly
40% of the world’s
language families (Campbell 2017a: xi), they are still underrepresented in
part of typological and comparative literature: see, for example, the
objections by Miestamo et al. (2016) concerning sampling procedures in
Voegelin & Voegelin (1977) and Bybee et al. (1994). In addition, little is
known about the histories of most of these languages (Hombert & Philippson
2009).

This state of affairs is due to many reasons: in line with current world-wide
tendencies, many LIs are becoming extinct even before they get the chance to
be documented (Harrison 2007), and the lack of comprehensive information
hinders a correct genetic affiliation of these languages, which often
precludes their being treated as isolates (Blench 2017: 162). The lack of
research on LIs from specific perspectives, for instance diachronic-historical
linguistics, is also influenced by preconceived ideas including the view that
isolates do not have a history: Meillet (1925: 11-12), for example, claims
that “if a language is isolate, it is deprived of history”.

As a result of this data situation, it is unclear whether LIs are, from a
typological and diachronic perspective, similar or different in comparison to
non-isolates: whereas some authors contend that “language isolates are not
very different from language families composed of multiple members” (Campbell
2017b: 1), other recent studies point in the opposite direction. The latter
signal an overrepresentation —or at least presence— of typologically unusual
features in isolates, such as the contrast between plain and postaspirate
nasals in Nasa Yuwe (Jung 2000: 141-142), verbal allocutivity in Basque,
Nambikwara and Pumé (Antonov 2015: 80-81), the lack of an unambiguous standard
negative system in Kusunda (Donohue et al. 2014) and a twenty-four-way system
of numeral series according to the type of counted objects in Nivkh (Georg
2017: 148-149). Far less is known regarding the diachronic facet of LIs,
despite the fact that a few languages such as Basque, Elamite, Mapudungun and
Sumerian, among others, have sufficient textual evidence stretching over
relatively long periods of time so as to allow for comprehensive historical
and philological research (Hayes 1990, Khačikjan 1998, Zúñiga 2006, Campbell
2011, Ulibarri 2013).


Call for Papers: 

This workshop is meant to delve deeper into the questions concerning the
typological features and histories of LIs from different theoretical
perspectives. It is also interested in exploring and discussing recent
findings with respect to the documentation and filiation of endangered and
poorly described LIs. We welcome contributions that address, among others, the
following topics:
- what similarities and differences are there concerning the typological
features of language isolates vs. non-isolates?
- how can we advance our knowledge of the history of language isolates?
- what similarities and differences are there concerning the historical
changes of language isolates vs. non-isolates?
- how does linguistic contact affect language isolates?
- how much documentation, and of what kind, is necessary to determine the
isolate status of languages?

Contributions that address these questions could be oriented in the following
manner:
- comparative typological and/or historical studies on isolates and
nonisolates;
- corpus studies on the historical development of language isolates;
- studies which attempt internal reconstruction of language isolates;
- studies on the documentation of little-described or previously undescribed
language isolates;
- studies that discuss attempts to establish the genetic filiation of language
isolates and/or unclassified languages.

Preliminary abstracts of no more than 300 words (excluding references) in
.doc, .docx, .odt or .pdf format should be sent before November 1, 2020, to
ikersalaberri at gmail.com.




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LINGUIST List: Vol-31-2614	
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