Colloquia and Talks
Conferences and Calls for Papers
Fall Semester Reading Groups

IU Foreign/Second Language Shair Fair

After a hiatus of more than two years, the IU Foreign/Second Language Share Fair is back this fall. The Share Fair is an annual pedagogy event in which graduate language instructors (present, past, and future) make 3-5 minute presentations on a teaching activity or technique that they use in the language classroom. It is fast-paced, fun, supportive, and energizing. There are many presentations, so it yields lots of ideas in under two hours, and there will be refreshments and prizes. For more information, visit the event website: http://www.iub.edu/~shfair/shfair.html http://www.iub.edu/~shfair/shfair.html.

Anthony Lodge presents "The Oc/Oil boundary in medieval France: Hard fact or ideological fiction?"

The Mary-Margaret Barr Koon Fund of the Department of French & Italian, the West European Studies Program, and the Department of Linguistics are pleased to present this talk by Anthony Lodge, a renowned specialist on the sociolinguistic history of French. The following is taken from the abstract:

Histories of the French language invariably open with a map of the country neatly divided into three linguistic zones : French (langue d'oil), Occitan (langue d'oc) and Franco-Provençal. Are we to take the boundaries between these languages as reflecting real breaks in the dialect continuum, implying a severe loss of mutual intelligibility, or should we see them as just a convenient way of dividing up the subject, a methodological fiction? Traditional histories of French do not discuss the problem, for the reality of these boundaries, and their impermeability, are axiomatic. The municipal account-books of Montferrand in Basse-Auvergne (13th-14th centuries) provide a helpful base for exploring 'on the ground' the interface between the three languages of Gallo-Romance in the medieval period. Close examination of the language of these documents and of the life of the urban community which produced them shows no evidence of an Oc/Oil boundary. The boundaries so real to modern historians of French had no reality at all for the people of the time. How then are we to explain the tenacity of the three-language model in the minds of modern linguistic historians? The reasons for it are ideological rather than scientific, and they invite us to create a more holistic, less standard-oriented paradigm for studying the history of Gallo-Romance, which takes the fluidity and flexibility of medieval vernaculars more fully into account.

David Stringer presents "The Syntax of Modifiers in Second Language Acquisition"

Associate Professor David Stringer of the Department of Second Language Studies will present recent research into the acquisition of English preposition, adjective and adverb modifiers by second language learners. The talk examines the role of Universal Grammar in second language acquisition, investigating the extent to which modifier hierarchies are universal, the effect of L1 transfer, and the value of targeted instruction. This results of this research indicate that while language universals are in evidence, they are insufficient for learners to converge on the target grammar, highlighting the need for enhanced input in language instruction.

African Languages Festival

Come and celebrate the African languages taught at IU (Akan, Bamanankan, IsiZulu, Kiswahili, and Wolof) and enjoy a catered dinner! For more information please contact Julie Johnson, Co-President of the IU African Languages and Cultures Club, at jj78@indiana.edu

IULC Linguistics Library Cataloging

The IULC is hosting this session to organize and catalog the Department's large collection of journals, books, and dissertations, in order to make them more available to all IU Linguistics faculty and students. Pizza will be provided. For more information or to RSVP, please contact Darcy Rose at darcrose@umail.iu.edu.

Dwight Atkinson presents "Sociocognitive Second Language Acquisition"

Dr. Dwight Atkinson of Purdue University will examine the process of second language acquisition through a sociocongitive lens in this presentation. The following is taken from the abstract:

This lecture will present a sociocognitive approach focused on aspects of SLA not covered in other theories--in particular the rich support provided by interaction and alignment between learners and their ecosocial worlds. I begin by considering three views of interaction: interaction by chatbots--robots designed to emulate human interaction; interaction as conceptualized in mainstream SLA studies; and interaction as conceptualized in a sociocognitive approach to SLA. The first two views are characterized not as wrong but as impoverished--they do not consider interaction as a rich, environmentally embedded process which provides a fundamental basis for learning/alignment/SLA. Next, I consider five questions, contrasting mainstream answers to these questions with the perspective offered by sociocognitive SLA: 1) What is cognition for? 2) What is learning for? 3) What is language for, and why do we learn it? 4) Why do we learn second languages? and 5) How do we learn second languages? I then describe a range of sociocognitive "tools" by which second languages are learned according to this theory. Finally, I show and analyze a short video of interaction between a learner and tutor, intended to concretely illustrate the sociocognitive approach introduced in this presentation.

Second Language Studies Colloquium

The Department of Second Language Studies presents this colloquium series, which explores a wide range of topics related to second language acquisition.

• November 16: Rex Sprouse presents "Universal Grammar, the Poverty of the Stimulus, and the Nature of L2 Acquisition."


• November 30: Robert Baxter presents "Response Appropriateness in Spanish: Interactional Competence in Collaborative Talk."

For more information on these or future SLS Colloquia, please visit http://www.iub.edu/~psyling/SLSColloquium/Fall2012.html.

Guest Lecturer John Edwards presents "The 'New' Ecology of Language: Some Critical Thoughts on Ecolinguistics"

The IU Department of Linguistics is proud to co-sponsor John Edwards, Professor of Psychology at St. Francis Xavier University, as he presents a lecture examining ecological views of language and linguistics. The following is taken from the lecture abstract.

As a focus of study, ecology emphasizes the holistic study of environments, with both beneficial and inimical interrelationships among plants, animals and, indeed, inorganic surroundings. The extension of this idea to language is particularly associated with the late Einar Haugen (circa 1972). His intent was to emphasise the interconnectedness of languages with their environments, with particular regard to status and function. Unfortunately, however, the breadth of the ecology-of-language view has been progressively reduced, and the label of ecology increasingly co-opted. Much that is written under the rubric of ecology now argues for pacific language interaction, instead of a more brutal social Darwinism, presenting a sense of a world in which there is room for all languages. This is a kinder and gentler picture, but is it always accurate?

Guest Lecturer John Edwards presents "Multilingualism: Understanding Linguistic Diversity"

The IU Department of Linguistics is proud to co-sponsor John Edwards, Professor of Psychology at St. Francis Xavier University, as he presents a lecture examining linguistic diversity and the role of language in identity. The following is taken from the lecture abstract.

The general intent of this lecture is two-fold. The first goal is to present an outline picture of global linguistic diversity, with some of its important ramifications and consequences. The second goal is to point out that the most compelling aspects of this diversity are not linguistic at all. They have to do, rather, with the symbolic and group-identity-marking features of language.

IULC Working Papers call for submissions

The Indiana University Linguistics Club Working Papers Online is now accepting submissions for Volume 13.
Undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty members from all departments are encouraged to submit original papers on any subfield in linguistics. Submissions resulting from outstanding term papers and independent research studies are welcome.
The IULCWP is meant to provide a gentle introduction to the world of publishing and a stepping stone to a full-fledged journal submission through the review and revision process. We appreciate faculty support in familiarizing our students with this opportunity and encouraging them to keep it in mind as they begin designing their final projects and papers.
Please visit our website for detailed instructions on submission and to view previous volumes: http://www.indiana.edu/~iulcwp
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us at iulcwp@indiana.edu.

27th Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics call for submissions

The Arabic Linguistics Society and the Center for the Study of the Middle East at Indiana University are pleased to announce the 27th Arabic Linguistics Symposium to be held at Indiana University, Bloomington, February 28 - March 2, 2013. Please note that the deadline for submissions has been extended to November 10. Papers are invited on topics that deal with theoretical and applied issues of Arabic Linguistics. Research in the following areas of Arabic linguistics is encouraged: linguistic analysis (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics), sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics and computational linguistics.
Keynote Speakers for the symposium are:

• Elabbas Benmamoun, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Mona Diab, Columbia University, New York
• Atiqa Hachimi, University of Toronto, Scarborough
• Sam Hellmuth, University of York, United Kingdom

Persons interested in presenting papers are requested to submit a one-page abstract online at http://linguistlist.org/confcustom/ALS2013.

Conferences of Interest

Many conferences of interest to IU Linguists can be found on the Linguist List Calls and Conferences page. Our own page for such announcements is undergoing revisions and will be linked shortly.

CLingDing: Computational Linguistics Hour

CLingDing is a weekly computational linguistics discussion group, where students and faculty share in-progress research. CL students are strongly encouraged to attend.

• November 27 - Olga Scrivner & Eric Baucom: Latin-English parallel corpus

Please see http://cl.indiana.edu/wiki/Fall2012ClingDing for the full fall schedule, or contact Markus Dickinson (md7@indiana.edu) for more information.

Syntax Reading Group

The Syntax Reading Group meets on Tuesdays from noon to 1:00 p.m. The group is currently reading Daniel Siddiqi's book, Syntax within the Word. If you would like to join the discussion or need to be added to the Oncourse site, please contact Steven Franks (franks@indiana.edu).