SPEAKERS AND WORKSHOPS

INVITED SPEAKERS

J.K. Chambers, University of Toronto;
Jacques Durand, Université de Toulouse – LeMirail;
Hans Goebl, Universität Salzburg;
Natalie Schilling-Estes, Georgetown University.

WORKSHOPS – SPECIAL SESSIONS

New Perspectives in Ibero-Romance Dialectology
Organizer: David Heap, University of Western Ontario

Many of the central issues of interest to dialectologists across Ibero-Romance varieties (pronominal variation, phonological and lexical variables, dialect divisions and patterns of settlement and migration, etc.) have been studied for much of the last century. In recent years, new data sources (including atlas surveys, oral interview corpora, postal questionnaires, and historical text corpora) and methods (electronic cartography, statistical treatments of geographical variables, and concordances) now provide innovative approaches to many of these classic problems, as well as permitting us to frame new questions relating to recent trends in linguistic theory. This session will bring together researchers from Spain, Portugal, Latin America and elsewhere to share results while comparing methods and analyses.

North American Varieties of French
Organizers : Robert A. Papen, Université du Québec à Montréal, and Gisèle Chevalier, Université de Moncton

The purpose of this special session is to bring together researchers who work on North American varieties of French from different theoretical and methodological perspectives.  Specific aims are:

• to encourage further descriptive research,
• to expand the basis of comparison among regional varieties so that research on a given regional variety is situated within pan-Canadian and pan-North American contexts,
• to reflect on the compatibility of the various theoretical and methodological frameworks currently being used in the study of linguistic variation, and
• to encourage the sharing of linguistic databases, research tools, expertise, and the diffusion of research results.

Finno-Ugric Languages in Contact with English II
Organizers : Anna Fenyvesi, University of Szeged, Pekka Hirvonen, University of Joensuu, Timo Lauttamus, University of Oulu, and Greg Watson, University of Joensuu

The purpose of this workshop is to further strengthen links among researchers working on contacts between Finno-Ugric and Germanic languages.  This session will explore and compare observations on contact-induced changes in Finno-Ugric languages and in the Germanic languages spoken by Finno-Ugric ethnic-language groups

Progress in Dialectometry: Toward Explanation
Organizers:  John Nerbonne, University of Groningen, and William A. Kretzschmar Jr., University of Georgia

In dialectology computational techniques have brought improvement especially with respect to analytical tools, data archives, and the amount of data that can be subjected to analysis. The wealth of potentially competing methods and the initial computational enthusiasm have also inspired a careful examination and evaluation of computing methods and techniques with an eye to letting dialectology benefit maximally from the new technology. The purpose of this session is to bring together researchers who are working to harness computational power as a source of improvement in dialectology. Our focus is on dialectometry, e.g., the use of exact measurements to determine dialect differences and/or similarities, geographic or social distribution, or the incorporation of frequency analysis or psychological findings. This workshop continues an exchange begun at the Methods XI conference (and published as a special issue of Computers and the Humanities 2003 (3)) and aims to further this tradition of examining alternative techniques critically. The workshop is particularly interested in contributions demonstrating the utility of dialectometry in explaining linguistic variation, either with recourse to extralinguistic determinants (esp. geography), or on the basis of internal linguistic structure, e.g., the role of pronunciation versus lexis (vs. syntax, etc.), or the degree to which dialectal variation is linguistically regular.