Comparing linguistic diachronies: Languages in the Balkans, in the Mediterranean and in Europe

CIVIS focus area: Society, culture, heritage
Open to: Master's

PhD candidates/ students
Field of studies: Social Science and humanities
Type: CIVIS Hub 2
Course dates: 24-30 July 2022

This workshop is part of the CIVIS project “Comparing Linguistic Diachronies” which aims to develop a joint research initiative, that can be related to joint teaching.

A first stage of the joint teaching program has been applied through the first and second versions of the joint CIVIS course on “Languages in Europe and their Diachronies”. The CIVIS joint research project aims to strengthen the joint efforts of developing joint research projects and learning programs in the area of historical/ diachronic and comparative linguistics, with the collaboration between members of CIVIS universities.

Advanced MA students and PhD students will be involved in a one-week workshop that aims to examine modern methodologies of teaching historical linguistics and to test several approaches. One of the main questions of the workshop will be the following: how we can teach the diachrony of European languages, with a comparative perspective, with modern methodologies, with the help of technology, in the multilingual context of CIVIS.

Main topics addressed

The focus of the CIVIS workshop will be on the following topics:

Comparing diachronies of European languages: from their origin to modern times;
Language contact between European languages: with an emphasis on the Balkans (Balkan Sprachbund), the Mediterranean (contact between Romance and Greek varieties), and Europe (instances of language contact and Standard Average European).
New approaches on how to teach diachronies of European languages in the multilingual context of the CIVIS universities.

Workshop participants will also have the chance to attend the lectures of the summer school part of the CIVIS blended course “Languages in Europe and their Diachronies”.

Learning outcomes

Dissemination of the new approaches to ancient and medieval languages: modern linguistic theories in collaboration with technology and modern statistical analyses.

Teaching experience for young scholars, PhD students (and advanced MA students).

Dates: 24-30 July 2022	CIVIS scholarships: 10
Format: Physical	Langue: English (C1)
Location: Athens, Greece	Contact hours: 50
Contact: Nikolaos Lavidas - nlavidas@enl.uoa.gr	Individual workload: 100 hours

This one-week in-person workshop will be held in Athens, Greece, at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

This course is equivalent to approximately 6 credits (ECTS). However, the recognition of ECTS depends on your home university.

Requirements

This CIVIS Workshop is open to Master's and PhD students at the 10 CIVIS member universities, enrolled or interested in Linguistics and Ancient-Medieval Languages.

A C1 level of English is required.

Application process

Interested students should fill in the following online application form by 25 May 2022.

Selected students will be notified on 31 May 2022.

Assessment

Postgraduate students (MA and PhD) will have to present research findings of their relevant MA or PhD Thesis and participate in the workshop discussions.

General Eligibility Criteria for CIVIS Courses

Applicants need to be enrolled at their home university in order to be eligible for selection and participation. If uncertain about your status at your home university (part-time or exchange students etc) please check with your home university’s website or International Office.

Applicants who will be receiving other Erasmus funds for the duration of the course are not entitled to funding. Participation in the course may still be possible under “zero-grant” status, but applicants should contact their home university in order to confirm this.

A list of links and contacts for each university can be found in this Q&A.

GDPR Consent

The CIVIS alliance and its member universities will treat the information you provide with respect. Please refer to our privacy policy for more information on our privacy practices. By applying to this course you agree that we may process your information in accordance with these terms.

Nikolaos Lavidas is Associate Professor of Diachronic Linguistics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Department of Language-Linguistics, Faculty of English, School of Philosophy). His research covers a range of topics associated with Indo-European historical linguistics and the directions of language change (in particular the development of transitivity and voice in Indo-European languages), syntax-semantics interface, (historical) language contact and historical corpora.

Antonio R. Revuelta Puigdollers is Associate Professor of Ancient and Modern Greek at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and a sworn translator of Modern Greek. His main research areas are the semantics, syntax and pragmatics of Greek; his work also includes incursions into other languages such as Latin. He is the co-author of a new syntax of Ancient Greek and has authored several entries in Brill’s Encyclopaedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics.

Katrin Axel-Tober is Professor of German Linguistics at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Her research focuses on the synchronic and diachronic syntax of German. She has published the books Studies on Old High German Syntax: Left Sentence Periphery, Verb Placement and Verb-Second (Benjamins, 2007) and (Nicht-)kanonische Nebensätze im Deutschen: Synchrone und diachrone Aspekte (Walter de Gruyter, 2012) as well as several articles on sentence structure, complementizers, null subjects, and modal verbs.

Artemij Keidan is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the Italian Institute of Oriental Studies, Sapienza Università di Roma. His main areas of expertise include the history of grammatical thought, Indo-European morphology, philosophy of language, and issues in syntax and phonology, both general and applied to ancient (such as Sanskrit, Latin, Gothic, Slavic languages) and modern languages.

Joanna Kopaczyk is Senior Lecturer in Scots and English (English Language & Linguistics) at the University of Glasgow. She is a historical linguist with a special interest in the medieval and early modern history of the Scots language. She uses corpus-driven methods to uncover textual standardisation and she is also interested in formulaicity in language, as revealed through all kinds of repetitive patterns. She has recently co-edited books on Applications of Pattern-Driven Methods in Corpus Linguistics (John Benjamins, 2018) and on Binomials in the History of English (Cambridge University Press, 2017).