N'CLAV/ScanDiaSyn Grand Meeting in Tromsø

Sommarøy Arctic Hotel
Photo: Maia Andréasson

The first N'CLAV Grand Meeting that also coincides with the last ScanDiaSyn Grand Meeting has taken place at Sommarøya Arctic Hotel, about one hour's drive from Tromsø, Norway. During three days we have listened to interesting and intriguing talks and we have also had the opportunity to spend time together with fellow linguists of the two networks, the NORMS network and the international partners of ScanDiaSyn. 

Four invited speakers gave talks during the meeting. Monday afternoon Bruce Morén, CASTL/University of Tromsø, gave a talk on the saami languages, encouraging us to study and participate in documentation of these endangered languages that are so close at hand. 

The midnight sun.
Photo: Maia Andréasson

Tuesday morning Caroline Heycock, University of Edinburgh, gave a talk on joint work with Antonella Sorace on variability in the grammar of children acquiring the Faroese language. Just after lunch Cecilia Poletto, Universities of Padua and Venice, presented a talk on the change from OV to VO word order in Italian dialects.

Going very fast in a very small boat.
Photo: Maia Andréasson

Tuesday afternoon the traditional excursion took place and this year there were several options to chose among. Some went for a boat ride, with fishing (two cods were caught by Zakaris Svabo Hansen while an even bigger one, caught by Tania Strahan, managed to regain its freedom and escape) and eagle spotting. Others went on a fast tour with a small motor boat. 

In and around the hotel some went climbing in the hills, while others preferred to enjoy the hot tubs. A very few dared to dip their feet in the ocean and one or two even took a swim in the icing cold water.

Wednesday morning invited speaker Helge Sandøy, University of Bergen, stressed the necessity of including both an analysis of internal factors (i.e. structural linguistics) and external factors (i.e. sociolinguistics) when aiming to study language faculty and specific linguistic changes.

After lunch Hans Bennis, Meertens Instituut, chaired a two hour discussion on data sharing. In his introduction, Hans Bennis pointed on the necessity of having an attitude where sharing data is the default  situation. After brief presentations from Ásta Svavarsdóttir, Helge Sandøy, Elisabet Engdahl, Lisa Södergård and Sjef Barbiers a discussion on problems and opportunities took place.

During the data sharing discussion, Anton Karl Ingason presented one extreme variant of data sharing within the work on the Icelandic tree-bank (www.linguist.is/wiki/Main_Page) where everything that is done is available to the public, even during the different stages in the process of building the tree-bank. On the other extreme, Janne-Bondi Johannesson referred to an data collection where all the data were to be destroyed as soon as the research was over.

Handouts, presentations and photos from the grand meeting will be available on the conference website: http://uit.no/scandiasyn/sommaroya/.

/Maia Andréasson