Comparative-Historical Linguistics of the XXIst Century:

Issues and Perspectives

 

Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies,

Russian State University for the Humanities

 

Moscow, March 20-22, 2013

 

International Conference Program

 

March 20.

 

Morning session (10.00 — 13.00).

 

Focus on Linguistic Area: Asia / America

 

1. Ilia Peiros (Santa Fe Institute). Linguistic contacts in ancient East Asia.

2. Oleg Mudrak (RSUH). Comparative-historical research on the linguistic situation in Northeast Asia. [IN RUSSIAN].

3. Nikita Krougly-Encke (Paris, Sorbonne). Contribution of Aleutian original and borrowed lexica to the Nostra­tic theory.

4. Yevgeniya Korovina (RSUH). Vowel Development in the Mam Subgroup of Mayan.

5. Sergei Nikolayev (Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Science). Na-Dene reconstruction: state of the art.

 

Afternoon session (14.00 — 17.00).

 

Focus on Theory and Method: [Lexico]statistical Methods in Historical Linguistics

 

6. Alexei Kassian (Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Science / RSUH). The Lezgian linguistic family within the framework of the Global Lexicostatistical Database.

7. Mikhail Zhivlov (Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Science / RSUH). The Hokan family and lexicostatistics.

8. Johann-Mattis List (Philipps-University Marburg). Investigating the Impact of Sample Size on Cognate Detection.

 

March 21.

 

Morning session (10.00 — 13.00).

 

Focus on Linguistic Area: Indo-European

 

9. Sergei Kullanda (Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Science). Dialectal Traits and Ex­ter­nal Relations of Scythian.

10. Alexander Lubotsky (Leiden University). False Labels in Indo-European Reconstruction: Laryngeal Loss in Compounds and Marginal Phonemes.

11. Vladimir Dybo (RSUH). Nikolayev & Starostin's «Paradigmatic Classes of Indo-European Verbs» and new data from Indo-Aryan languages [IN RUSSIAN].

12. Sergei Boroday; Ilya Yakubovich (Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences). The Role of Corpus Linguistics in Language Decipherment.

13. Václav Blažek (Masaryk University, Brno). Indo-European Declension in Nostratic Perspective.

 

Afternoon session (14.00 — 17.00).

 

Focus on Theory and Method: Macro-Comparative Linguistics

 

14. George Starostin (RSUH). Macro-Comparative Linguistics in the XXIst Century: State of the art and perspectives.

15. Søren Wichmann (Max Planck Institute, Leipzig). Probabilistic Approaches to Long-Range Comparison. Methodology and Results.

16. Edward Vajda (Western Washington University). Assessing the Sino-Caucasian Hypothesis.

 

March 22.

 

Morning session (10.00 — 13.00).

 

Focus on Linguistic Area: Africa

 

17. Konstantin Pozdniakov (LLACAN, Paris). Perspectives for the reconstruction of noun classes in Proto-Niger-Congo.

18. Valentin Vydrin (LLACAN, Paris). Towards the reconstruction of Proto-Mande: current state of affairs.

19. Kirill Babaev (Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Science). TAM and negation marking in Mande: a comparative overview.

20. Viktor Porkhomovsky (Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Science). Semitic and Arabic TAM Systems from a Diachronic Typological Perspective.

21. Olga Stolbova (Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Science). Reflexes of Afroasiatic pharyngeals in Chadic: internal reconstruction and some complements to Afroasiatic / Indo-Euro­pean comparisons.

 

Afternoon session (14.00 — 17.00).

 

Focus on Theory and Method: Historical Semantics and Etymology

 

22. Anna Dybo (RSUH / Institute of Linguistics). Semantic patterns and semantic processes in the Swadesh list: preliminary results.

23. Elena Parina (Institute of Linguistics / Philipps-University Marburg). Welsh Polysemous Adjectives. A Case Study in Semantic Reconstruction.

24. Alexander Militarev (RSUH). An Attempt at a Systemic Evaluation of Etymologies.