ECoLa 2010

ECoLa 2010 is a three-day international symposium (June 6-9 2010) set up to explore a range of topics on "English as a contact language". There are several motivations for us to organise such an event, the most important being exciting recent developments in contact linguistics and the growing awareness that the complexity of contact-induced language change is due to the overlap and co-occurrence of branches such as historical linguistics, variationist sociolinguistics, typology and universals, pidgin and creole linguistics, language acquisition, etc, not all of which have the sort of contact they should have and would benefit from.

To address the issues at hand from as broad a viewpoint as possible, we have invited specialists to come and lecture in Zurich. Participants will present a 30 minute paper (plus 15 minutes of discussion), in which they provide an overview of current research in a specific area, point out controversial issues as well as open research questions and explore potential for future research.

The proceedings will be published in a volume with the title English as a Contact Language in the Studies in English Language Series with Cambridge University Press.