Conference: Variation at the Crossroads - Toronto, Ontario, Canada; October 23-25, 2015

现代科学已经变得高度专业化，甚至在日常口语的研究中也是如此。这种趋势促进了奇妙的发现和对我们世界的更好理解，但它也有不利的一面。如果专家不与其他类型的专家合作，新的知识领域就无法形成。这个问题在语言学中得到解决，汇集了来自几个互补领域的专家，以确定未来十年有前途和重要的研究方向。该活动由一个国际学者小组组织，汇集了来自世界各地的专家。他们将探索语言学习的五个重要领域。首先，一些学者将研究婴儿如何在周围有如此多的声音变化的情况下习得语言。第二，一些学者将探索两个独特的定义人类语言的品质，变化和句法。第三，学者们将开发新的计算能力可以在语言学中得到最佳利用的方法。第四和第五个领域是研究较少的语言的文献和语言接触的影响，这两个领域随着英语的全球影响力的增加而对美国人越来越重要。研讨会将展示当前语言变异的社会语言学模型，与濒危语言文献，正式理论，习得，语言接触，克里奥尔语研究和大数据交叉，旨在促进跨学科。研讨会将在分析变化的新方法（NWAV）44会议期间举行，我们预计将吸引约400名与会者。NWAV是全世界公认的致力于变异社会语言学框架研究的主要论坛。研讨会将与会议协同工作，有四个角柱特别会议和一个全体演讲。每一个角落会议将是一个合作的事件与与会者的摘要是由角落领导人和研讨会委员会审查。每一个角柱会议的目的是设计他们的语言学子领域的未来十年的目标。全体发言人是一个迷人的发言者与感染力的热情和热情，她的工作。她是由该学科的创始人训练，并将描述她的研究跨越变异社会语言学（主办会议的中心焦点），双语，濒危语言文件，克里奥尔语研究和语言接触。相比之下，其他受邀的演讲者都是来自变异社会语言学之外的知名研究人员和创新者。总的来说，受邀的演讲将深化和扩大将在未来十年占据变异社会语言学家的问题，并为未来的研究制定议程。

Modern science has become highly specialized, even within the study of everyday spoken language. This trend has fostered wonderful discoveries and a better understanding of our world, but it has a down side. If specialists do not work with other kinds of specialists, new realms of knowledge cannot be crafted. This problem is addressed within linguistics by bringing together experts from several complementary fields in order to identify promising and important research directions for the next decade. This event is organized by an international panel of scholars and pulls together experts from around the world. They will explore five important areas of language study. First, some scholars will examine how babies acquire language with so much sound variation around them. Second, some scholars will explore the two qualities that uniquely define human language, variation and syntax. Third, scholars will develop ways that new computational powers can be best used in linguistics. The fourth and fifth areas are documentation of lesser-studied languages and the effects of language contact, two domains of increasing importance to Americans as English increases its global reach.The workshop will showcase current sociolinguistic models of language variation intersecting with endangered language documentation, formal theory, acquisition, language contact, creole studies, and big data, with the aim of fostering cross-disciplinarily. The workshop will take place during the conference New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 44, which we expect to attract ~400 participants. NWAV is recognized worldwide as the major forum devoted to research in the Variationist Sociolinguistic framework. The workshop will work in concert with the conference, with four cornerpost special sessions and a plenary lecture. Each cornerpost session will be a collaborative event with participants whose abstracts are vetted by the cornerpost leader and workshop committee. The purpose of each cornerpost session is to design the goals of their subfield of linguistics for the next decade. The plenary speaker is a captivating speaker with infectious enthusiasm and zeal for her work. She was trained by a founders of the discipline and will describe her research which cuts across Variationist Sociolinguistics (the central focus of the host conference), bilingualism, endangered language documentation, creole studies and language contact. In contrast, the other invited speakers are all are high-profile researchers and innovators who come from outside Variationist Sociolinguistics. Collectively, the invited presentations will deepen and broaden the questions that will occupy Variationist Sociolinguists in the next decade and set the agenda for future research.