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、马恩岛语、威尔士语、布列塔尼语、康沃尔语）是2000多万美国人文化遗产的一部分。这些语言现在已经很少有人说了，无论是在美国还是在他们的祖国。所有这些语言都有灭绝的危险。当一种语言消失时，很多文化也会随之消失。保护濒危语言的一个步骤是提供对其语法的完整描述。凯尔特语有许多语法特性，使它们与其他欧洲语言不同，因此对这些语言的语言分析可能是对基于法语、西班牙语和英语等研究得更好的语言的形式语法理论的挑战。Andrew Carnie教授将与其他三位国际公认的凯尔特语言学专家一起，领导为期一周的迷你课程，以正式的方法描述这些语言的句子结构，声音结构和单词结构。这个迷你课程将是培训下一代从事凯尔特语言工作的语言学家的起点。讲座、研讨会和实习课程不仅将教授学生研究这些语言语法的基础知识，还将教授他们有关伦理、文档和数据保存的知识，并为研究提供文化背景。迷你课程的最后将是一个讲习班，汇集了专家，他们将报告这些领域的最新进展。研讨会的目的是鼓励在这些领域工作的学者进行合作，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.