Date: 20-Nov-2020 – 21-Nov-2020
Location: Bucharest, Romania
Contact Person: Carmen Mîrzea Vasile
Meeting Email: < click here to access email >
Web Site: https://litere.ro/2020/08/01/colocviul-international-al-departamentului-de-lingvistica/

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; History of Linguistics; Morphology; Sociolinguistics; Syntax

Subject Language(s): English; French; Romanian

Call Deadline: 15-Oct-2020

Meeting Description:

This workshop will be held as part of the twentieth Conference of the Department of Linguistics of the University of Bucharest.

The present workshop is intended to foster a deeper understanding of the standardization process and linguistic variable norm(s), by comparing similar cases in different languages and cultures, in a sociolinguistic framework. Standardization will be considered in its relationship with language evaluation, ideologies, purism and folk linguistics. Special attention will be paid to norm variability and the effects of implicit or explicit norms on language change.

Call for Papers:

The workshop aims to find answers to the following queries:
– Are there more convergences or more differences in the standardization processes, both in diachrony and in the contemporary state of national languages?
– Is there a general tendency of relaxing norms and accepting register hybridization? What is the balance between power and weakness of regulatory institutions, and between norm acceptance and norm criticism?
– Is there a specific on-line metadiscourse on language norm(s)?
– Which are the similar constructions differently standardized in various languages and how are they standardized (e.g. agreement in number and gender for coordinated, partitive, collective expressions; “agreement” of adverbs and invariability of adjectives; clitic doubling; negative concord; feminization of profession nouns, etc.)?
– What effects does the standardization of one level of language have on other levels (e.g. writing norms on pronunciation)? How similar are languages in this respect?

Papers may focus on a particular language, investigated either synchronically or diachronically or may compare phenomena from two or more languages (genetically related, belonging to the same areal, but also completely different).

Each presentation will last 20 minutes followed by 10 minutes for discussion. The workshop languages are Romanian, English and French.

Abstracts, no longer than 500 words (references excluded), in Times New Roman, size 12, will be sent by attachment to: carmen.vasile(at)unibuc.ro (Carmen Mîrzea Vasile), isabela.nedelcu(at)unibuc.ro (Isabela Nedelcu), rodica.zafiu(at)unibuc.ro (Rodica Zafiu).

Important dates:
Deadline for submissions: October 15, 2020
Notification of acceptance: October 25, 2020
Conference dates: November 20‒21, 2020

Registration fee (if the conference will be held face-to-face): € 40 (or RON 190); doctoral students: € 20 (RON 95).

We will keep you informed in a timely manner on how the workshop will take place (face-to-face or online).

Selected bibliography:
Armstrong, N., I. E. Mackenzie, 2013. Standardization, Ideology and Linguistics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ayres-Bennett, W., 2020. From Haugen’s codification to Thomas’s purism: assessing the role of description and prescription, prescriptivism and purism in linguistic standardisation. In: Language Policy 19. 183-213.
Coseriu, E., 1952. Sistema, norma y habla. Montevideo: Universidad de la República.
Haugen, E., 1972. The Ecology of Language. Stanford/Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Lebsanft, F., F. Tacke (eds), 2020. Manual of Standardization in the Romance Languages. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Milroy, J., L. Milroy, 1991. Authority in Language: Investigating Language Prescription and Standardisation. London: Routledge.
Niedzielski, N. A., D. R. Preston, 2000. Folk Linguistics. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Pountain, Ch. J., 2016. Standardization. In: A. Ledgeway, M. Maiden (eds). The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages. Oxford: O.U.P. 634-643.
Rutten G., R. Vosters, W. Vandenbussche (eds), 2014. Norms and Usage in Language History, 1600-1900: A Historical-sociolinguistic and Comparative Perspective. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Thomas, G., 1991. Linguistic Purism. London/New York: Longman.