Typology of small-scale multilingualism: International Conference (Lyon, France)

Lyon, April 15-17 2019

The conference aims to provide a forum for linguists and anthropologists to discuss issues concerning small-scale multilingualism (Lüpke 2016, Singer & Harris 2016), which is typical for pre-colonial societies with small socio-political groups. The aim of the conference is to develop a set of parameters for comparing different sociolinguistic settings across the world. Topics to be covered include the (in)equality of languages (egalitarian language ecology is usually considered to be a feature of areas with high linguistic diversity), linguistic ideologies, marriage patterns as they are related to the spread of L2s, the sources of second language acquisition, the domains where languages are used, the existence of lingua francas in the context of small-scale societies, and methods for studying multilingual patterns of the past. For further details see The typology of small-scale multilingualism.

Invited Speakers:

Friederike Lüpke (SOAS, London)
Nicholas Evans (ANU, Canberra)

Submission:

We welcome abstracts from researchers working on all areas where high linguistic diversity is attested. We are interested both in reports on current language ecologies and diachronic studies.

BA, MA and PhD students are especially encouraged to apply. The organizers are looking for additional funding which may be used to support students and researchers from low-income countries.

The conference will consist of oral presentations and a poster session. Abstract submitters may choose to have their abstract considered either for a poster only, for a talk only, or for a poster or a talk.

Abstracts:

Abstracts (PDF, 12 point font, max 1 page text + 1 page figures and references) should be submitted to the address smallscale.multilingualism@gmail.com before December 15, 2018. You may submit no more than one abstract as first author.

Adjacent workshop:

Note that there will be a workshop on "Noun categorization: from grammar to communicative interaction" taking place at DDL on 18-19 April, i.e. immediately adjacent to this workshop.

Organizers:

Nina Dobrushina (HSE, Moscow)
Olesya Khanina (Institute of Linguistics RAS, Moscow & Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki)
Brigitte Pakendorf (CNRS & Université Lumière Lyon 2, Lyon)

L aboratoire Dynamique du Langage (DDL), the Laboratory of Linguistic Convergence (HSE, Moscow), and Institute of Linguistics (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow).