26-27th April 2013
WAIL16
Workshop on American Indigenous Languages
University of California, Santa Barbara
Program
Friday · Saturday · Download program here (.pdf format)
Keynote lecture:
Historical changes in part of speech categories: Some examples and some questions
Spike Gildea, University of Oregon
Languages can vary substantially in the formal organization of their parts of speech systems, including languages with no adjectives and even languages with very weak (arguably nonexistent) noun-verb distinctions. Given that there are also plenty of languages in the world with robust part of speech distinctions, this raises a relevant question: given that all synchronic patterns must originate somewhere, how might a language lose a formerly robust part of speech category, or gain a new part of speech category that it did not distinguish robustly in the past?
Registration
Onsite Registration is $35. Conference Dinner (student): $5; Conference Dinner (non-student): $10;
About WAIL
The annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL) is a forum for the discussion of theoretical and descriptive linguistic studies of indigenous languages of the Americas. WAIL is sponsored by the UCSB Linguistics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara and presented by the Native American Indigenous Languages Study Group (NAIL), which has been meeting regularly in Santa Barbara since 1990 to discuss issues relating to Native American language and culture.
The coordinators of WAIL are grateful for the support of the following groups on the UCSB campus:
