49th Annual Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL) at the University of Georgia; May 1-4, 2019; Athens, GA

University Of Georgia Research Foundation Inc, Athens GA

Investigators

Abstract

Speakers of all languages share the capacity for language, which is unique to humans. Understanding the various aspects of this capacity lies at the core of all linguistic research. What researchers learn about one language provides insight upon comparison with the larger language family and this, in turn, provides further insight on human language. The Linguistic Symposium on the Romance Languages is the largest international meeting of linguistics focused on Romance languages. National Science Foundation funding will provide partial support for the 49th annual meeting (LSRL 49), to be held at the University of Georgia in May, 2019. LSRL has consistently been at the forefront of linguistic research, introducing innovative methods to the study of this particular language family, and enriching our broader understanding of language and linguistics based on studies of these languages. LSRL 49 seeks to bring together linguists working on diverse aspects of Romance languages from a multiplicity of theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and linguistic subfields, thus fostering interaction and the potential for collaboration among researchers investigating different languages. LSRL 49 highlights the importance of documenting lesser-known languages and dialects by including an invited speaker who studies endangered varieties of Romanian. Multilingualism is common among speakers of minority languages. Research is increasingly focusing on how language processing and representation in the multilingual mind. The theme of LSRL49, 'Expanding Horizons in Romance Linguistics', represents the increasingly diverse range of theories and methods used to analyze natural language phenomena. Researchers in linguistics, as in many other disciplines, have taken an interest in Big Data approaches to new and old problems, and LSRL 49 will host a day-long workshop on Corpora and Big Data Analysis for Romance, focusing on the representation of Romance Languages in the context of computational techniques in linguistic analysis. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.