Presentation

The “(Language) Description, Typology and Fieldwork” (DTT) research team is founded on the idea that any study of language conscious of taking into account the diversity of languages requires highly reliable typological data, which in turn depends on the variety and the quality of available language descriptions. With the predicted increase in the rate of language extinction, a real danger is that in decades to come a large number of languages will have disappeared without ever having been described in any detail, thus losing forever their valuable contribution to our understanding of the range of possible forms that human languages can take. We consider typology and language description therefore as two closely intertwined domains, and that all new language descriptions can contribute to our knowledge of language diversity, but that conversely no language description is possible without a certain number of hypotheses about the structure of the object to be described. Furthermore, the group follows the general approach of the Dynamique Du Language laboratory, in that particular attention is given to the diachronic evolution of languages, to the phenomenon of grammaticalization, to the gradual loss and attrition of endangered languages, and to the sociolinguistic aspects of endangered languages.

Main research topics

  Description of African languages
  Description of Latin American Languages
  Description of languages from Europe, Asia and Oceania
  Phonological typology
  Morphosyntactic typology
  Semantic typology
  Diachronic typology
  Fieldwork and data collection
  Fieldwork on endangered languages
  [Former themes and actions -- archive]
  Morphosyntax Workshop

Collective activities

• Permanent seminar of the DTT research team
  
  
  • This seminar consists of ateliers (e.g., Atelier Morphosyntaxe, Atelier Sémantique, Atelier LED-TDR, DTT axis organization meetings, presentations by members of DTT axis or by guest speakers, thematic sessions, etc.
    
    
  • See programs 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020


• Workshops
  
  
  • E.g.: MorphEm 2015, DiaSAL 2015, TTM 2015, AnaMorphoSys 2016, ASLAN Complexity Meeting 2016, Crosslinguistic Diversity of Antipassives at SLE 2016, Obsolescing grammars 2017, EEMPA 2017, Associated Motion at ALT 2017, Noun Categorization: From Grammar to Communicative Interaction 2019, Constituency 2020


• Conferences and Summer schools
  
  
  • E.g.: Sénélangues 2015


• Collective projects
  
  
  • E.g.: Classification nominale, TUL 2018 ; Events & Space - Mouvement, posture et description d’événements, TUL 2018 ; Deixis Dynamique TUL 2015-2018

Languages studied by the team members