36.1246, Confs: REEDS Workshop on Multidisciplinary Approaches to Morphosyntactic Variation (Belgium)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-1246. Tue Apr 15 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.1246, Confs: REEDS Workshop on Multidisciplinary Approaches to Morphosyntactic Variation (Belgium)

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Date: 11-Apr-2025
From: Carolina Fraga [cfraga at usc.edu]
Subject: REEDS Workshop on Multidisciplinary Approaches to Morphosyntactic Variation


REEDS Workshop on Multidisciplinary Approaches to Morphosyntactic
Variation
Short Title: REEDS MUMOVA2025
Theme: Syntactic variation from a multidisciplinary perspective

Date: 11-Dec-2025 - 12-Dec-2025
Location: Leuven, Belgium

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Computational Linguistics;
Semantics; Sociolinguistics; Syntax

Submission Deadline: 15-Aug-2025

The study of dialectal variation in phonology, morphology, and syntax
has received increasing attention in recent decades. The result is an
important body of work on dialect syntax with diverse approaches,
methodologies, and scopes, including formal approaches (e.g. Bayer
1984, Haegeman 1992, Hoekstra 1993, Poletto 2000, Benincà and Poletto
2004, Van Craenenbroeck 2010), computational-quantitative analyses
(e.g. Nerbonne 2009, 2010, Heeringa and Nerbonne 2013, Wieling and
Nerbonne 2015), and sociolinguistic investigations (e.g. Ghyselen et
al. 2016, Cheshire et al. 2005, Van Hoof and Vandekerckhove 2013,
Ghyselen and De Vogelaer 2018). However, despite such progress,
interdisciplinary collaboration¬¬¬–both among these subfields and
between dialect syntax and other fields¬–has been surprisingly limited
(Cornips 2015, Hinskens 2017).
This is particularly striking given that linguistics, perhaps more
than any other field, offers a unique opportunity for
interdisciplinary work. It bridges the humanities, social sciences,
cognitive sciences, physical sciences, and the biological sciences,
making linguistics in general, and dialect syntax in particular, an
ideal hub for cross-disciplinary interaction and communication.
In recent years, the REEDS network was established to promote such an
interdisciplinary approach to the study of dialect syntax and address
the long-standing challenges hindering collaborative approaches. Three
main challenges were identified.
The first challenge concerns the lack of infrastructure, which affects
the comparability of results across different projects due to
differences in data type, collection methods, and annotation
practices.
The second challenge is methodological: the large and complex digital
datasets yielded by past, ongoing, and future projects require the
development of new methodologies that combine not only grammatical but
also geographical and social information, while also being powerful
enough to analyze variable and multivariate data.
Finally, the third challenge concerns the theoretical dimension. Even
though dialect syntax has drawn interest from formal,
computational-quantitative, and socio-linguistic perspectives (see
references above), there is little interdisciplinary collaboration
between these subfields (Cornips 2015, Hinskens 2017). The same
persists within subdisciplines, too. For instance, even within
theoretical linguistics, collaborations between syntacticians and
phonologists are uncommon, despite the potential benefit such a
collaboration might have for refining our understanding of grammatical
microvariation and its theoretical implications.
This workshop directly addresses the third challenge–the theoretical
modeling of syntax microvariation from an interdisciplinary
perspective. Our goal is to foster dialogue and collaboration on
dialect syntax both between theoretical syntax and other linguistic
disciplines (e.g., computational-quantitative linguistics,
sociolinguistics, dialectology, etc.) and within theoretical
linguistics (e.g. semantics, morphology, and phonology).
To this end, we encourage the submission of (joint) talks where
scholars with different backgrounds (e.g. theoretical syntax &
sociolinguistics, sociolinguistics & computational linguistics,
theoretical syntax & phonology, etc.) collaborate to present and
discuss novel findings and analyses in dialect syntax, which crucially
rely on this interdisciplinary approach.
Therefore, we seek:
a)      contributions on dialect syntax which combine methods,
techniques, or procedures from other disciplines in the collection,
processing and/or analysis of the data and
b)      contributions on computational linguistics, corpus
linguistics, and sociolinguistics, as well as semantic, morphological,
and phonological theory that have implications for dialect syntax.
The workshop will take place in person in Leuven (Belgium) on 11-12 of
December. It will open with a keynote talk on the state of the art of
theoretical microvariation by three leading scholars in the field. On
the second day, these scholars will also lead a roundtable discussion
summarizing the workshop’s key findings.
The contributions presented at the workshop will be considered for
publication in a dedicated volume or a special issue of a journal
(e.g. Journal of Comparative Germanic Syntax, Journal of Romance
Linguistics, Language Variation & Change etc.).
Final remark: We would like to emphasize that researchers interested
in interdisciplinary collaboration but who have not yet found a
suitable collaborator are warmly encouraged to use the REEDS-network
to identify and connect with potential collaborators.
Abstract Guidelines:
Abstracts should not exceed two pages, including data, references, and
diagrams. They must be formatted in at least 11‐point font with
one‐inch margins on letter‐size (8.5 by 11 inch) or A4 paper.
Submissions must be anonymous. Each author may submit a maximum of two
abstracts, with no more than one being single‐authored. Only
electronic submissions will be accepted.
Please submit your abstract using the EasyAbs link
https://easyabs.linguistlist.org/submit/REEDS_MUMOVA2025/
Invited speakers:
Esther Rinke
Diego Pescarini
Jenny Cheshire
Important dates:
Second call for papers: 1 June 2025
Submission deadline: 15 August 2025
Notification of acceptance: beginning October 2025
Workshop: 11-12 December
Organizing committee:
Edoardo Cavirani (KU Leuven)
Cora Cavirani-Pots (University of Cambridge)
Carolina Fraga (University of Southern California)
William Oliver (Stony Brook University)
Jeroen van Craenenbroeck (KU Leuven/Meertens Institute)
Marjo van Koppen (Meertens Institute/Utrecht University)



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