The South Caucasian Chalk Circle : Philology meets linguistics"

This workshop will bring together linguists working on different aspects of the scientific study of language and experts in Georgian and South Caucasian (Kartvelian) languages. Its primary goal is to promote a dialogue between scholars from different approaches, established scholars, as well as graduate students and young scholars at the beginning of their career. The timing of this workshop coincides with the Shota Rustaveli year, commemorating the greatest poet and thinker known as the Homer of the Caucasus.




Georgian and the small language family to which it belongs (Laz, Mingrelian, and Svan) manifest a dazzling array of unusual linguistic characteristics and are associated with a strong philological tradition in Georgia itself. Scholars who do not read Georgian or Russian may be familiar with some aspects of these languages thanks to the work of a number of Western scholars. However, given the many research questions and theoretical challenges they have raised, the languages in the Kartvelian family deserve more attention from scholars, and could be explored in greater detail by an international team that would bring together specialists versed in the Georgian philological tradition and general linguists working on phonology, syntax, language acquisition, language variation, and sentence processing. This workshop is part of the bilateral effort to create closer ties between two research communities invested in the study of individual Kartvelian languages or comparative Kartvelian.




The main goal of the workshop is to c reate a research community of scholars working on Kartvelian languages, which is reflected in the format of the workshop.




THERE WILL BE NO STANDARD CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS ! POSTER PRESENTERS WILL GIVE TWO-MINUTE SUMMARIES OF THEIR POSTERS IN THE BEGINNING OF THEIR SESSION.




There will be several tutorials and a special session on terminological issues ; the main time will be devoted to our three panels : phonetics/phonology ; morphosyntax, and documentation/ variation/language change. Panel chairs will change every day, see below.




< class="s1" style="color : #993300 ;">Schedule (updated September 23, 2016)




< class="s1">Day 1, Thursday, September 22




< class="s1">9:30-10:00 Official opening (all panels together) :




Robert Morrissey (U of Chicago), Director of the Paris Center




< class="s1">Lenore Grenoble (U of Chicago), < class="s1">Léa Nash, Ioana Chitoran, and Hélène Gerardin (Paris organizers)




< class="s1">10:00-11:00 General introduction (all panels together) : Maria Polinsky – PDF : Polinsky introduction




< class="s1">11:00-11:30 Break




< class="s1">11:30-13:00 Tutorial 1 : Georgian grammar and formal models (Léa Nash and Daniel Harbour, U Paris-8 and Queen Mary U of London)




PDF : harbour




PDF : sccc-version-lnash-handout




< class="s1">13:00-14:00 Lunch




< class="s1">14:00-15:00 Tutorial 2 : Kartvelian research in Georgia : Current state of affairs (Rusudan Asatiani, Tbilisi State U)




< class="s1">15:00-15:15 Break




< class="s1">15:15-17:00 Phonetics/Phonology posters (8) ; each presenter will have two minutes to give a short summary of their poster, then posters go on display




< class="s1">17:00-19:00 < class="s2">Panels, Meeting 1 :




< class="s1">panelists talk about what each of them has done and what next set of questions they want to address ; panels create charge for the afternoon meeting of Day 2.




< class="s1"> In addressing pressing research questions, please focus on the following :






1. < class="s1">statement of the problem : what needs to be investigated and explained




2. < class="s1">relevance of the problem : what will we know once the problem is solved




3. < class="s1">implications : how will our theory change once we have answers to (i)







< class="s1"> Phonetics/phonology panel, chair Chitoran




PDF : ivanishvili_lezhava_eng




PDF : chitoran_kwon_scccpost




< class="s1">




< class="s1"> Morphosyntax panel, chair Polinsky




< class="s1">PDF : sccc-ozturk




< class="s1">PDF : ivanishvili-soselia-preverbs-in-megrelian




< class="s1"> Documentation panel, chair Grenoble




19:15-21:30 : Conference reception at the Centre




< class="s1">Day 2, Friday, September 23




< class="s1">9:00-11:00 Tutorial 3 : Experimental work on language (Maria Polinsky and Stavros Skopeteas, U of Maryland and U of Bielefeld)-




< class="s1">PDF : Experimental Work on Language




< class="s1">PDF : Skopeteas




< class="s1">11:00-11:15 Break




< class="s1">11:15-13:00 Morphosyntax Posters (13) ; each presenter will have two minutes to give a short summary of their poster, then posters go on display




< class="s1">13:00-14:00 Lunch




< class="s1">14:00-15:00 Tutorial 4 : Terminological session (Léa Nash, Daniel Harbour, and Martha McGinnis, U Paris-8, Queen Mary University London, U of Victoria)




< class="s1">15:00-15:15 Break




< class="s1">15:15-18:30 < class="s2">Panels, Meeting 2 :




< class="s1">Present a research question, explain why it is necessary, and how it can be explored ; prepare drafts of specific proposals for future work.




< class="s1">The structure for each informal presentation is as follows :






1. < class="s1">statement of the problem : what needs to be investigated and explained




2. < class="s1">relevance of the problem : what will we know once the problem is solved




3. < class="s1">implications : how will our theory change once we have answers to (i)







< class="s1"> Phonetics/phonology panel panel, chairs Begus and Sturm




< class="s1"> Morphosyntax panel, chair Nash




PDF : mcginnis_themsuf




PDF : lomashvili




< class="s1"> Documentation panel, chair Skopteas




< class="s1">Day 3, Saturday, September 24




< class="s1">9:00-10:00 Tutorial 5 : Documentary linguistics (Lenore Grenoble, U of Chicago)




< class="s1">10:00-10:15 Break




< class="s1">10:15-12:15 Tutorial 6 : Georgian corpora from a computational and comparative perspective (Aric Bills, CASL at U of Maryland)




< class="s1">12:15-13:15 Lunch




13:15-14:15 Posters on v< class="s1">ariation, acquisition, historical linguistics (6) ; each presenter will have two minutes to give a short summary of their poster, then posters are on display




14:15-16:30 Panels, Meeting 3 :




< class="s1"> Panels continue and create a draft of a working paper or a set of specific proposals




< class="s1">Phonetics/phonology panel, chair Borise




< class="s1"> Morphosyntax panel, chair Foley




PDF : foley-sccc-slides




< class="s1"> PDF : weir




< class="s1"> Documentation panel, chair Manjgaladze




< class="s1">16:30 Conference closing




< style="color : #993300 ;">Posters




---




< class="s1">POSTER PRESENTERS WILL GIVE TWO-MINUTE SUMMARIES OF THEIR POSTERS IN THE BEGINNING OF THEIR SESSION.




---




< class="s1">Day 1 Posters. Phonetics/phonology




1. Changements diachroniques des complexes consonantiques accessifs – Tsiuri Akhvlediani & Ketevan Gabunia (State U Djavakhishvili, Tbilissi)




2. Phonetic Superation (overcoming) of Consonant Accesive Complexes –Tsiuri Akhvlediani & Ketevan Gabunia (State U Djavakhishvili, Tbilissi)




3. The phonetics of aspirate dissimilation – Gašper Begus (Harvard U)




4. Phonological system of the Proto-Kartvelian radical-language – Merab Chukhua (Tbilisi State U)chukhua




5. Word Boundaries and Metrical Structure in Rustaveli’s Vepkhist’q’aosani – Josh Falk (U of Chicago)




6. Georgian clusters : the role of timing patterns – Tomas O. Lentz, Marianne Pouplier, Ioana Chitoran, & Philip Hoole (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, and Université Paris Diderot)




7. An Acoustic and Articulatory Analysis of Georgian Plosives – Michelle Meier, Julia Biesemann, Anne Hermes, & Reinhold Greisbach (U of Cologne)




8. Sonorants in Georgian Consonant Clusters – Julia Sturm (Harvard U)




< class="s1">Day 2 Posters. Morphosyntax




1. s in Verbal Agreement : The case of South Caucasian – Hagen Blix (NYU)




2. Prosody of focus in a language with a fixed focus position : evidence from Georgian – Jelena Borise (Harvard U)




3. Marking Contrastive Topic in Georgian – Laurence B-Violette (Harvard U)




4. Negative concord in Svan and Old Georgian : Implications for grammaticalization – David Erschler (U of Massachussetts at Amherst)




5. Dative blocking in Georgian – Xenia Ershova (U of Chicago)ershova_sccc2016




6. The Ergativity-Inversion Connection – Gallagher Flinn (U of Chicago)




7. What agreement tells us about case : Person-based split ergativity in Georgian – Steven Foley (UC Santa Cruz) foley-scc-poster




8. A base-generation approach to Georgian split DPs – Zuzanna Fuchs (Harvard U)




9.The Georgian perfect tense series and the Western European BE/HAVE auxiliary split – Steve Hewitt




10. Modal particles in Georgian – Tamar Kalkhitashvili & Alexander Asatiani (Ilia State U & Georgian Institute of Public Affairs)




11. Post-syntactic operations and morpheme order of Georgian derived nominals – Leila Lomashvili (Shawnee State U)




12. Why is not Double Negative Attested in Unwritten Kartvelian Languages ? – Maia Lomia & Ketevan Margiani (Institute of the Georgian Language, Faculty of Humanities, Tbilisi State U)Lomia




13. Grammatical and affixal models for expressing negation in Kartvelian languages from the diachronic and synchronic viewpoint – Maia Maduashvili, Nino Keburia, Maguli Ghambashidze, Elene Kadagishvili, Tamar Chankseliani, & Giorgi Jgharkava (Institute of the Georgian Language, Faculty of Humanities, Tbilisi State U) : PDF




< class="s1">Day 3 Posters. Documentation/Variation/Acquisition




1. Zanian Borrowings in the Gurian Dialect : Plant Names – Natia Botkoveli (Tbilisi State U) DOC – PDF




2. The Morpho-isogloss in the Georgian and Udi Languages – Nino Rukhadze (Tbilisi State U)ruxadze




3. Verb-Drop in Svan –Nato Shavreshiani, Medea Sagliani and Lela Giglemiani (Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics,Tbilisi State U)shavreshiani-et-al




4.On lexical borrowings and language contact : A case of Georgian, Megrelian, and Batsbi languages – Maka Tetradze (Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics,Tbilisi State U)




5. Designing NLP tools for Georgian Language – Irakli Tsikarishvili & Urszula Boryczka (U of Silesia in Katowice)




6. Why Is There a Tendency of Loss of the Marker of the Third Indirect Objective Person in Modern Georgian ? – Lela Tsikhelashvili (Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State U) – PDF