37.2736, Confs: Sociosyntax and the Bharatiya Linguistic Area: Structure, Variation, and Contact: Advancing Interdisciplinary Research at the Interface of Grammar, Culture, and Society in Bharat (India)

Tue Aug 25 10:05:02 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2736. Tue Aug 25 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2736, Confs: Sociosyntax and the Bharatiya Linguistic Area: Structure, Variation, and Contact: Advancing Interdisciplinary Research at the Interface of Grammar, Culture, and Society in Bharat (India)

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Date: 22-Aug-2026
From: Zahid Bashir Lone [uoklingconference at gmail.com]
Subject: Sociosyntax and the Bharatiya Linguistic Area: Structure, Variation, and Contact: Advancing Interdisciplinary Research at the Interface of Grammar, Culture, and Society in Bharat

Sociosyntax and the Bharatiya Linguistic Area: Structure, Variation,
and Contact: Advancing Interdisciplinary Research at the Interface of
Grammar, Culture, and Society in Bharat

Date: 28-Sep-2026 - 30-Sep-2026
Location: Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India
Contact: Zahid Bashir Lone
Contact Email: uoklingconference at gmail.com
Meeting URL: https://tinyurl.com/3e5yb3rh

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories;
Sociolinguistics; Syntax
Language Family(ies): Austro-Asiatic; Dardic; Dravidian (drav1251);
Indo-Aryan (indo1321); Tibeto-Burman

Submission Deadline: 05-Sep-2026

The Department of Linguistics, University of Kashmir, India, is
pleased to issue a Call for Papers at an ICSSR (Indian Council of
Social Science Research)-sponsored Three-Day National Conference on
“Sociosyntax and the Bharatiya Linguistic Area: Structure, Variation,
and Contact” on 28th-30th September 2026. The conference aims to bring
together scholars working across linguistics and related disciplines
to explore the relationship between social structure, linguistic
variation, grammatical systems, and language contact in the Bharatiya
(Indian) linguistic area.
Focusing on Bharatiya (Indian) languages, this conference aims to
address a research gap by bringing together structural and
sociolinguistic approaches to grammar within a complex multilingual
ecology. The conference will engage with the issues related to
‘sociosyntax’ from diverse methodological and theoretical
perspectives, concentrating on:
(a) Social grammar in South Asia: How do syntax, region, gender, and
multilingual repertoires shape syntactic variation and change? How are
features such as differential argument markers, honorification,
agreement, and classifier systems socially indexed in major and
understudied languages and contact zones, beyond speech-act
dichotomies?
(b) Sociolinguistic and anthropological frameworks that focus on
specific linguistic form and their function, such as registers, urban
and rural varieties, among others. Particular emphasis will be placed
on ethnographically grounded studies that demonstrate how syntactic
choices are embedded in everyday interaction and identity
construction.
(c) Formal linguistic framework examining how social meaning is
integrated into grammar and contributing to the understanding of
interfaces such as syntax-semantic-sociolinguistics. This includes
work on clause types, agreement systems, and the encoding of
speaker–addressee relations within formal models. Special focus will
be given to how interface phenomena mediate between structural
constraints and socially interpretable meaning.
(d) Computational, Experimental, and Corpus-based approaches to detect
and analyze the nature of Bharatiya socio-syntactic variation.
(e) Bharat as a sociosyntactic area: How does long-term language
contact shape sociosyntactic systems, especially in the context of a
minority or an endangered language in contact with a majority
language? What mechanisms enable the diffusion and grammaticalization
of socially meaningful structures across languages? This theme
revisits the notion of the Bharatiya linguistic area from a
sociosyntactic perspective.
Important Dates:
Abstract submission: 25th August - 5th September 2026
Decisions on abstracts: 6th September, 2026
Registration:  7th-15th September, 2026
Themes:
Submissions on any of the following (but not limited to) themes are
welcome:
 - Social grammar in South Asia
 - Sociolinguistic and anthropological frameworks
 - Formal linguistic frameworks examining how social meaning is
integrated into grammar
 - Computational, Experimental, and Corpus-based approaches to detect
and analyze patterns of Bharatiya socio-syntactic variation
 - Bharat as a sociosyntactic area
 - Aggregation of linguistic features in a contact zone
 - Porous linguistic and social boundaries between ‘languages’,
‘dialects’, and ‘registers’ in a socio-grammatical framework
Abstract should not be more than 350 words (one page), including
keywords. Text should have Times New Roman font, 12 size, 1 line
spacing (APA 7th style). Submissions should clearly indicate the
title, subtitle (if any), name of the author(s), affiliation, and
email address.
Submissions should clearly indicate the presentation format: Platform
presentation/Poster/Lightning talk (5-minute presentation).
Invited Speakers:
 - Padma Shri Prof Anvita Abbi, Goa University
 - Prof Nazir A. Dhar, Former Head, Deptt. of Linguistics, University
of Kashmir
 - Prof Pritha Chandra, IIT Delhi
 - Prof Sonal Kulkarni-Joshi, Deccan College University, Pune
 - Prof Pradeep Kumar Das, JNU, New Delhi
 - Prof Niladri S. Dash, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata
We look forward to welcoming faculty, scholars, and students to the
University of Kashmir for an engaging and interdisciplinary discussion
on sociosyntax, linguistic variation, and language contact in the
Bharatiya linguistic area.
For more details, visit: https://tinyurl.com/3e5yb3rh
Convenor: Prof Musavir Ahmed, Head, Department of Linguistics,
University of Kashmir, Srinagar, India

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