Some of the main goals of the ERC-funded project Linguistic Adaptation (GramAdapt) are to develop methodologies for comparing sociolinguistic environments and linguistic structures to one another, and to produce new analyses that will enable researching linguistic adaptation in principled ways. To discuss and co-develop these themes we are organizing a series of three seminars in November-December 2020. The invited speakers represent a wide range of fields working on language typology, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and language learning.
The second session of the series, titled “Sampling, data collection and comparison in comparative sociolinguistic research”, discussed methodological themes in comparative sociolinguistics. The four talks were followed by a general panel discussion. The talks were recorded, and all of the videos and slides from the presentations are available below in the end of the article.
Prof. Nina Dobrushina (Linguistic Convergence Laboratory, HSE Moscow) discussed comparative sociolinguistic research on Dagestanian languages, and the methodological challenges faced when drawing conclusion about adaptation.
Dr. Pierpaolo Di Carlo (The State University of New York, Buffalo) discussed the role of language ideologies in comparative sociolinguistic studies.
Dr. Francesca Di Garbo presented the sampling methodology developed in the GramAdapt project.
Finally, the PI of GramAdapt Prof. Kaius Sinnemäki talked about a typological approach to comparative sociolinguistic developed in the GramAdapt project.
Slides and video recordings from the first session can be found here: "Seminar series “Grammatical Adaptation - Strategies and Methods” Begins". Materials from the last session will be posted on the GramAdapt webpage in mid-December.
Videos and slides of the presentations:
Prof. Nina Dobrushina: Dagestanian speech communities: parameters of variation across
linguistic ecologies
Dr. Pierpaolo Di Carlo: From qualitative to quantitative in the sociolinguistics of multilingualism
Dr. Francesca Di Garbo: Sampling for contact
Prof. Kaius Sinnemäki: A typological approach to comparative sociolinguistics