Schedule - All session in UB auditorium
November 6-11, 2006, University of Tromsø
Lecturers
John McWhorter (Manhattan Institute for Policy Research)
Jurij Kusmenko (Berlin)
Jan-Ola Östman (Helsinki)
NB! Funds for travel to this course are now available. These are limited to Ph.D. students coming from the Nordic or Baltic countries (but not Norway). For more information, please contact curt.rice@hum.uit.no .
Description
A central source of language change is language contact.
When two languages are spoken in the same area by populations in contact, they influence one another. The history of English offers textbook examples of such contact, with both lexical and grammatical influences from French and Old Norse being crucial to understanding the developments of English. Some features of modern Norwegian may also be due to language contact, such as the syntax of wh-questions in northern Norwegian dialects, which may find their origin in contact with Kvenish or Saami.
To understand and model language change, scholars need insight into the nature of language contact. This course brings together leading scholars in this field, to offer a week-long course focusing on the political and social aspects of language contact. The course is designed to be of interest not only to doctorial students with projects focusing directly on sociolinguistics or language and society, but it is also intended for students interested in theoretical linguistics, especially those interested in topics such as language change and language acquisition. The selection of lecturers reflects our intention to offer a course with a broad range of appeal.
Students are expected to have considerable background in linguistics, although background in the specific topic of this course is not required. This is a doctoral level course and is therefore primarily intended for students who have completed a Master of Arts degree.
Program
On each day from Monday (start at 12) through Thursday, there will be two lectures of two hours each, for a total of 16 hours. Friday and Saturday are devoted to a workshop which will include presentations by students and other participants, including faculty members from the University of Tromsø. Please contact the organizers if you are interested in making a presentation at the workshop.
To earn points for this course, participants must either present a paper at the workshop or write a 5-10 page paper on a topic related to the course, to be approved by one of the course organizers.
Practical details
There is no registration fee for participating in the course. There is a possibility that some travel support for doctoral students from other Nordic institutions will be available; details regarding such support will be made public in early October.
Registration
This course will give 10 credits for PhD-students registered at the University of Tromsø. Regarding hours of lecture, course contents and syllabus given, the number of credits is to be regarded as a guide for students registered at other institutions.
Please register on this electronic registration form: http://uit.no/getfile.php?PageId=1113&FileId=223
The form must be returned to Jorun Nordmo (jorun.nordmo@hum.uit.no)
Registration deadline: If you want credit for this course, please fill out the registration forms immediately!
Please note that the code of the subject is HIF-8005. You do not have to fill in the box titled 'Examination arrangements'.
If you are not interested in the credits or want to attend only parts of the course, please register here: http://uit.no/humfak/registration
(We need to know the total amount of people coming.)
PhD students who are members of the national research school do not have to enclose confirmation from their home institution.
Accomodation
If you want us to make a reservation for a hotel room, we will need information about the length of your stay in Tromsø. You will find a form at this address: http://uit.no/humfak/hotel