Seminar series part 2: Sampling, data collection and comparison in comparative sociolinguistic research

The second session of the three-part GramAdapt seminar series was held on November 19th, 2020 via Zoom. The session included talks by Nina Dobrushina, Pierpaolo Di Carlo, and GramAdapt researchers Francesca Di Garbo and Kaius Sinnemäki.

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