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The Colloquium will focus on the emergence and death of languages, fundamental processes that have become very topical, both in the Catalan context and for understanding the role of languages in a globalized world. In these processes two factors are decisive: the first is the magnitude (of the language, of each dialect, of the groupings of dialects) that makes a language viable; the second is the distance (purely linguistic distance between each dialect, or between the dialect and its language or, more precisely, its linguistic prototype) that allows or prevents the “individuation” of a language. We start from the premise that languages, as social constructions, can neither be too large nor too small. This approach differs from the prevailing politically correct or mainstream view, because it may collide with the basis for certain linguistic rights (those of excessively small minorities) or with certain “scientifically objective” approaches. However, we suspect that these issues have a much greater importance than specialists have traditionally recognised, at least overtly. If a language is always an abstraction of a set of "real" lects, which is given the value of the linguistic "representation" of a community, it raises the question: are there any basic requirements — a minimum and maximum magnitude or a minimum and maximum distance — for producing the necessary abstraction?
For the development of the 8th Colloquium we propose three topics:
- The concept of language
- The linguistic distance and the magnitude of the languages
- Language and dialects: a process of occultation
Call for papers ends March 15.
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