Summer 2010 Workshops in Grammatical Description
In the summer of 2010, the Canada Institute of Linguistics (CanIL) at Trinity Western University, in Langley, British Columbia will be having an advanced grammar emphasis featuring the following three opportunities:
- Workshop in Role and Reference Grammar (1 week)
- Workshop in Grammatical Description (4 weeks)
- Advanced Grammar class (featuring Role and Reference Grammar) (9 weeks)
Special guests include Drs. Thomas and Doris Payne (SIL/University of Oregon), and Dr. Robert Van Valin (SUNY Buffalo). Potential participants are encouraged to start making plans immediately for this rare opportunity.
Workshop Costs:
- Role and Reference Grammar Workshop: $150
- Workshop in Grammatical Description: $150
If you want to additionally take LING 560 Syntax and Semantics, please contact for more information. Costs are determined by a number of factors including whether you are taking this for audit or credit, for which degree program, and whether or not you are a member of SIL.
Room and Board costs yet to be finalized but will be similar to last summer with projected increases: $145/week including 1 meal per day Mon-Fri. Equipped cooking facilities provided in shared dorm room accomodation. Other housing opportunities may also be available. Refer to: Summer Cost Calculator for more information.
For more information or to register for any of the grammar workshops, please contact .
Download the Grammar Workshop application form
The Workshop in Role and Reference Grammar Monday-Friday, July 12-16.
Led by Dr. Robert Van Valin
This workshop will take place before the Workshop in Grammatical
Description. There will be daily lectures on RRG, along with one-on-one
consulting sessions with Dr. Van Valin.
Dr Robert Van Valin works at SUNY Buffalo and Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf. He is the primary creator of Role and Reference Grammar theory (Van Valin & LaPolla 1997, Van Valin 2005). His recent involvement with SIL has included conducting lectures and workshops at the European Training Programme, University of North Dakota SIL and for the Malaysian SIL branch, as well as supervising MA and PhD students working with SIL.
For more info on RRG click here.
The Workshop in Grammatical Description July 17 – August 13 (4 weeks).
Led by Drs. Thomas and Doris Payne
This
workshop is designed for experienced SIL fieldworkers, though it will
be open to anyone who could profit from six weeks of focused time
working on a grammatical description, with the support and guidance of
SIL International linguistics consultants. The ideal workshop
participant would be a linguist-translator with one or more years of
direct experience learning and doing linguistic analysis of one of the
many under-documented languages of the world. A digital database of
text materials of various genres (narrative, expository, hortatory,
etc.) is also desirable.
The goal of the workshop is for each participant or team to produce a 30 page or longer “Grammar Sketch” that gives a brief overview of some key morphological and syntactic features of a field language. This sketch will not necessarily be a publishable paper, but may serve as the basis for a future published work. In addition to, or instead of the Grammar Sketch, participants may want to concentrate on another specific topic of interest, whether or not that topic appears on the workshop outline. The Grammar Sketch will be the focus of the workshop plenary sessions, and after the six-week workshop, consultants and workshop staff will be glad to continue working with individuals who wish to develop their papers (grammar sketches and/or other topical papers) into publishable form.
The workshop will be organized as follows:
Plenary sessions, 1
hour a day five days a week, will involve a combination of lectures by
the workshop staff and presentations/discussion by the workshop
participants of the work they are doing. Friday plenary sessions will
consist of presentation of material by workshop participants.
Consultant
sessions. Each individual or team who is participating in the workshop
will be assigned a consultant early on. The team will meet with their
consultant for up to one hour each day to discuss progress on the
Grammar Sketch.
The rest of the work day will involve individual research and writing.
Insights
from many different theoretical traditions may be employed in the
workshop where they are useful, principally Cognitive Grammar,
Construction Grammar, and Role and Reference Grammar. However, this
will not be a workshop on linguistic theory. Theory will only be
employed as it proves useful to clear, insightful linguistic
description.
The costs of the workshop are yet to be determined, but will be comparable to a 3 unit course at CanIL. Scholarships may also be available. Participants may choose to enroll for Trinity Western University credit, though this is not required. The more participants who register for the workshop, the lower the per capita costs will be, and the more consultants will be available on staff. We are looking forward to ten or more workshop participants.
CanIL’s Advanced Grammar course June 13-August 13 (9 weeks).
Taught by Dr. Emma Pavey (CanIL)
LING 560 Syntax and Semantics covers such topics as syntactic and semantic
categories, clause and constituent order typology, and grammatical
relations within the Role and Reference grammar paradigm.
Taking LING 560, even just auditing the weeks prior to July 12, will provide a theoretical grounding that will enable participants to benefit from the Workshop in Role and Reference Grammar. Workshop in Grammatical Description (WGD) participants may sit in on the LING 560 lectures, but it is not recommended that WGD participants simultaneously take 560 for credit. Students in LING 560 are also welcome to sit in on the WGD plenary sessions.
We are hoping that many SIL and SIL-related entities around the world will encourage and support field linguists who wish to participate in these workshops, as an alternative or supplement to area or entity level workshops.