Call for papers

Compared to other Romance subfamilies, Gallo-Romance has attracted far less attention in the study of regional and dialectal variation in the light of formal linguistics. While French syntax and morphology are particularly well studied, both empirically and formally, the same is less true for the non-standard(ised) Gallo-Romance varieties (e.g., Spoken French, Occitan, Francoprovençal, Walloon, etc.). Moreover, although there are already established venues for French linguistics (e.g., Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française, Diachro: le français en diachronie) and for Romance linguistics more broadly (e.g., Going Romance, Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages), there was no dedicated platform for the syntax and morphology of Gallo-Romance specifically. This was a missed opportunity for (formal) syntacticians, morphologists, dialectologists, and philologists alike, since such a specialised focus can allow them to address existing and novel issues with unparalleled depth.

The Gallo-Romance Advances in Morphology & Syntax conference (GRAMS) was founded to address this gap. This two-day event features a single track with no parallel sessions, fostering direct exchange of ideas among all participants. This project draws inspiration from the successful Comparative Italian Dialect Syntax-Morphology Meeting (CIDSM), which since 2006 has established itself as the main venue for research on Italo-Romance morphology and syntax. On the occasion of CIDSM’s 20th anniversary, it was time for a Gallo-Romance counterpart. The goal is for GRAMS to become an annual event, an established platform in which linguists working on the syntax and morphology of Gallo-Romance can meet and discuss the latest developments in the field.