Appel_Towards a Formal Approach to Creole Studies

[Muhsina]

Call for abstracts 
Workshop
Towards a Formal Approach to Creole Studies
 
University of Tromsø
November 14/15, 2008
 
 
Invited speakers:
Hans den Besten
Alain Kihm
 
 
The goal of this workshop is to bring together scholars who share an
interest in the formal study of creole languages. Early generative
approaches to creoles were often hampered by the lack of available
data, which may have led to premature conclusions. However, only few
scholars have pursued this line of research since its heyday in the
early 1980s (see e.g. Muysken 1981). Instead, there was an increased
focus on the description of individual creole languages and
sociolinguistic factors surrounding creole formation, which helped us
to gain a much better understanding of the factors involved in creole
formation.
            We believe that the time is ripe for a renewed approach to
pidgin and creole languages from a theoretical and/or generative
perspective. Both linguistic theory and the empirical exploration of
creole languages have advanced considerably since the 1980s, allowing
us to take a fresh perspective on what seems to be an old topic.
Shifting the spotlight to the more formal issues surrounding creole
formation may help us in furthering our understanding how pidgin and
creole languages come into being and why their grammatical properties
are the way they are. At the same time, it may foster the interaction
between theoretical linguists and researchers `in the field'.
 
We therefore invite abstracts that address theoretical and formal
aspects in Creole Studies, from all the subfields of generative
research, syntax, semantics, phonology, and morphology. Questions that
we think still need to be addressed include (but are not limited to)
the following:
·          Which contribution can creoles make to linguistic theory
and theoretical developments?
·          Are creoles `special' languages, from a structural perspective?
·          Are there structural similarities that are common to all
creoles, irrespective of their origin, their substrates and their
lexifiers? If so what are they and how can we account for them?
·          How does the claim that creoles are the simplest languages
of the world  (McWhorter 2005) hold up to formal scrutiny?
·          What are the formal factors in creole formation, and how do
these formal factors interact with sociolinguistic factors?
 
 
We invite submissions of abstracts for 35-minute presentations (plus
10-minute discussions). Abstracts should be no longer than one page US
Letter or A4 with one inch (2.5 cm) margins, single spaced, with a
font size no smaller than 12pt, and with normal character spacing. A
second page may be used for examples, figures, tables or references.
The preferred submission format is pdf, but you can also send your
abstract in .doc, .txt or .rtf format.
            Please send two copies of your abstract. One should be
anonymous (all abstracts will be reviewed anonymously), one should
include your name, affiliation and e-mail address directly below the
title. The two files should be named <yourtitle-yourname> and
<yourtitle-anon>, e.g. title-schuchardt.pdf and title-anon.pdf.
Abstracts should be sent to creole at hum.uit.no
 
Modest financial aid is available to a limited number of researchers
with limited financial resources whose abstracts are accepted. Request
for funding ought to be submitted together with the abstract.
 
Deadline for submission: July 7, 2008.
Notifications will be sent out by early August
 
For details and further information, please consult the workshop
website at http://www.hum.uit.no/creole/index.html
 
 
Organisers
Marleen van de Vate, University of Tromsø
Christian Uffmann, University of Sussex





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