Swiss Workshop on Sociolinguistics,
Language Contacts and Historical Linguistics
in the Ancient World
Context
The Swiss Workshop on Sociolinguistics, Language Contacts and Historical Linguistics in the Ancient World, now in its second edition, aims at exploring questions of sociolinguistics, language contacts and historical linguistics in antiquity and prehistory.
The workshop is open to scholars based both inside and outside Switzerland, and wants to be a venue to learn about current research, to exchange ideas, and hopefully to develop future collaborations and synergies.
Topics
The workshop will combine sessions for the presentation of selected papers with open table discussions. We organizers are particularly interested in:
Language contact, areal phenomena, and sociolinguistics in the ancient and pre-/proto-historic contexts;
Interdisciplinary approaches involving other evidence (archaeology, genetics, etc.);
New methods to approach and analyse the data (e.g. computational methods);
Theoretical and methodological questions;
Case studies and general discussions about the potential role of linguistics in the study of the socio-historical realities of ancient societies.
Invited Speakers
Dr. Martine Robeets (MPI Jena) – Transeurasian languages, language typology, contact and areal linguistics
Dr. Ilya Yakubovich (Philipps-Universität Marburg) – language contact in early history, Indo-European languages and Hurro-Urartian
When & Where?
The workshop will take place on 13–14 February 2025 at the University of Basel.
Organisers
Dr. Marwan Kilani (University of Basel) – contact linguistics in Ancient Egypt and the Levant
Prof. Robin Meyer (University of Lausanne) – historical linguistics, contact linguistics and diachronic syntax in the ancient and medieval Mediterranean and the Caucasus
Dr. Neige Rochant (University of Lausanne) – language description, historical linguistics and typology, esp. of Atlantic and Nakh-Daghestanian languages
How to participate
The participation to the workshop is free of charge.
If you are thinking about submitting a paper, we encourage you to introduce your work and your areas of interest. As for the presentations, contributions may focus on specific research topics or projects (completed or ongoing). Cursory introductions to current research interests and new ideas are also appreciated.
We also welcome guests who want to attend without presenting a paper. In this case, we would kindly ask you to let us know no later than 15 January 2025, so that we can send you more details about the programme and the location before the event.
Submissions
We accept papers from established and early career researchers, as well as from PhD students, based in Switzerland and abroad.
Papers will be 20 min long, followed by Q&A.
If you want to submit a paper, please send us a brief abstract (max. 300 words) as soon as possible, and no later than 15th of October 2024.
Abstracts should be sent to: marwan.kilani@unibas.ch
Small supporting grants might be available for students – please add a note to your submission if you would be interested in this option.
The workshop will be conducted in English, and this applies to abstracts and papers as well.
Downloads
A PDF version of the Call for Papers can be downloaded here.
