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Scandiasyn-bloggen i juni 2010
Fredag 11. juni
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| View from atop Hillesøya, overlooking the Sommarøya hamlet with Kvaløya in the background; conference site to the right. Photo: Lucien Boland |
The Sommarøya Grand Meeting is now over, and the three intense days passed without extensive blogging this year (for reasons that I will leave untouched). Here therefore follows but a summary of how the convention proceeded.
According to the established tradition, the first day started with a session of project reports. The undersigned gave a status report on ScanDiaSyn and NORMS, including the mentioning of fond memories from the previous five meetings around North Germania. Maia Andréasson continued with some notes and forward looks concerning the new N'CLAV network, before Torben Juel Jensen presented the LANCHART project at University of Copenhagen. Ragnhild Anderson closed off the first bulk of slots in the program by a presentation of the research on Nordic language variation going on at the University of Bergen.
In the remaining time before lunch Sjef Barbiers first relayed his perspectives on the European collaboration on dialect syntax, and then Janne Bondi Johannessen and Anders Nøklestad presented the latest developments of the infrastructural tools developed in ScanDiaSyn, i.e. the Nordic Dialect Corpus and the Nordic Syntactic Judgment Database, and as was evident for those also present at the Älvdalen grand meeting last year, an impressive lot has been achieved since then.
After lunch followed a series of presentations by young researchers. Ida Larsson (Gothenburg) presented a paper on the structure of have, Silvia Rossi a joint paper with Mariachiara Berizzi (Padua) on the after-perfect in Hiberno-English, Leiv Inge Aa (NTNU, Trondheim) a paper on verb particles in coastal and southern mid-Norwegian, and Tania Strahan (Iceland) a paper on resumptive pronouns in Northern Norwegian (based on joint work with Toril Fiva). The session proceeded with a paper by Åshild Søfteland (Oslo) on clefts in spoken Norwegian, one by Tanya Karoli Christensen (Copenhagen) on semantic variation as treated by sociolinguistics and functional grammar, before Jenny Nilsson (Gothenburg) closed off with a paper on the Observer's paradox.
But the program didn't end there! In fact, the day was topped by the first invited speaker, Bruce Morén-Duolljá from CASTL, UiT, who held a one hour lecture on the Saami languages and on why data sharing is essential for documenting this highly endangered language group.
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| Zakaris caught a decent cod on the boat trip. Photo: Helge Sandøy |
After this intense and long day, only a select few of the participants took the advantage of getting into the wood heated hot tub that had been prepared for the group. This group of individuals did not only bathe in the tub, but also found pleasure in paying the salty waters of the lagoon a visit. Twice! Then there was dinner.
Whereas the first day was gloomy and grey, the second day of the meeting was sunny and bright, and that was quite fortunate as a substantial part of the program was reserved for leisure activities. But before getting there, there were several interesting presentations on the bid. Caroline Heycock and Antonella Sorace (Edinburgh) were the second invited speakers in action at the meeting, and Caroline presented their work on the acquisition of variation in Faroese. Three presentations by young researchers, all on case-related issues, then followed before lunch: Anton Karl Ingason (Iceland) presented his death rattle hypothesis for accusative subjects, Marianne Anderson (NTNU, Trondheim) presented her studies of dative case in her native Vestnes dialect, and Jeff Parrott presented a paper on case variation in coordination structures in varieties of Norwegian and Danish. After lunch Cecilia Poletto gave her invited lecture on OV and VO in Romance.
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| Caroline Heycock and David Adger getting ready for a fast boat ride. Photo: Irene Franco |
At that point leisure activities could commence! Throughout the morning I had solicited the group for expression of interests in various boat trip alternatives, and in the end we arrived at a perfect distribution over the alternatives as far as capacity was concerned. A group of twenty people went on a combined "sea safari" and fishing trip, whereas there were two consecutive shorter trips with a fast going RIB taking up to eight persons each time. Both boat trips were well appreciated. The sea safari people got to watch sea eagles and even caught some fish, with Zakaris – no wonder – pulling the biggest one (although Tania according to reports caught an even bigger one that slipped just as it was pulled out of the water). The people going on the fast boat had other pleasures besides seeing the lovely landscape of the Sommarøya archipelago, although the driver was complaining that the waves were not very big that day.
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| GM participants enjoying a fast boat ride! Photo: Lucien Boland |
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| Peter Jurgec, Tania Strahan and Jeffrey Parrott in the outdoor, wood heated hot tub at Sommarøya. Photo: Lucien Boland |
After the boat ride several people took the opportunity to walk up on the top of Hillesøya from which there is a splendid view in all directions. Later on the hot tubs filled up, this time also the one outside. Other people, including myself, had to exploit the leisure time to do non-leisure activities and rather prepare for other events coming up later in the week... The day was closed off with a nice dinner, and in the lack of professional entertainment, a small collection of songs had been prepared so that the group could create some collective entertainment.
Wednesday 9, the final day of the grand meeting, started with the fourth and last invited lecture which as held by Helge Sandøy (Bergen). He discussed the interaction of linguistic structure and language society as a basis for understanding language variation. Following Sandøy's lecture came the three last talks by young researchers. Christine Østbø (Tromsø) gave a paper on pronoun shift in Norwegian dialects, Stig Rognes (Oslo) one on om and yes/no-interrogatives in the Rogaland dialects, before Eefje Boef (Meertens/Tromsø) and Irene Franco (Tromsø) gave the last talk of the meeting on subordinate A'-dependencies across varieties of Scandinavian and Germanic.
After lunch two hours were reserved for a general discussion of data sharing. Hans Bennis held an introduction to the topic before short addresses were made from various representatives of the different Nordic countries plus one with a European perspective (Ásta Svavarsdóttir, Helge Sandøy, Elisabet Engdahl, Lisa Södergård, and Sjef Barbiers). The session was useful and fruitful, not the least as it served to remind us all of the importance to collect and organize data in manners that make them suitable for sharing with others.
At 3 p.m. a bus was ready to take the crowd back to Tromsø. A few people got off at the airport and headed home whereas most others stayed on either because of group leader meetings and/or for the NORMS closing seminar and the 25th Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop.
– Øystein
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| The participants at the 2010 Grand Meeting at Sommarøya. Photo: Lucien Boland |
Måndag 7. juni
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| Sommarøy Arctic Hotel with the Sommarøya hamlet in the background. Photo: Lucien Boland |
On Sunday evening, June 6th, around 60 linguists arrived at beautiful [page not found] for the joint 6th and last ScanDiaSyn Grand meeting and the 1st N'CLAV Grand meeting. The landscape, the light, and the weather all made an impression on the crowd --- though in quite different ways... (4 degrees in June is not exactly what we 'ordered', but the sun shows up every now and then...)
After a brief welcome note by Øystein, we had supper at the Sommarøy Arctic Hotel (which is also the location for the meeting). This year's participants represent a broader specter within linguistics, since the N'CLAV network embraces a wider range of perspectives (such as phonology and sociolinguistics, as well as non-North Germanic languages spoken in the Nordic countries, like Finnish and Sami). We have four invited speakers: Bruce Morén-Duolljá, Caroline Heycock, Cecilia Poletto, and Helge Sandøy (Bert Vaux unfortunately had to withdraw from the meeting in the last minute). In addition we have project reports, a workshop for younger researchers, and group discussions as usual.
We are very excited about this year's meeting and look forward to three interesting, engaging and fun days here at Sommarøya!
– Kristine
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