Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Central Asian Languages and Linguistics (ConCALL)

The Conference on Central Asian Languages and Linguistics (ConCALL) was founded in 2014 at Indiana University by Dr. Öner Özçelik, the residing director of the Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region (CeLCAR). As the nation’s sole U.S. Department of Education funded Language Resource Center focusing on the languages of the Central Asian Region, CeLCAR’s main mission is to strengthen and improve the nation’s capacity for teaching and learning Central Asian languages through teacher training, research, materials development projects, and dissemination. As part of this mission, CeLCAR has an ultimate goal to unify and fortify the Central Asian language learning community by facilitating networking between linguists and language educators, encouraging research projects that will inform language instruction, and provide opportunities for professionals in the field to both showcase their work and receive feedback from their peers. Thus ConCALL was established to be the first international academic conference to bring together linguists and language educators in the languages of the Central Asian region, including both the Altaic and Eastern Indo-European languages spoken in the region, to focus on research into how these specific languages are represented formally, as well as acquired by second/foreign language learners, and also to present research driven teaching methods. Languages served by ConCALL include, but are not limited to: Azerbaijani, Dari, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Lokaabharan, Mari, Mongolian, Pamiri, Pashto, Persian, Russian, Shughnani, Tajiki, Tibetan, Tofalar, Tungusic, Turkish, Tuvan, Uyghur, Uzbek, Wakhi and more!The Conference on Central Asian Languages and Linguistics held at Indiana University on 16-17 May 1014 was made possible through the generosity of our sponsors: Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region (CeLCAR), Ostrom Grant Programs, IU's College of Arts and Humanities Center (CAHI), Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center (IAUNRC), IU's School of Global and International Studies (SGIS), IU's College of Arts and Sciences, Sinor Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies (SRIFIAS), IU's Department of Central Eurasian Studies (CEUS), and IU's Department of Linguistics

Post-focus compression in Brahvi and Balochi

Previous research has shown that post-focus compression (PFC) - the reduction of pitch range and intensity after a focused word in an utterance, is a robust means of marking focus, but it is present only in some languages. The presence of PFC appears to follow language family lines. The present study is a further exploration of the distribution of PFC by investigating Brahvi, a Dravidian language, and Balochi, an Indo-Iranian language. Balochi is predicted to show PFC given its presence in other Iranian languages. Dravidian languages have not been studied for prosodic focus before and they are not related to any languages with PFC. We recorded twenty native speakers from each language producing declarative sentences in different focus conditions. Acoustic analyses showed that, in both languages, post-focus f 0 and other correlates were significantly reduced relative to baseline neutral-focus sentences, but post-focus lowering of f 0, and intensity was greater in magnitude in Balochi than in Brahvi. The Balochi results confirm our prediction, while the Brahvi results offer the first evidence of PFC in a Dravidian language. The finding of PFC in a Dravidian language is relevant to a postulated origin of PFC, which is related to the controversial Nostratic Macrofamily hypothesis

Typological variation across Sinitic languages

Decades of works dedicated to the description of (previously) lesser-known Sinitic languages have effectively dispelled the common myth that these languages share a single “universal Chinese grammar”. Yet, the underlying cause of their grammatical variation is still a matter for debate. This thesis focuses on the typological variation across Sinitic varieties. Through comparing the typological profiles of various Sinitic languages with those of their non-Sinitic neighbors, we discuss to what extent the variation within the Sinitic branch can be attributed to areal diffusion. Variation across Sinitic is often explained from the perspective of language contact – sandwiched between Altaic languages to its north and Mainland Southeast Asian (MSEA) languages to its south, Sinitic can be considered typologically intermediate between these two groups of languages, where Northern Sinitic shows signs of convergence towards Altaic languages and Southern Sinitic towards MSEA languages. For example, the northern varieties tend to have a smaller number of classifiers, tones and codas, as well as a stronger tendency to disyllabicity and head-final constructions. However, the notion of “Altaicization” (Hashimoto 1976) is a moot point. Despite the typological differences between Northern Sinitic and Southern Sinitic, as Bennet (1979) argues, there is little evidence for “Altaicization” as many of such differences can hardly be put down to Altaic influence; instead, they are more likely due to the typological convergence between Southern Sinitic and MSEA languages. Moreover, there is evidence that the typological variation across Sinitic cannot be amply explained by areal influence from non-Sinitic languages. Some Sinitic varieties are known to exhibit certain distinct typological characteristics. For instance, analyzing the disposal, passive, and comparative constructions across the Sinitic branch, Chappell (2015b) argues that there are no fewer than five principal linguistic areas in China. Taking into account over 350 language varieties of seven different genetic affiliations (Sinitic, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Hmong-Mien, Tai-Kadai, Austroasiatic) and 30 linguistic features, we conduct a typological survey with the aid of the phylogenetic program NeighborNet (Bryant & Moulton 2004). Our results suggest that convergence towards their non-Sinitic neighbors has indeed played a pivotal role in the typological diversity of Sinitic languages. Based primarily on their degree of Altaic/MSEA influence, the Sinitic varieties in our database are classified into four areal groups, namely 1) Northern, 2) Transitional, 3) Central Southeastern, 4) Far Southern. This classification scheme reflects the intricate interplay between areal convergence, regional innovations, and retention of archaic features. The findings suggest that contact-induced typological change can occur rather rapidly, especially if given the appropriate sociolinguistic conditions. Furthermore, this thesis highlights the interdependence between the meticulous analysis of qualitative linguistic data and the proper application of quantitative tools in typological studies. Although this study is chiefly concerned with Sinitic typology, the quantitative approach adopted herein can potentially help shed new light on the challenge of typological comparison in other areas

Cultural China 2020: The Contemporary China Centre Review

Cultural China is a unique annual publication for up-to-date, informed, and accessible commentary about Chinese and Sinophone languages, cultural practices, politics and production, and their critical analysis. It builds on the University of Westminster’s Contemporary China Centre Blog, providing additional reflective introductory pieces to contextualise each of the eight chapters. The articles in this Review speak to the turbulent year that was 2020 as it unfolded across cultural China. Thematically, they range from celebrity culture, fashion and beauty, to religion and spirituality, via language politics, heritage, and music. Pieces on representations of China in Britain and the Westminster Chinese Visual Arts Project reflect our particular location and home. Many of the articles in this book focus on the People’s Republic of China, but they also draw attention to the multiple Chinese and Sinophone cultural practices that exist within, across, and beyond national borders. The Review is distinctive in its cultural studies-based approach and contributes a much-needed critical perspective from the Humanities to the study of cultural China. It aims to promote interdisciplinary dialogue and debate about the social, cultural, political, and historical dynamics that inform life in cultural China today, offering academics, activists, practitioners, and politicians a key reference with which to situate current events in and relating to cultural China in a wider context

Cultural China 2020

Cultural China is a unique annual publication for up-to-date, informed, and accessible commentary about Chinese and Sinophone languages, cultural practices, politics and production, and their critical analysis. It builds on the University of Westminster’s Contemporary China Centre Blog, providing additional reflective introductory pieces to contextualise each of the eight chapters. The articles in this Review speak to the turbulent year that was 2020 as it unfolded across cultural China. Thematically, they range from celebrity culture, fashion and beauty, to religion and spirituality, via language politics, heritage, and music. Pieces on representations of China in Britain and the Westminster Chinese Visual Arts Project reflect our particular location and home. Many of the articles in this book focus on the People’s Republic of China, but they also draw attention to the multiple Chinese and Sinophone cultural practices that exist within, across, and beyond national borders. The Review is distinctive in its cultural studies-based approach and contributes a much-needed critical perspective from the Humanities to the study of cultural China. It aims to promote interdisciplinary dialogue and debate about the social, cultural, political, and historical dynamics that inform life in cultural China today, offering academics, activists, practitioners, and politicians a key reference with which to situate current events in and relating to cultural China in a wider context

Living with Diversity Vol. II: 20-21 October 2009, University of Ljubljana

Living with Diversity, volume II, documents the proceedings of the Slovenia-Japan University Cooperation Network Graduate Student Forum Series held at Ljubljana University in 2009. The proceedings comprise the individual research papers as well as reports of the two discussion sessions and overall forum evaluation. While the individual papers discuss issues from each researcher’s specific field of expertise within the federating theme, the discussion sessions address a wide range of issues and problems concerning the individual, governance and flexibility from an essentially trans-disciplinary perspective. 『多様性を生きる』第２巻は、2009年にリュブリャナ大学において開催された「スロベニア・日本学生知的交流会議」の報告書です。本報告書は、個々の論文ならびに２つのディスカッション・セッション報告と学生会議に対する総評を収めています。各論文においては、統一テーマの枠内で、研究者が各自の専門領域から問題を論じているのに対して、２つのディスカッション・セッションにおいては、本質的に領域横断的な視点から、個人、統治、柔軟性に関する広範な論点と課題を取り上げています

Cultural China 2020

Cultural China is a unique annual publication for up-to-date, informed, and accessible commentary about Chinese and Sinophone languages, cultural practices, politics and production, and their critical analysis. It builds on the University of Westminster’s Contemporary China Centre Blog, providing additional reflective introductory pieces to contextualise each of the eight chapters. The articles in this Review speak to the turbulent year that was 2020 as it unfolded across cultural China. Thematically, they range from celebrity culture, fashion and beauty, to religion and spirituality, via language politics, heritage, and music. Pieces on representations of China in Britain and the Westminster Chinese Visual Arts Project reflect our particular location and home. Many of the articles in this book focus on the People’s Republic of China, but they also draw attention to the multiple Chinese and Sinophone cultural practices that exist within, across, and beyond national borders. The Review is distinctive in its cultural studies-based approach and contributes a much-needed critical perspective from the Humanities to the study of cultural China. It aims to promote interdisciplinary dialogue and debate about the social, cultural, political, and historical dynamics that inform life in cultural China today, offering academics, activists, practitioners, and politicians a key reference with which to situate current events in and relating to cultural China in a wider context

Dynamics of Language Contact in China: Ethnolinguistic Diversity and Variation in Yunnan.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2017