Sommerschule: The Limits of Variability

The summer school is organized by the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centre SFB 1287 “Limits of Variability in Language: Cognitive, Grammatical, and Social Aspects“. The school will bring together leading international experts from modern sociolinguistics, dialect research, grammar theory and the formal study of African languages.

The school’s central topic is the empirical study and theoretical modelling of variability and its constraints at various levels of language. Individual courses will introduce new empirical methods for diagnosing (in-)variability in language systems and language use; and they offer novel ways for the theoretical modelling of (in-)variability in language. Graduates can learn about and exchange ideas on:

• Formal approaches to social meaning, variation and identity construction (Heather Burnett, Paris),
• Linguistic variation and change in social context (Sali Tagliamonte, Toronto),
• Morphophonemic and morphosyntactic variation in Bantu (Larry Hyman, Berkeley & Jenneke van der Wal, Leiden),
• Discovering parameters: from micro- to macro-variation (Marjo van Koppen, Utrecht & Jeroen van Craenenbroeck, Leuven) and
• lectures by Sjef Barbiers (Leiden), who is a Mercator Fellow in the SFB.

The summer school contributes to the following goals: A better understanding of how constraints on individual language use and (social) constraints on communication between speakers interact in shaping individual mental grammars; how individual mental grammars change over time; and how they are stabilized and aligned through inter-speaker communication, resulting in externalized language systems that are indicative of the limits of variability.

Deadline for a binding registration is the 15. May. Late applicants might be considered.

Please send an E-Mail with the header “Summer School” stating your name and affiliation to SFB1287@uni-potsdam.de. Please state the morning session (A or B) that you want to attend. Due to limited space the applications will be dealt with on a first-come-first-serve basis. The participation fee is 20 €.

The complete summer school schedule can be found here.