Graduate Workshop on Language Contact in Asia and the Pacific

September 3rd-5th

The goal of this graduate workshop is to expose interested young researchers to up-to-date research and theories of contact linguistics with a specific focus on the Asia-Pacific region, an area of high linguistic diversity and a wealth of contact settings. This 3-day workshop consists of 3 intensive courses taught by invited external tutors, each one a renowned specialist in their field, and a local tutor from the University of Macau:

Session 1: Anthropology of Creole Languages. Tutor: Prof. Christine Jourdan (Concordia University)

Session 2: Language endangerment and language maintenance: working with communities. Tutor: Prof. David Bradley (LaTrobe University)

Session 3: Portuguese in contact in Asia. Tutors: Dr. Hugo Cardoso (University of Coimbra) & Dr. Mário Pinharanda (University of Macau)

The topics of the three courses will allow the participants to broaden their knowledge of general issues in the research of language contact, as well as expose them to specific case-studies based on the tutors’ expertise. The workshop is geared towards graduate Linguistics students or advanced undergraduates. It is open to anyone; if, however, we receive more expressions of interest than we can accommodate, preference will be given to students of Asian-Pacific institutions and students researching or planning to research Asian-Pacific contact settings.

Registration of attendees to this workshop is now open until 17 June 2012. All those interested should email their CV and a short paragraph introducing themselves, their course of study and their research interests to: marioN@umac.mo.

The registration fee will be MOP 600.00 (+/- 75 USD; 57 EUR).

The workshop precedes the 1st Conference on Language Contact in Asia and the Pacific, which all participants are highly encouraged to attend and submit an abstract to.

1st Conference on Language Contact in Asia and the Pacific

September 6th-7th, 2012

As highly multilingual and diverse regions, Asia and the Pacific have over time witnessed intense language contact. Though not new, scholarly interest on the subject has been gaining momentum in recent times. This two-day conference will be dedicated exclusively to studies of the multiple facets of language contact and multilingualism in Asia and the Pacific.

The conference will include keynote addresses by:

Jeff Siegel (University of New England, Australia)
David Bradley (Latrobe University, Australia)
Christine Jourdan (Concordia University, Canada)

We invite abstracts in the field of language contact and multilingualism in Asia and the Pacific for 20-minute talks followed by a 10-minute discussion period. The recommended length is 300 words, and no longer than 500 words (excluding references). The abstract should: (i) state the topic of the paper clearly; (ii) indicate the methodology; (iii) include the main findings; and (iv) indicate their relevance to the field.

Abstracts should be sent in an attachment .doc or .pdf document, no later than May 31, 2012, to marioN@umac.mo.

Authors’ names must not be given in the abstract or the file name. In the email, authors are requested to include the following information:

- Name of author/s
- Title of paper
- Affiliation
- Postal & email address