31.1810, Calls: Gen Ling/Germany

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-31-1810. Mon Jun 01 2020. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 31.1810, Calls: Gen Ling/Germany

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Date: Mon, 01 Jun 2020 10:49:40
From: Esther Jahns [esther.jahns at hu-berlin.de]
Subject: Dynamics of Language Contact: new perspectives on emerging grammars, variation and change

 
Full Title: Dynamics of Language Contact: new perspectives on emerging grammars, variation and change 
Short Title: RUEG2021 

Date: 21-Feb-2021 - 23-Feb-2021
Location: Berlin, Germany 
Contact Person: Esther Jahns
Meeting Email: esther.jahns at hu-berlin.de
Web Site: https://www.linguistik.hu-berlin.de/en/institut-en/professuren-en/rueg/conference2021 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 01-Aug-2020 

Meeting Description:

In the past, language contact was often regarded as exceptional and
multilingualism was either seen as a potential problem, as reflected in
Jespersen's (1922) and similarly in Weisgerber's (1966) early assumptions that
multilingualism poses a cognitive problem, or it was neglected, as in the
structural linguistics' tradition which, beginning from Saussure (1916),
focusses on an idealized, stable, and implicitly monolingual language system,
also evident in Chomsky's (1965) notion of competence of an ideal
speaker-hearer. Accordingly, linguistic phenomena observed in language contact
situations, and linguistic practices and competences of multilingual or
bilingual speakers have mostly been the domain of specialised research, and
tend to be investigated from the point of view of deviations from monolingual
data.

While this might seem a natural way to look at it, lately there have been more
and more calls to overcome such a deficit-oriented view, feeding into a
discussion that acknowledges linguistic diversity as a normal condition of
human language, normalises multilingualism and regards bilinguals as regular
native speakers (e.g. Grosjean 2008, Bayram 2013, Rothman & Treffers-Daller
2014, Scontras et al. 2015, Guijarro-Fuentes & Schmitz 2015, Kupisch & Rothman
2016, Schroeder 2016, Bak 2017).

This moves research on language contact and multilingual speakers from the
fringes to the centre of linguistic research, and makes it fruitful for our
understanding of language structure and linguistic representations, language
use and language development.

A particularly interesting population for this is that of ''heritage
speakers'', that is, of speakers who grew up bi- or multilingually with at
least one minority language and a majority language (cf. among others Montrul
2016, Polinsky 2018, Lohndal et al. 2019 for details). This pattern supports
intense language contact in dynamic linguistic repertoires, with the heritage
language typically starting as a native language at home, while the larger
society's majority language usually becomes the speaker's dominant language
later.

The Research Unit ''Emerging grammars in language contact situations: A
comparative approach'' (RUEG;linguistik.hu-berlin.de/en/rueg) has picked up on
this with an integrated, large-scale investigation that has been driven by a
positive, multilingual perspective on heritage speakers' linguistic behaviour.
Under this perspective, we think of the dynamics, rather than vulnerability,
of different linguistic domains, of development, rather than incomplete
acquisition, and of innovation, rather than attrition and loss in heritage
speakers' languages.

This international conference marks the completion of RUEG's first
3-year-period. It aims to bring together researchers from different fields who
study the dynamics of language contact from a positive, multilingual
perspective.

International Mother Language Day
On the first day (February 21st), the conference will connect with the
International Mother Language Day, focusing on educational implications for
multilingual settings, including an outreach event with heritage communities,
practitioners, and policy makers.
Invited speaker: Janet Fuller, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen


Call for Papers: 

We invite submissions on language contact phenomena from the point of view of
linguistic systems (grammatical structure, linguistic architecture), and
speakers (competence, choices, sociolinguistic factors). In addition to papers
presenting new findings on language contact phenomena, we also welcome
methodological papers with a general focus on studying linguistic patterns
outside standard language. 

We will have three thematic sessions dedicated to different aspects of
heritage speakers' language production and comprehension, and a poster
session. The three thematic sessions will be introduced by invited speakers,
followed by commentaries.

1. Attrition vs. Innovation:
What linguistic developments characterise bilingual speakers' productions in
heritage and majority languages? Is it possible to detect systematic patterns
which could be best analysed as newly emerging grammars, or is it more
plausible to speak of attrition?
Invited speaker: Tanja Kupisch, Universität Konstanz
Commentary: Maria Polinsky, University of Maryland

2. Transfer vs. Internal Dynamics
What impact does language contact have? Is it plausible for certain linguistic
patterns to assume direct transfer from one language to another, do
non-canonical patterns in heritage speakers' production rather reflect general
patterns of language contact, or do they pick up, and possibly generalise,
language-internal tendencies that are also evident in monolinguals? What role
do different registers play?
Invited speaker: Ad Backus, Tilburg University
Commentary: Shana Poplack, University of Ottawa

3. Methods in research on patterns outside standard language
How can we best capture linguistic patterns that fall outside formal standard
language? What methods in corpus and experimental linguistics are suitable to
study speakers' repertoires in general? What methods in corpus and
experimental linguistics are suitable to detect and capture possible heritage
language grammars or other types of non-standard grammars in particular?
Invited speakers (round table):
Maria M. Piñango, Yale University
Anatol Stefanowitsch, Freie Universität Berlin

Poster session: 
There will also be an extended poster session (half a day) with lightning
talks dedicated to the topics described in 1-3.

Please submit your abstract with a maximum of 1000 words (incl. references)
via EasyChair https://easychair.org/cfp/RUEG2021

In your submission, please indicate whether you would like to present a talk,
and/or a poster during our poster session. Please indicate also which session
you would like to present in.

Accepted speakers for talks will have the opportunity to present for 20
minutes, followed by an additional 10-minute question period. 

Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 01.10.2020.




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