37.461, Confs: Workshop at 10th International Symposium of Linguistics: The Grammar of Spoken Language (Romania)

Tue Feb 3 15:05:02 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-461. Tue Feb 03 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.461, Confs: Workshop at 10th International Symposium of Linguistics: The Grammar of Spoken Language (Romania)

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Date: 31-Jan-2026
From: Cecilia Mihaela Popescu [cecilia99_ro at yahoo.com]
Subject: Workshop at 10th International Symposium of Linguistics: The Grammar of Spoken Language

Workshop at 10th International Symposium of Linguistics: The Grammar
of Spoken Language
Short Title: SIL10 - Workshop
Theme: Research Workshop: The Grammar of Spoken Language

Date: 21-May-2026 - 23-May-2026
Location: Bucharest, Romania
Contact: Andra Vasilescu
Contact Email: vasilescu.andra at gmail.com
Meeting URL: https://lingv.ro/

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics;
Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics
Language Family(ies): Romance

Submission Deadline: 20-Mar-2026

As part of the International Symposium of Linguistics organized by the
“Iorgu Iordan – Alexandru Rosetti” Institute of Linguistics of the
Romanian Academy, in collaboration with the Faculty of Letters,
University of Bucharest (21–23 May 2026), a research workshop
dedicated to spoken language will be held.
The thematic focus of the workshop builds on one of the research
directions included in the research plan of the “Iorgu Iordan –
Alexandru Rosetti” Institute of Linguistics: The Grammar of Spoken
Romanian.
The workshop aims to bring to the fore methodological, descriptive,
and theoretical issues relevant to the study of the grammar of spoken
language as an emergent, dynamic, interactional, fluid system,
constructed and negotiated within contextualized communicative
practices. Unlike grammatical approaches that investigate idealized
language forms, a grammar of spoken language examines how linguistic
structures are spontaneously produced in face-to-face interaction
between real interlocutors. These interlocutors have particular
identities, engage with partially different discourse worlds, think
and interpret messages almost simultaneously with their production,
receive and transmit information through multiple channels, and
dynamically negotiate information, interpersonal relations,
turn-taking, and language use. Within this research paradigm, emphasis
is placed on how cognitive processes, pragmatic variables,
sociocultural factors, and discursive constraints shape grammatical
structures – namely morphosyntactic, lexico-semantic, and phonological
structures at both micro- and macrotextual levels.
After several centuries during which grammar focused primarily on
formulating rules of the literary norm (classical grammar), of
language as a system (Saussurean structuralism), or of linguistic
competence (Chomskyan generativism), the systematic study of actual
language use, speech, and performance began to take shape toward the
end of the 1970s. Subsequently, this line of inquiry has been
increasingly rigorously theorized, and today corpus-based grammars,
especially those grounded in spoken data, attract growing interest
among linguists (Hopper 1987; Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad &
Finegan 1999; Hopper & Bybee 2001; Carter & McCarthy 2015; Haselow
2017; Steensig et al. 2025, among others). This new orientation
represents a natural development in linguistic research, leading to an
integrative perspective on the complex relationship between language
as an abstract system of rules and language as a concrete
manifestation in use.
Within the workshop, we will explore and jointly reflect on a wide
range of issues involved in the study of spoken language, including:
 - Theories of spoken language
 - The relationship between written and spoken language
 - Corpus-based methodologies (methodological challenges in describing
spoken language using oral corpora; annotation issues in defining
units of analysis for spoken language; methodological innovations
enabling more empirically grounded descriptions of spoken language,
etc.)
 - Units of spoken language
 - Aspects of meaning construction (thematic progression; information
structure; parenthetical, metadiscursive, and appositive
constructions; multiactivity and mixed syntax; hyper-elaboration;
under-elaboration; simplification; brevity; discursive incoherence and
inconsistency; vagueness, imprecision, ambiguity; phatic sequences,
etc.)
 - Structures specific to oral interaction (ellipsis, incremental
structures, anacoluthon, lexical disruptions, slips of the tongue,
repetitions, etc.)
 - Discursive polyphony and its formal manifestations in oral
interaction
 - Stance in spoken interaction
 - Discourse and pragmatic markers specific to spoken interaction
 - The construction of interpersonal relations (consensus vs.
conflict, dominance vs. subordination, empathy, playfulness, humor,
irony, sarcasm, etc.)
 - Turn-taking management (transitions, interruptions, holding the
floor, overlaps, latched turns, diagraphs, silences, disfluencies,
etc.)
 - Variation, use, and change (frequency, flexibility, contextual
adaptation; lexical and grammatical variation in speech; the role of
spoken interaction in processes of language change, etc.)
 - The multimodal construction of meaning: the relationship between
paraverbal (intonation, rhythm, pauses), nonverbal (gesture, gaze,
body movement), and verbal elements
 - Contrastive, typological, and plurilingual perspectives
Venue: “Iorgu Iordan – Alexandru Rosetti” Institute of Linguistics, 13
Calea 13 Septembrie, Bucharest.
Format: in-person
Working languages: Romanian, English, French
Abstract: 250–300 words; see the attached form; the form should be
sent to the organizers’ email addresses.
Organizers and contacts: Andra Vasilescu, University of Bucharest and
The „Iorgu Iordan – Alexandru Rosetti” Institute of Linguistics
(vasilescu.andra at gmail.com); Cecilia Popescu, University of Craiova
and The „Iorgu Iordan – Alexandru Rosetti” Institute of Linguistics
(cecilia.popescu at edu.ucv.ro)
Deadlines and Practical Information:
20 March – abstract submission
31 March – notification of acceptance
1–30 April – payment of the participation fee (350 RON / 70 EUR).
References:
Carter, Ronald, Michael McCarthy. Spoken grammar: Where are we and
where are we going?. Applied linguistics 38.1 (2017): 1-20.
Douglas Biber, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad & Edward
Finegan. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Longman 1999.
Haselow, Alexander. Spontaneous spoken English: An integrated approach
to the emergent grammar of speech. Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Hopper, Paul J., Joan L. Bybee (eds.). Frequency and the emergence of
linguistic structure. Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 2001.
Hopper, Paul. ”Emergent grammar”. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth
Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Editat de Jon
Aske, Natasha Beery, Laura Michaelis, and Hana Filip, 139–157.
Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society, 1987.
Steensig, J., Jørgensen, M., Lindström, J. K., Mikkelsen, N.,
Suomalainen, K., & Sørensen, S. S. (eds.). Grammar in Action: Building
comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction. DeGruyter Brill, 2025.

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