Seminar

Slurring Terms across languages

STAL organizes a monthly seminar on issues related to the study of slurs, pejoratives, and evaluative and expressive terms in general, from less studied languages.


The titles and abstracts of last year's meetings can be seen here.


In the 2024-2025 academic year, the seminar will be on MONDAYS, 14:30-16:00 Central European Time (CET).

To participate, send an email to stalnetwork@gmail.com for the Zoom link.


The next seminar is on


FEBRUARY 10, 2025

Thomas Wier (Free University of Tbilisi)

"Expressivity in Georgian and other Caucasian Languages"

ABSTRACT:

Expressive and ideophonic constructions conveying ‘marked words that depict sensory imagery’ (Dingemanse 2012) are frequently found in the languages of all regions of the world, but their distribution, use and functioning across languages of the Caucasus has never been documented from a regional perspective. This talk will give you a brief taste of the various kinds of expressive language present in the three autochthonous Caucasian families: Abkhaz-Adyghean, Kartvelian and Nakh-Daghestanian. It will also look at greater length at the specific morphological and syntactic peculiarities of expressives in Georgian, which exhibit exuberant consonant clusters, processes of reduplication uncharacteristic of the language as a whole, as well as specific morphosyntactic alignment splits between different classes of expressive. 


Here is the schedule for the current academic year:


SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

Bianca Cepollaro (University Vita-Salute San Raffaele), Filippo Domaneschi (University of Genoa) and Isidora Stojanovic (Pompeu Fabra University/CNRS)

"Slurs across Syntactic Realizations. Experimental Evidence on Predicative vs. Ad-nominal Uses of Slurs"


OCTOBER 14, 2024

Matteo Colombo and Giovanni Cassani (Tilburg University)

"In the Thick of It. Do Thick Terms Constitute a Distinctive Class of Affectively-charged Language?"


NOVEMBER 4, 2024

Nicolás Lo Guercio (CONICET/University of Buenos Aires)

"Maximize Expressivity!"


DECEMBER 9, 2024 [Cancelled - will be rescheduled]

Elin McCready (Aoyama Gakuin University) and Christopher Davis (University of the Ryukyus)

"The Invocational Impact of Slurs"


JANUARY 20, 2025

Kristen Syrett (Rutgers University) & Misha Becker (UNC-Chapel Hill)

"How Language Supports the Acquisition of Predicates of Mental States and Emotions"


FEBRUARY 10, 2025

Thomas Wier (Free University of Tbilisi)

"Expressivity in Georgian and other Caucasian Languages"


MARCH 10, 2025

Claire Horisk (University of Missouri)

TBA


APRIL 28, 2025

Donna Jo Napoli (Swarthmore College)

"Creativity in Taboo Terms in Sign Languages"


JUNE 2025

Mingya Liu (Humboldt University Berlin)

TBA