Call for Papers: First Global Australian Languages Workshop

This is the website for the first Global Australian Languages Workshop, to be held online from May 17-20, 2021. The purpose of the workshop is to get together people with Australia’s Indigenous languages in different ways. The workshop is being held the week prior to Reconciliation Week. This year’s Reconciliation Week theme is more than a word.

Important dates

  • Call for papers: Opens March 9
  • Deadline to register to give a paper: April 16
  • General registration: Up to May 14

Themes

We have several suggested themes for papers (which we are using to group papers). These themes are a way of organizing presentations rather than excluding topics, so if your paper doesn’t fit, that’s ok!

  • Reclamation/revitalization
  • Reconciliation
  • Historical linguistics/variation and change/diachrony
  • Language contact and multilingualism
  • Phonetics/Phonology
  • Morphology/Syntax
  • Semantics
  • Language documentation and fieldwork
  • Language teaching and learning
  • Linguist Helpdesk (see below)
  • (Other)

Papers

We are not going to have formal papers for this workshop. Instead, we are calling everything a “poster”. The format is up to you (it can be a traditional poster or a few slides, or talking with a whiteboard; you can upload a written paper, a video, or just the poster/slides). We ask that you keep video presentations under 30 minutes but apart from that there are no restrictions. Think of “giving a paper” at this conference as meaning “telling us what you’d like to talk about”.

There is no limit to the number of “posters” you can be involved with, though please do not submit more than one single authored presentation. We want to hear from as many people as possible, but we also recognize that many people are involved in lots of different projects.

We particularly welcome papers/posters/submissions from Language Centres and Indigenous presenters.

Posters received prior to the workshop will be placed on this web site for previewing. They can also be posted after the workshop, if that is the presenter’s preference. During the conference sessions, participants and presenters can discuss the content of the papers (or anything else related to the sessions!)

Instructions to submit materials has been sent to presenters, but if you did not receive them or have questions/concerns, please contact Juhyae (contact info below).

Linguist helpdesk

The ‘linguist helpdesk’ session is an excellent idea from the Irra Wangga Language Centre. We’ll have some sessions where community-based linguists can talk over data that’s puzzling them and get suggestions for how to figure out constructions that are unusual or otherwise difficult to understand.

To present in this section, just let us know in the presenters’ registration form. It’d be really helpful to have examples of the construction(s) you’d like to talk about, along with any other information about your guesses as to what it means, things you’ve tried in figuring it out, and context for the sentences with the construction. (The more examples the better, but if you don’t have many don’t let that put you off!)

Registration (closed)

Registration is free. Registration will give you access to the links for the zoom sessions. You don’t need to be giving a paper/poster to attend, of course.

Session Times

We will have three blocks of time for sessions each day:

  1. 7am – 9am US Eastern Daylight Saving Time (= 9-11pm Sydney, 8:30-10:30pm Darwin, 7-9pm Perth, 12-2pm London, 1-3pm Berlin, 4-6am Los Angeles)
  2. 12pm – 2pm US Eastern Daylight Saving Time (= 2-4am* Sydney, 1:30-3:30am* Darwin, 12-2am Perth*, 5-7pm London, 6-8pm Berlin, 9-11am Los Angeles)
  3. 7pm – 9 pm US Eastern Daylight Saving Time (= 9-11am* Sydney, 8:30-10:30am* Darwin, 7-9am* Perth, 12-2am London, 1-3am Berlin, 4-6pm Los Angeles)
    (* means that it’s the next day; e.g. 7pm May 17 in New Haven is 9am May 18 in Sydney)

By using these times, we can accommodate a large number of time zones (to find your time zone, timeanddate.com will do conversions). Sessions 1 and 3 work for (most of) the US and Australia. Sessions 1 and 2 work for the US and Europe. Sessions 2 and 3 work for the other bits of the US and Australia.

Note that registration to give a paper asks you for which sessions you’d be available for. We will assign themes and papers to particular times based on your comments at registration.

Contact

Please contact Juhyae Kim or Claire Bowern with any questions (our emails are firstname.lastname@yale.edu).