36.1961, Confs: Finding Patterns Through Fieldwork in African Languages (DGfS 2026 Workshop) (Germany)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-1961. Wed Jun 25 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.1961, Confs: Finding Patterns Through Fieldwork in African Languages (DGfS 2026 Workshop) (Germany)

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Date: 24-Jun-2025
From: Johannes Mursell [j.mursell at lingua.uni-frankfurt.de]
Subject: Finding Patterns Through Fieldwork in African Languages (DGfS 2026 Workshop)


Finding Patterns Through Fieldwork in African Languages (DGfS 2026
Workshop)

Date: 24-Feb-2026 - 27-Feb-2026
Location: Trier, Germany
Meeting URL: https://sites.google.com/view/dgfs-2026-ag4

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories;
Phonology; Semantics; Syntax

Submission Deadline: 24-Aug-2025

Linguistic research and theory construction has for a long time been
conducted from a very Eurocentric perspective and mainly based on
intuition. This type of armchair linguistics has been rightfully
criticized, but fortunately, the last decades have seen a shift to
more empirically oriented methods. Naturally, these methods were
initially applied to well-known languages like English and German.
However, more recently, empirical methods have also been more
consistently applied to understudied languages.
With his methodologically oriented workshop we want to initiate an
exchange on how to elicit linguistic patterns in one of these
linguistically still understudied regions, in languages from
Sub-Sahara Africa. Set against the background of a rising interest in
research in African languages in all linguistic disciplines,
empirically oriented methods gain more and more importance. The first
goal of this workshop is to create a platform for linguists to discuss
and compare the broad variety of linguistic fieldwork methodologies
that are used across the disciplines and the kind of data these
methods serve to elicit, as well as the advantages and disadvantages
of the diverse approaches. Since the languages of Sub-Sahara Africa
show typologically very interesting patterns, combining rich
functional morphology with properties of tonal languages, we expect to
discuss a variety of approaches targeted at different types of data.
As a second goal, the workshop seeks to combine the methodological
insights with potential results in theoretical linguistics, thus the
question of which kind of data can be best gathered with which type of
methods will be central. The more theoretically oriented aims of the
workshop are first, to discuss how patterns leading to new predictions
in theoretical linguistics can be elicited; second, to show how
fieldwork may develop theoretical knowledge into hitherto poorly
understood areas of linguistics, and third, to evaluate to which
extent fieldwork may be filling gaps in the theoretical model.
The workshop will not only address classical approaches to fieldwork
but also invite contributions from more recent methods, including
experimental work. Thus, the workshop addresses linguists from
different fields such as syntax, phonology, semantics, morphology,
psycholinguistics who perform empirically oriented work on languages
from Sub-Sahara Africa.
Invited Speakers:
Mary Amaechi (Universität Bielefeld)
Imke Driemel (University of York)
Jenneke van der Wal (Leiden University)
Submission Guidelines:
We invite submissions addressing one or several issues raised in the
description. Please submit your anonymous abstracts to the following
email address: fieldwork.dgfs48 at gmail.com
Abstracts should be formatted as pdf, 1 page, 11pt Times New Roman,
with References and Graphics on an additional page.
Deadline for abstract submission: August 24th
Notification of acceptance: September 5th
Organizers:
Katharina Hartmann (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a. M.)
Johannes Mursell (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a. M.)



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