37.1348, Summer Schools: Academia Grammaticorum Salensis Vigesima Tertia. Language Change Inside and Out (Lithuania)

Tue Apr 7 17:05:02 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1348. Tue Apr 07 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.1348, Summer Schools: Academia Grammaticorum Salensis Vigesima Tertia. Language Change Inside and Out (Lithuania)

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Date: 07-Apr-2026
From: Danguolė Kotryna Kapkan [info at academiasalensis.org]
Subject: Academia Grammaticorum Salensis Vigesima Tertia. Language Change Inside and Out

Academia Grammaticorum Salensis Vigesima Tertia. Language Change
Inside and Out

Host Institution: Vilnius University
Coordinating Institution: Academia Salensis
Website:
https://www.academiasalensis.org/en/conference-and-summer-school/academia-grammaticorum-salensis-vigesima-tertia/

Dates: 26-Jul-2026 - 01-Aug-2026
Location: Antalieptė, Lithuania, Lithuania

Minimum Education Level: BA
Special Qualifications: Participants will receive 3 ECTS credits.

Focus: The summer school is primarily aimed at advanced MA and PhD
students and early-career researchers in linguistics who wish to
deepen their understanding of language change from both a theoretical
and methodological perspective. The core audience includes students
specializing in historical linguistics, areal linguistics,
sociolinguistics, and typology, but the school is also relevant to
participants from related fields such as corpus, experimental, and
theoretical linguistics. While the focus of the courses is on the
study of language change, the methodological training – particularly
the course on statistical testing – will be of value to any
participant seeking to strengthen their empirical toolkit for
linguistic research more generally. For this reason, we expect to
attract students from a wide range of linguistic backgrounds,
including those whose work may not directly address diachrony but who
wish to incorporate quantitative and corpus-based methods into their
projects.
Description:
Triggers of language change generally fall into two types: a)
language-external motivations or event-based triggers (Bickel 2015),
the major one being language contact; and b) language-internal
motivations, or functional factors independent from contingent
historical events, rooted in biological or communicative conditions of
language (Bybee et al. 1994, Cristofaro 2003, Roberts & Roussou 2003,
Traugott & Dasher 2003). These are usually associated with different
subfields in linguistics – historical linguistics on one side, areal
linguistics and typology on the other. The aim of the summer school is
to promote innovative approaches that combine insights from
cutting-edge theories, large-scale empirical data, and quantitative
methods that now underpin much of historical and areal research.
The 23rd edition of Academia Grammaticorum Salensis (Salos) will
feature two advanced theoretical courses on language change, both with
a focus on quantitative methods. The third course will be introductory
and will focus on statistical methods of hypothesis testing, providing
foundational knowledge and hands-on skills that are required when
investigating language change in modern frameworks. Each day will end
with a tutoring session. One day of the summer school is dedicated to
participants' oral presentations and a poster session.
1. Diachronic Construction Grammar
Prof. Dr. Stefan Hartmann, HHU Düsseldorf
Construction Grammar has become one of the most successful approaches
to linguistic analysis over the last few decades. While it was
initially mostly limited to synchronic analyses, it quickly came to be
extended to diachrony. Especially the usage-based branch of
Construction Grammar lends itself very well to accounting for
diachronic phenomena as it sees all aspects of linguistic knowledge as
fundamentally shaped by usage – and language use in turn is
characterized by variation, which almost necessarily leads to change.
A number of theoretical accounts have been proposed to account for the
diachronic development of constructions, i.e. form-meaning pairs, from
their emergence to diachronic changes they undergo to their eventual
demise. In this course, we will get to know the basic assumptions of
Construction Grammar and discuss how they can be transferred to
diachrony, and how they have been applied to the analysis of
diachronic phenomena by different scholars. We will explore
influential approaches to diachronic Construction Grammar such as
Traugott & Trousdale’s concepts of constructionalization and
constructional changes, and we will take a closer look at empirical
case studies that aim at testing specific hypotheses of diachronic
Construction Grammar using corpus-based methods.
Contact-induced language change
Dr. Max Wahlström, University of Helsinki
This course seeks to offer an up-to-date picture of research into
contact-induced language change, with a focus on morphology and
syntax. Contact-induced language change is addressed by case examples,
illustrating different types of contact phenomena. A portion of the
course will concentrate on discerning contact-induced language change
from internal developments. For this discussion a brief excursion to
areal linguistics is needed with an overview of both bottom-up and
top-down approaches to areality. Additionally, social and other
extra-linguistic factors will be discussed as shaping factors
regarding outcomes of language contact.
Topics in inferential statistics
Prof. Dr. Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, University of Bremen
This course introduces students to the principles and practice of
inferential statistics, with a particular focus on the fundamentals of
null hypothesis significance testing. Students will learn how to
formulate research questions in a way that allows for statistical
hypothesis testing, and how to match different types of research
questions and datasets with appropriate quantitative methods. A
central component of the course is the critical evaluation of the
assumptions underlying common statistical procedures, as well as an
exploration of frequent misunderstandings in statistical inference.
The course includes a substantial hands-on component in which
participants work with a selection of example datasets drawn from the
topics covered in Courses I and II. Students will be guided through
the full research process: identifying and refining research
questions, operationalizing them for hypothesis testing, selecting and
justifying appropriate statistical tests, implementing these analyses
in R, and critically interpreting the results.
Tuition: 320 Eur
Tuition Explanation: The tuition fee includes:
- attendance in three courses (4 lectures each) and daily
tutoring/group work sessions
- participation in the conference day (oral or poster presentations)
- accomodation in shared rooms
- full board (breakfast, lunch, dinner)
- coffee breaks
- opening and closing receptions
- bus trip from Vilnius and back
Reduced tuition fee of 270 Eur applies to members of "Academia
Salensis" association.

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

Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Registration Open until 03-May-2026

                Email: info at academiasalensis.org

Apply on the web:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1f-FUrC8f_VcmWITeFZnxp3i2vxdZQcGuiYKasYGrz5o/viewform?edit_requested=true

Registration Instructions:
To apply, please fill in the form by May 3rd, 2026. Successful
applicants will be asked to proceed with registration until May 24th.

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