Call for Papers: Ars Grammatica 2017, Mannheim, Germany, June 8-9 2017

From the 8th to the 9th of June 2017 in Mannheim, Germany, a special conference devoted to grammatical terminology in German will be held at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim.  Entitled “Ars Grammatica 2017”, this scientific gathering welcomes researchers from the branches of computational linguistics, theoretical linguistics, syntax, and lexicography.  The deadline for abstract submissions is the 15th of April 2017. More on this German language event can be found at the conference website.

Under the title “Grammatical terminology – content and methods”, paper should deal with the characteristics and properties of grammatical technical terms in the field, and the tension between content and methodological application:

  • From a substantive point of view, it is important to conceive and use as exact definitions as possible of specialized terminology in order to be able to express linguistic phenomena and explanations precisely. This suggests, in particular, such scientific disciplines as challenges in which varying theories of theory, cognitive interests or subjective authors’ decisions lead to a non-uniform terminological inventory, which is even contradictory in individual cases.
  • From a methodological point of view, it is necessary to develop sufficiently powerful and sustainable structures for the coding of domain-specific terminological systems. The spectrum ranges from methodically oriented specialized vocabularies, thesauri to knowledge networks and ontologies with appropriately modeled concepts and attributes.

Creatures named after Sir David Attenborough

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Sir David Attenborough has brought wildlife to people’s televisions for more than 60 years. He’s inspired many people to take an interest in animals. This BBC Newsround article has beautiful photos of seven creatures named after Attenborough, plus one more item in the non-animal category. Do you know what it is?

Call for Articles: “Words: Description, Acquisition, and Pedagogy”, Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Calling all scientists researching lexicology, language acquisition, and education. Original book chapters are currently being sought for an upcoming publication entitled Words: Description, Acquisition, and Pedagogy, to be published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Vocabulary, or the lexicon, is a strong predictor of academic success and language proficiency. Therefore, it is important for researchers and practitioners to better understand how vocabulary is acquired, represented in the mind, as well as learned in monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual environments. The manuscript will bring together recent research on the topic; the lexicon will be considered from multiple perspectives by theorizing the description of lexicon, lexical acquisition, and pedagogy.

The manuscript will cover the following main areas:

  • Mental lexicon
  • Theoretical linguistics and its implications for developing lexical competence
  • Lexical knowledge assessment and acquisition in L1 and L2
  • Instructional practices to develop lexical competence in L1 and L2

Interested authors are encouraged to contact Alexandra Tsedryk (alexandra.tsedryk AT msvu.ca) or Christine Doe (christine.doe AT msvu.ca) at Mount Saint Vincent University). The deadline for chapter proposals is the 15th of April 2017. All interested authors must consult the guidelines for manuscript submissions at Cambridge as well as the guidelines for copyright permissions prior to submission. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.

Name some RCMP puppies!

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are calling all dog lovers and underage name enthusiasts to send in their favorite name for the 13 pups that will soon be joining this year’s RCMP Police Dog Service Training Center. The deadline for name suggestions is the 11th of April 2017. All name suggestions must begin with the letter “K”, and have no more than two syllables. Contestants in the contest must be Canadian residents and 14 years or older. For those of you who still qualify (or have someone in your family who does), a video of the puppy police cadets can be found here (and embedded below). WARNING: These cuties just might steal your heart!

Call for Papers: 2nd International Conference on Language and Culture: Dirty, Repulsive, Unwanted, Poznan, Poland, September 18-19 2017

An international comparative studies conference entitled “Language and Culture: Dirty, Repulsive, Unwanted” will be held from the 18th to the 19th of September in Poznan, Poland.  The conference is being conjointly sponsored by the Department of Comparative Culture Studies and the Institute of Linguistics at Adam Mickiewicz University.  The purpose of the conference is to provide researchers an opportunity to present and discuss recent insights into the nexus between language, literature, and culture studies with regards to forbidden language and the language of the forbidden, the unwanted in lexicography and other spheres of communication, as well as taboo language in general.  The deadline for submission of an abstract proposal (max. 400 words) is May 31, 2017. The call for papers (in English) is here. More on this event can be found at this website.

CSSN: Canadian Society for the Study of Names, Toronto, Canada, May 27-28 2017

3061957824_c2b77fac23_mThe Canadian Society for the Study of Names (CSSN) / Société canadienne d’onomastique (SCO) will hold its annual meeting as part of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, May 27 and 28, 2017. The theme of the 2017 congress is: “The Next 150, On Indigenous Lands”.

Have you ever thought about the names of the places where you live? Or the first names of your neighbours? Or the names of things that you eat? The conference takes place over two days. About 15 papers are normally presented, 20 minutes plus 10 minutes discussion. Topics concern any aspects of names and naming. Presenters are normally from the fields of Linguistics, Geography, History, Anthropology, and other areas.

The preliminary program can be found here.

Why Samsung’s name for its personal assistant may twist quite a few tongues

Washington Post reporter Hayley Tsukayama interviews linguists and branding experts about the name of Samsung’s new personal assistant, Bixby. While the name is short and unique, it may pose difficulties for speakers of languages other than English – including Korean! (Samsung is a Korean company.) Bonus: quotes from Laurel Sutton, ANS Information Officer:

Bixby can also be a good brand for Samsung because it doesn’t have many preexisting associations with it, said Laurel Sutton, co-founder of the naming firm Catchword, linguist and information officer for the American Name Society.

ICOS2017: XXVI International Council of Onomastic Science, University of Debrecen, Hungary, August 27-Sept. 1 2017

The International Council of Onomastic Science will be holding its next congress at the University of Debrecen in Hungary from the 27th of August to the 1st of September 2017.  The theme of this year’s conference is “locality and globality of the world in names.”  Several different symposia will be featured at this year’s meeting, for example, “International onomastic cooperations and projects”; “Systematical relations between toponyms and anthroponyms”; and “Applied Onomastics in practice”. Early-bird registration for ICOS2017 has been officially opened; go here for information.

The International Council of Onomastic Sciences (ICOS) is the international organisation for all scholars who have a special interest in the study of names (place-names, personal names, and proper names of all other kinds). The aim of the Council is the advancement, representation and co-ordination of name research on an international level and in an interdisciplinary context.

U.S. surnames in the 2010 Census

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released the 2010 Census surnames product, a table of all last names occurring at least 100 times in the 2010 Census returns. For each of the 162,000 last names, the table includes its frequency, national rank, and breakdown by Hispanic origin and race category. Despite the nation’s growing racial and ethnic diversity, the five most frequent American surnames in 2010 remained the same as in 2000 and were mainly reported by whites and blacks.

Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown and Jones were the most common last names, according to a Census Bureau analysis of the 2010 Census.

This is the third in a series of data releases based on names recorded in the decennial census. Previous products tabulated name frequency from the 1990 and 2000 Censuses. The complete product, along with a methodology document, is available here.