«Mutatas dicere formas» Variation and change in Philology, Literature, Linguistics and Book Cultures

Date: 27-Oct-2025 – 29-Oct-2025
Location: Bologna, Italy
Meeting URL: https://phd.unibo.it/culture-letterarie-e-filologiche/it/attivita/convegno-dottorale-internazionale-2025

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Sociolinguistics; Typology

Submission Deadline: 11-May-2025

The PhD students of the Doctoral Program in Literary and Philological Cultures at Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna are pleased to announce the second edition of the Doctoral Conference of the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies. The conference invites participation from both PhD candidates and early-career researchers. This edition focuses on variation and change across the fields of Classical Studies, Italian Studies, Linguistics, and Book Cultures. Contributions may explore theoretical and methodological perspectives (history of debates, critical approaches, influential positions) and/or empirical analyses (significant or widely discussed case studies).

Call for Abstract:

All grammars leak: Edward Sapir’s (1921:39) emblematic statement has become an established principle in linguistic research. Languages are far from being monolithic and one-dimensional entities; rather, they are inevitably subject to variation. Moreover, the concept of variation is often inseparable from that of change, which is why, according to Meillet (1921:17), the study of linguistic change should be inseparable from the study of social change. Establishing the overall state of affairs is therefore a complex task that requires multiple perspectives. Given the inseparable link between variation and change, what remains difficult to clarify is what Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog (1968) define as actuation: how, when, and why linguistic change occurs – and perhaps even more significantly – why it sometimes does not.
Why are some diachronic sources more productive than others? Why, given identical starting structural features, does change occur in some languages but not in others? What role does sociolinguistic variation play in shaping cross-linguistic patterns of change? Answering these questions and investigating such dynamics requires an integrated approach in which sociolinguistics examines language diversification along variation axes, typology explores possibilities, tendencies, and constraints at a universal structural level, and diachrony reconstructs change by clarifying the mechanisms and principles through which variation either leads – or fails to do so – to a definitive structural transformation of the system.
We therefore welcome contributions from all areas of linguistic research that, adopting an integrated approach to theoretical and methodological frameworks, combine tools from sociolinguistics, typology, and historical linguistics to investigate linguistic phenomena at any level of analysis (e.g., phonology, morphology, semantics, lexicon, syntax, pragmatics), either from a comparative perspective or through the study of individual languages.

General information:

PhD students and those who have obtained such title within the last two years by the abstract submission deadline are invited to submit by May 11th, 2025:
– an original paper proposal (maximum 350 words, excluding the title and up to 10 bibliographic references)
– a short academic profile (maximum 100 words)

Proposals should be sent to convegnoficlit.unibo@gmail.com with the subject line “Paper Proposal – Doctoral Conference” and should specify the relevant section (e.g., either Classical Studies, Classical Philology, Italian Studies, Italian Philology, Romance Philology, Linguistics or Book Sciences). The email should include the following information: paper title, name, affiliation, and contact email address. Submissions may be in Italian or English and should be sent in both .doc(x) and anonymized .pdf formats. The outcome of the review process will be communicated by June 23th, 2025. Each presentation will have a maximum duration of 20 minutes. Selected speakers are required to present their papers in person. All thematic units are interdisciplinary, and individual panels will be organized according to thematic or methodological similarities. The conference will also feature keynote speakers. The Scientific Committee will consider the possibility of publishing the conference proceedings. The conference will take place on Monday, October 27th – Wednesday, October 29th, 2025, at the University of Bologna. There is no registration fee. Further details regarding registration, the conference venue, accepted proposals, and the full program will be provided on the official conference website: https://phd.unibo.it/culture-letterarie-e-filologiche/it/attivita/convegno-dottorale-internazionale-2025. For further questions, please contact: convegnoficlit.unibo@gmail.com