Symposium on Variation and Typology

Variation and Typology: New trends in Syntactic Research

A symposium organized by the Linguistic Association of Finland in

Helsinki, Finland, August 25-27, 2011

Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2011

Workshop proposals: February 11, 2011

Symosium website: http://www.linguistics.fi/variation/

Symposium e-mail: typ-variation/at/helsinki.fi

Organizing committee

Seppo Kittilä (University of Helsinki)
Aki-Juhani Kyröläinen (University of Turku)
Meri Larjavaara (Åbo Akademi University)
Jaakko Leino (Research Institute for the Languages of Finland)
Alexandre Nikolaev (University of Eastern Finland)
Maria Vilkuna (Research Institute for the Languages of Finland)

Invited speakers

Balthasar Bickel (University of Leipzig)
Joan Bresnan (Stanford University)
Marja-Liisa Helasvuo (University of Turku)

Abstract submission

Please send your abstract to typ-variation /at/ helsinki.fi no later than March 1, 2011.

Workshops

The symposium will include a workshop on Finnish and Finnic dialect syntax . Proposals for all workshops should be submitted no later than February 11, 2011.

Brief description

See the symposium website for a full description, call for papers and further information.

This symposium offers a forum for scholars interested in syntactic questions within typology and variation (and combinations thereof).  Possible topics for talks include, but, as usual, are not restricted to, the following:

• dialect syntax vs. syntactic typology: what is the relation between cross-linguistic variation and dialectal variation?
• accounting for variation in syntactic theory: rigid rules, fuzzy templates, or something else?
• implications of language variation to typological data selection & research: what is the 'best variant' of a language to be presented in reference grammars? What are the consequences of relying on standard language data in cross-linguistic research? And what is the significance of having vs. not having variation data available to the grammarian?
• how to take into account variation in typological research in syntax?
• case studies of variation within and across languages (e.g. clause combining, use of reflexive pronouns, possessive constructions, argument marking, word order variations, etc. etc. within and across languages)
• methodological contributions to variation: to what extent do we need different machinery for dealing with different types of variation, and to what extent are we dealing with "just variation"?
• variation and marginal constructions: do we need a distinction between core and periphery in grammar? Does this involve a distinction between common and dialectal variants? Are certain constructions marginal both in dialects and across languages?
• borderline between dialectal and typological variation: e.g. issues of dealing with closely related languages, distinguishing between dialects vs. languages, spontaneous vs. contact-induced variation, etc.
• qualitative methods in typology and dialect studies