Workshop and Mini-course on Formal Approaches To Celtic Linguistics; Tucson AZ, March 1-8, 2009

现代凯尔特语(爱尔兰语、苏格兰盖尔语、曼克斯语、威尔士语、布雷顿语、康尼什语)是2000多万美国人文化遗产的一部分。这些语言现在很少使用，无论是在美国还是在他们的祖国。所有这些语言都处于灭绝的危险之中。当一种语言丢失时，这种文化的大部分也会丢失。保护濒危语言的一个步骤是提供它们的语法的完整描述。凯尔特语具有许多不同于其他欧洲语言的语法特性，因此对这些语言的语言分析可能会对基于法语、西班牙语和英语等研究较好的语言的形式语法理论构成挑战。安德鲁·卡尼教授将与其他三位国际公认的凯尔特语言学专家一起，领导一个为期一周的小型课程，以正式的方法描述这些语言的句子结构、发音结构和单词结构。这个小型课程将是培训下一代研究凯尔特语言的语言学家的起点。讲座、研讨会和实践环节不仅将向学生传授学习这些语言语法的基本知识，还将向他们传授伦理、文献和数据保存方面的知识，并为研究提供文化背景。这一小型课程将在一次研讨会上达到高潮，这些专家将报告这些领域的最新进展。研讨会旨在鼓励致力于这些领域的学者合作，交流思想，并激励从事这些语言工作的年轻语言学家。

Modern Celtic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Breton, Cornish) are part of the cultural heritage of more than 20 million Americans. These languages are now rarely spoken, either here in the U.S. or in their home countries. All of these languages are in danger of extinction. When a language is lost, so too is much of the culture. One step towards preserving endangered languages is providing a complete description of their grammars. The Celtic languages have many grammatical properties which make them distinct from other European languages, so the linguistic analysis of these languages can be a challenge to formal theories of grammar which are based on better-studied languages such as French, Spanish and English. Prof. Andrew Carnie, along with three other internationally recognized experts in Celtic linguistics, will be leading a week-long mini course into formal approaches to the description of the sentence structure, sound structure and word structure of these languages. This mini-course will be a starting point for training the next generation of linguists working on Celtic languages. The lectures, seminars and practicum sessions will not only teach students the fundamentals of working on the grammars of these languages, but will teach them about ethics, documentation and preservation of data, as well as providing cultural context to the research. The mini-course will culminate in a workshop bringing together experts who will report on the latest advances in these same areas. The workshop is designed to encourage scholars working on these areas to collaborate, exchange ideas, and inspire young linguists working on these languages.