Meeting Description:

This colloquium to be held at FRIAS, Freiburg (Germany), seeks to bring together researchers working on different language constellations who share an interest in the linguistic and sociolinguistic description of the emergence of bilingually or multilingually mixed language structures ("fused lects") from language mixing. The idea that fused lects such as mixed languages arise from language mixing is not new (see Myers-Scotton 1998; Auer 1999; Thomason 2001). It is supported not only by the plenteous structural similarities between fused lects and language mixing but also by well-documented historical facts (McConvell and Meaking 2003; O'Shannessy 2012; Schaengold 2004). Fusion is thus a process whereby certain bilingual mixing patterns become regularized, conventionalized and grammaticalized in specific communities. To provide a better understanding of how fused lects emerge, we need not only consider the sociolinguistic factors facilitating extensive fusion but also scrutinize intermediate stages of fusion, such as partial fusion (Auer 2014).

Confirmed Keynote Speakers Include:

• Evangelia Adamou, LACITO (CNRS), Paris

• Carmel O'Shannessy, University of Michigan

• Brigitte Pakendorf, DDL (CNRS), Lyon

Abstracts
Programme