The 16th annual Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas will be held at the University of Stavanger, October 2–4, 2025. 

We invite abstracts for 30-minute presentations (20 minutes + 10 minutes for questions) on any aspect of the linguistics of heritage languages in the Americas (e.g., structural, historical, sociolinguistic, or experimental).  

Call for papers deadline: 15 June

The CFP and workshop description can be found here

The conference will focus on heritage/ community language studies as a multi-disciplinary field. Papers, posters, and panels relevant to heritage language research and pedagogy will be presented from the perspective of disciplines that include, but are not limited to, the following: anthropology, education, applied linguistics, linguistics, assessment, policy, bilingualism, psychology, demographics, sociology 

More info

The 3rd HLS brainstorming meeting will take place on May 23 at 2:30 pm CET (time could change slightly).

The meeting will be about one of our Big Questions (don't forget to add your ideas to our shared document!):

• HLs show very clearly that there is a continuum between processing (and frequency effects) and syntactic structural change. How do we handle this continuum, from the viewpoint of modularity theory, acquisition, contact linguistics, attrition, etc? Other possible variables are lexical access, inhibitory control, and self-perception as a member of the speech community. How do we include these in our syntactic model?

The meeting will take place on Zoom as usual (link below) and will be moderated by Liliana Sánchez.
If you would like to participate and are not in our mailing list please send a message and we'll send you the link.

The workshop "Third Factors in Language Design: the view from Heritage Languages" will be held in Paris (Inalco) on June 6 2025. It is organized within the IRN project "Heritage Languages in Europe" (CNRS & University of Paris 8) 

Invited speakers: Roberta D'Alessandro & Sivia Terenghi (University of Utrecht) 

Call for papers deadline: 30 March

More info can be found here

This HLRI will serve to bring together researchers, practitioners, and students fostering the presentation and discussion of current developments in the field of heritage language studies. The Institute will place special focus on heritage language education, from the perspectives of students, parents, teachers, administrators, and researchers. Researchers, practitioners, and students in fields that focus on or engage with (heritage) bi/multilingualism—regardless of theoretical, methodological, pedagogical, or disciplinary perspective—are especially encouraged to attend and participate in the dialogue. 

More information can be found here

New date!

The 2nd HLS brainstorming meeting will take place on the 7th of February at 2:30pm. 

The broad topic that we will discuss is

“Variability and how to deal with it, and when do all “externalization”-related effects become structural change?” 

Those who are already on the platform will be sent a link some days before the meeting. If someone else would like to join please send an email to HLS and I'll add you.

We hope to see many of you on the 7th of February!

We are still accepting abstracts for the workshop “Heritage speakers learning languages: Looking beyond the societal language” as part of the 47th annual conference of the German Linguistics Association (DGfS Jahrestagung) in Mainz, Germany, on March 4-7, 2025.

  Invited speaker: Dr. Anika Lloyd-Smith (University of Konstanz)

   
We invite 1 page abstracts (excl. references) for 20 min presentations (incl. 10 min discussion). Please email abstracts as a PDF to fb2he...@leibniz-zas.de by August 30, 2024. 

This workshop focuses on heritage language speakers/signers (HS) as language learners, emphasizing the linguistic diversity, change and variation within and beyond the language classroom. A long-standing debate in the field of L3/Ln acquisition regards the relative influence of each of the previously acquired languages (Rothman et al. 2019). By explicitly investigating the heritage language (HL) context, we can consider the effects of language dominance and acquisition context on language learning outcomes. Furthermore, we are interested in the ways in which learning a foreign language can affect existing linguistic skills and general cognitive processes in the HS. Additionally, when formally studying their HL, HS pose a unique pedagogical challenge that distinguishes them from L2 learners (Polinsky 2015). Their language competencies set them apart: HS may have strong listening skills, a wider vocabulary, and greater cultural insights, while struggling more with reading and writing. Thus, HL courses need to adapt their curricula and assessments accordingly, in order to account for the variation among the HL learners.

We invite papers from all linguistic subfields and methodological and theoretical backgrounds.  In particular, we welcome studies related to any of the following topics:

·                  Acquisition of third or further languages (L3, Ln) by heritage speakers

·                  Heritage speakers’ re-acquisition (or strengthening) of their HL in a classroom setting

·                  Sociolinguistic and Cultural Dimensions of Heritage Language Learning

·                  The influence of HL education and other background factors (cognitive, linguistic, demographic) on language outcomes

All the best,

Clara Fridman (Bar-Ilan University) Onur Özsoy (Leibniz-ZAS) Kateryna Iefremenko (Leibniz-ZAS, University of Potsdam)  

The BAM 2 (Bilingualism and Multilingualism) conference will be held in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, at the University of Saskatchewan Campus on May 9-11, 2025.

The conference theme is “Multidisciplinary and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Adult and Child Bilingualism and Multilingualism.”

We welcome submissions on any topics related to the conference theme from multiple disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary studies.

Please note that the conference does not offer any visa support. Before submitting an abstract from overseas, we advise checking the prices for a flight to Saskatoon from your location.

All info can be found here: https://artsandscience.usask.ca/linguistics/news/conferences.php#TimelinesandWorkflow

The 1st HLS brainstorming meeting will take place online on the 20th June 2024, 14:30-17:30 CET. We will chat around the following question: What should always be present in a heritage syntax paper?

Research on HL syntax is so varied, and it is sometimes frustrating to read papers and not find the info we need. We could collect a number of elements that we think should always be mentioned in a HLS paper (like, the speaker's profile, age of onset, the kind of input they received, the number of speakers, the exact examples/sentences used as stimuli, etc). But most of all, this will be an occasion to meet each other and share thoughts about issues, problems, what we could discuss as a group. 

Everyone welcome! If you are in the HLS platform you'll receive a Zoom link; if you're not and would like to participate you can send an email to HLS and we'll send you the link.