Workshop on Formal Approaches to Mayan Linguistics

玛雅语言学的正式方法(FAMLi)研讨会将把致力于玛雅语言学正式方法的研究人员聚集在一起。目前中美洲大约有30种玛雅语言。其中一些相对稳定，而另一些则严重濒危。尽管有许多研究人员致力于玛雅语言学中的正式问题，但最近还没有完全致力于这一主题的论坛。FAMLi希望弥补这一差距。研讨会将帮助研究人员建立新的联系，促进合作，并在更广泛的语言学领域激发对玛雅语言的兴趣。FAMLi的一个特殊目标是通过积极招募投稿和旅行资金援助，鼓励以英语为母语的语言学家进行研究。FAMLi研讨会将于2009-2010学年在麻省理工学院举行。这一地点将吸引麻省理工学院和邻近机构的参与者。研讨会将有五位受邀的演讲者，以及十四个讲座和十二张海报。被邀请的四场演讲将代表形式语言学核心领域的最新研究：音系学、词法、句法和语义学。第五个讲座将集中讨论正式语言学与文献不足或濒危语言研究之间的互动。FAMLi将汇集具有相似科学兴趣但不同语言专业水平的学者。玛雅语言在基因上非常接近，以至于许多相同的理论问题在整个家族的语言中都会出现。同时，各种语言之间存在的许多差异使协作讨论成为调查问题的一种有利可图的方式，并有可能产生从单独的语言调查中可能看不清的解决方案。在FAMLi上展示的研究还将强调对未被充分代表的和濒危的语言进行仔细、彻底的实地调查对于正式问题调查的重要性。另一个积极的结果将是玛雅学者与更广泛的理论界之间建立联系。这将导致以英语为母语的语言学家、玛雅语言学界的其他成员以及以前可能从未研究过玛雅语言的理论语言学家之间建立新的合作伙伴关系。

The Formal Approaches to Mayan Linguistics (FAMLi) workshop will bring together researchers working on formal approaches to Mayan linguistics. There are currently around thirty Mayan languages spoken in Central America. Some are relatively stable while others are severely endangered. Though there are many researchers working on formal issues in Mayan linguistics, there have been no recent forums dedicated entirely to this topic. FAMLi hopes to remedy this gap. The workshop will help researchers make new contacts, foster collaboration, and inspire interest in Mayan languages within the broader field of linguistics. A special goal of FAMLi is to encourage research by native speaker linguists through active recruitment of submissions and travel funding assistance. The FAMLi workshop will be held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the 2009-2010 academic year. This location will pull participants from MIT and neighboring institutions. The workshop will feature five invited speakers as well as fourteen talks and twelve posters. Four of the invited talks will represent current research in the core areas of formal linguistics: phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. The fifth talk will focus on the interaction between formal linguistics and the study of under-documented or endangered languages.FAMLi will bring together scholars with similar scientific interests, but different levels of language expertise. Mayan languages are genetically close enough that many of the same theoretical questions arise in languages across the family. At the same time, the many differences which exist among the individual languages make collaborative discussion a profitable way to investigate problems and have the potential to yield solutions that might not be clear from investigations of individual languages in isolation. The research presented at FAMLi will also underscore the importance of careful, thorough fieldwork on under-represented and endangered languages for the investigation of formal questions. Another positive outcome will be the creation of contacts between Mayan scholars and the broader theoretical community. This will lead to new partnerships between native speaker linguists, other members of the Mayan linguistics community, and theoretical linguists who may have never worked on Mayan languages before.