PROGRAM WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS ACCOMMODATIONS
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WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS

All workshops take place on Thursday, October 11. Information about workshop fees and registration is available on the registration page.


The Analysis of Vowel Systems with Plotnik 09
William Labov, University of Pennsylvania

time: 11:45am-1:45pm
location: Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, 3401 Walnut St., room #470

Note: This workshop will take place in the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, 3401 Walnut St, room #470. From JMHH, walk 4 blocks east down Walnut; the entrance to the building is on the northwest corner of 34th and Walnut, right next to Starbuck's. One of the workshop leaders will be available to guide participants from JMHH to IRCS; if you're interested, please meet near the NWAV registration desk at 11:35.

This workshop will give familiarity and practice with methods of charting and analyzing complex vowel systems using the latest version of Plotnik. Methods will be reviewed for charting tokens and means, normalizing, carrying out t-tests, displaying standard deviations, isolating and measuring sub-sets for segmental environment and style, and displaying trajectories and vowel targets.

Plotnik09 dispenses with the need to create vowel quotas of varying sizes, producing inventories of vowel tokens to fit each data set as loaded. This allows a more stable method for saving and recalling vowel diagrams. Plotnik09 also permits use of large-screen views on latest Macintosh models. Particular attention will be given to preparation for publication, moving from color to black-and-white, constructing legends and labels.

Participants are urged to download the latest version of Plotnik09 from the website of William Labov (www.ling.upenn.edu/~labov), and bring their laptops for hands-on practice at the workshop.

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Finding a needle in a haystack: Using annotated corpora for linguistic research
Anthony Kroch & Beatrice Santorini, University of Pennsylvania

time: 11:45am-1:45pm
location: Van Pelt Library, Room #114, Goldstein Electronic Classroom

Note: This workshop will take place the Goldstein Electronic Classroom (Room #114) in Van Pelt Library. From JMHH, walk 2 blocks east through campus on Locust Walk; the entrance to the library will be on your left, just behing the big, white button. One of the workshop leaders will be available to guide participants from JMHH to the library; if you're interested, please meet near the NWAV registration desk at 11:35.

Structurally annotated corpora are becoming ever more important in empirical linguistic research and the use of such corpora is particularly widespread in historical syntax. In this workshop, we will offer a hands-on introduction to searching syntactically annotated (parsed) corpora. The workshop will first introduce participants to the nuts and bolts of using CorpusSearch (Randall 2000-2007), a program developed at Penn to search parsed corpora. It will then proceed to guide participants in a mini-investigation of? one of the major syntactic changes in the history of English, as a way of illustrating the sorts of results that can be obtained with appropriately annotated databases.

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New Ways of Analyzing Verbal Aspect
James Walker, York University

Co-organizers:
Ronald Beline Mendes, University of São Paulo
Carmen LeBlanc, Carleton University
Tara Sanchez, Williams College
Scott Schwenter, Ohio State University
Rena Torres Cacoullos, University of New Mexico
Gerard Van Herk, Memorial University of Newfoundland

time: 11:45am-1:45pm
location: Linguistics Laboratory, 3700 Market St., Suite 300


Note: This workshop will take place in the classroom room at the Linguistics Laboratory, 3700 Market St., Suite 300. From JMHH, walk 2 blocks north and 1 block east; the entrance to the building is on the south side of Market just west of 37th. One of the workshop leaders will be available to guide participants from JMHH to the Lab; if you're interested, please meet near the NWAV registration desk at 11:35.

Studies of grammatical variation involving verbal aspect have proliferated over the years. Despite the problem of form-function polyvalence and the diversity of linguistic treatments of aspect, there has been little explicit discussion of the methodological issues involved in defining, extracting and coding such variables. The goal of this workshop is to provide a forum for these issues, based on recent work by a number of younger scholars working on different languages (African American Vernacular English, English, English-based creole, French, Papiamentu, Portuguese and Spanish). Each of these scholars, who have taken different approaches to addressing these issues, provide a brief presentation of their research and the methodological decisions they made in defining the variable context, extracting tokens and coding factor groups. These presentations are followed by an open question-and-answer session in which all participants are able to discuss the problems and approaches to the study of verbal aspect in linguistic variation.

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Morphosyntactic variation: Theory and methods
Organizers: Jeffrey Parrott, University of Cyprus and Lukasz Abramowicz, University of Pennsylvania
Additional panel discussants: David Embick, University of Pennsylvania and Andrew Nevins, Harvard University

time: 2pm-4pm
location: Linguistics Laboratory, 3700 Market St., Suite 300

Note: This workshop will take place in the classroom room at the Linguistics Laboratory, 3700 Market St., Suite 300. From JMHH, walk 2 blocks north and 1 block east; the entrance to the building is on the south side of Market just west of 37th. One of the workshop leaders will be available to guide participants from JMHH to the Lab; if you're interested, please meet near the NWAV registration desk at 1:50 pm.

The purpose of this bridge-building workshop is to bring together sociolinguists and syntacticians interested in morphosyntactic variation (like leveling in verbal inflection). While syntacticians often build theoretical models without utilizing observational empirical methods (such as fieldwork in speech communities), many sociolinguists aren't aware of the implications their data has for syntactic theory. Morphosyntactic variation is especially relevant for current theories of the post-syntactic interface with phonology, such as Distributed Morphology, which provide articulated mechanisms to account for allomorphic variation and paradigmatic syncretism. In an attempt to fill this gap, the workshop will feature a moderated panel conversation addressing a variety of empirical and theoretical questions about morphosyntactic variation. Ample time is allotted for questions, discussion, and debate from all workshop participants. We hope that this cooperative dialogue between variationists and theorists will facilitate more collaborative research and increase our understanding of morphosyntactic variation.

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Linguistic profiling and ear-witness testimony: Empirical and experimental insights
John Baugh, Washington University in St. Louis

time: 2pm-4pm
location: Linguistic Data Consortium, 3600 Market St., Suite 810

Note: This workshop will take place in the conference room at the Linguistic Data Consortium, 3600 Market St., Suite 810. From JMHH, walk 2 blocks north and 2 blocks east; the entrance to the building is on the south side of Market just west of 36th. You will be asked to sign in at the front desk. One of the workshop leaders will be available to guide participants from JMHH to the LDC; if you're interested, please meet near the NWAV registration desk at 1:50 pm.

This workshop explores the concept of ear-witness testimony and will simulate various circumstances where potential civil or criminal convictions depend substantially on the accuracy of voice identification, with relevance to sociolinguistic and perceptual studies of speech. Linguists have been called upon from time-to-time to lend expert advice and testimony in legal proceedings where language matters are central. Legal considerations, including alternative methods to test the veracity of witnesses who believe they can identify a speaker based exclusively on the sound of her or his voice, will be discussed. The workshop looks at a range of evidence--in the most exacting circumstances, original research may be required to evaluate facts surrounding a specific case--including experimental linguistic studies and their legal relevance to cases of linguistic profiling where individuals have been denied goods or services during business transactions conducted by phone, particularly with respect to predatory lending. Ample time will be allocated for discussion.

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Towards best practices in sociophonetics (2007)

Organizers and discussion leaders: Marianna Di Paolo, University of Utah & Malcah Yaeger-Dror, University of Arizona

time: 2pm-4pm
location: Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, 3401 Walnut St., room #470

Note: This workshop will take place in the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, 3401 Walnut St, room #470. From JMHH, walk 4 blocks east down Walnut; the entrance to the building is on the northwest corner of 34th and Walnut, right next to Starbuck's. One of the workshop leaders will be available to guide participants from JMHH to IRCS; if you're interested, please meet near the NWAV registration desk at 1:50.

Our goal in this workshop will be to continue the discussion on best practices in sociophonetics begun at NWAVE 33. The interdisciplinary nature of sociophonetics makes it difficult, especially for researchers at institutions with fewer financial and collegial resources, to keep up with technical and theoretical advances in acoustic phonetics, speech perception, and recording technology; and theoretical advances in social structure and, of course, in linguistic theory. In spite of the wide range of knowledge needed to do quality work, there are a growing number of researchers who are interested in engaging in sociophonetic projects. This workshop will help to provide quick access to methodological, technical, and procedural information from the best labs.

This year the workshop focuses on presenters from the LDC (UPenn), MIT-Lincoln Laboratory, and the US Secret Service. As always, a lengthy Q&A follows each topic. The 2007 topics are as follows:

Participants are highly encouraged to bring laptops to take full advantage of the segment on software.

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Operationalizing linguistic gratuity: From principles to programs
Walt Wolfram, Jeffrey Reaser, and Charlotte Vaughn
North Carolina State University

time: 4:15pm-6:15pm
location: Linguistic Data Consortium, 3600 Market St., Suite 810

Note: This workshop will take place in the conference room at the Linguistic Data Consortium, 3600 Market St., Suite 810. From JMHH, walk 2 blocks north and 2 blocks east; the entrance to the building is on the south side of Market just west of 36th. You will be asked to sign in at the front desk. One of the workshop leaders will be available to guide participants from JMHH to the LDC; if you're interested, please meet near the NWAV registration desk at 4:05 pm.

This workshop offers a theoretical and methodological approach to sociolinguistic engagement and dialect awareness outreach programs based on a wide range of experience in a variety of local and general public venues. It presents a strategic rationale for the selection of specific venues and activities of engagement along with practical advice for implementing dialect awareness programs. Illustrative vignettes from TV documentaries, DVDs, and CDs produced by the North Carolina Language and Life Project show how these products can represent topics that extend from language preservation to language identity, while examples from physical and virtual museum exhibits demonstrate how these venues can be used to portray language variation in tandem with other social, cultural, and historical themes. The workshop includes a discussion of linguistic gratuity that ranges from ideological issues of symbolic language representation to practical issues related to designing and editing products and interfaces for professional presentation.

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Variation in sign languages: Methodological and analytical issues
Ceil Lucas, Gallaudet University
Bob Bayley, University of California at Davis Joseph Hill, Gallaudet University

time: 4:15pm-6:15pm
location: Linguistics Laboratory, 3700 Market St., Suite 300

Note: This workshop will take place in the classroom room at the Linguistics Laboratory, 3700 Market St., Suite 300. From JMHH, walk 2 blocks north and 1 block east; the entrance to the building is on the south side of Market just west of 37th. One of the workshop leaders will be available to guide participants from JMHH to the Lab; if you're interested, please meet near the NWAV registration desk at 4:05 pm.

This workshop examines methodological issues that arise in the study of sociolinguistic variation in American Sign Language (ASL) and other sign languages. The first part consists of a brief review of the structure of signs, in two parts: a) the parameters of signs, including handshape, location, palm orientation, movement, and nonmanual signals; b) the segmental structure of signs, with an explanation of the perspective that signs are composed of sequences of movements and holds, analogous to the consonants and vowels of spoken languages. The second part of the workshop examines what kinds of units vary in sign languages and what kinds of internal (linguistic) and external (social) constraints are at work on the variables, including constraints that are particular to Deaf communities. The third part of the workshop gives examples of phonological, syntactic, and lexical variation taken from two large-scale projects on variation in ASL as used in cities across the United States and Black ASL in the South.

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Two things sociolinguists should know: Software packages for vowel normalization, and accessing linguistic atlas data
Erik Thomas, North Carolina State University
Tyler Kendall, North Carolina State University
Malcah Yaeger-Dror, University of Arizona

Co-organizer
William Kretzschmar, University of Georgia

time: 4:15pm-6:15pm
location: Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, 3401 Walnut St., room #470

Note: This workshop will take place in the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, 3401 Walnut St, room #470. From JMHH, walk 4 blocks east down Walnut; the entrance to the building is on the northwest corner of 34th and Walnut, right next to Starbuck's. One of the workshop leaders will be available to guide participants from JMHH to IRCS; if you're interested, please meet near the NWAV registration desk at 4:05.

Two key areas in which relatively few sociolinguists are proficient are vowel normalization and the use of data from linguistic atlases. For vowel normalization, we created a software package with several normalization techniques that will be distributed to participants. These techniques include both vowel-extrinsic (the Nearey and Lobonov methods and a new one by Watt and Fabricius) and vowel-intrinsic methods. Participants will be shown how to use the various methods and how to evaluate which method is optimal for their own projects. Linguistic atlases provide invaluable historical data, yet many researchers find them too arcane to use. The second part of the workshop will discuss how to extract data from them, in both printed and online versions, and how to interpret the data. It will focus on the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States (LAMSAS) and the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (LAGS).

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NWAV 36 | October 11-14, 2007 | University of Pennsylvania |