A strategic partnership for the study of Portuguese in multilingual settings

Category: PhD

Call for papers: Lancaster Postgraduate Student Conference

The 16th annual Lancaster Linguistics and English Language Postgraduate Conference will be held on June 27, 2022. The theme is “New Perspectives in Linguistics: Innovation and Dynamics.” The conference is a great opportunity for postgraduate students (pursuing an MA or a PhD) to present their work to their peers in a supportive and inclusive space. For enquiries please email Maya Dewhurst, m.dewhurst1@lancaster.ac.uk,

Conference website

MA and PhD students are invited to submit abstracts on linguistic research, in particular those that have used innovative methods. The following panels have been proposed and you may address your abstract to any one of these. If your abstract does not fit one, please submit it anyway; we are happy to consider abstracts on topics not listed below.

• Cognitive-Functional Linguistics and Typology
• Corpus and Computational Linguistics
• Discourse Studies
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Pragmatics and Literacy Studies
• TESOL and Language Pedagogy

Abstract submission deadline: Monday 11th April 2022: Link For Submission

Word limit for submissions: 300 words exl. references

Talks should be 20 minutes long, with 5 minutes allocated for Q&A (25 minute total time) in a PowerPoint format.

When submitting an abstract, you may choose to apply for a poster presentation or a longer talk. Upon acceptance, more information regarding poster dimensions and format will be provided.

Proposal Format

Abstracts should be submitted through the designated form. All submissions should include a title and a full abstract. Please note the following word limits for submissions:

Title: 20 Words
Abstract: 300 Words

Evaluation of Proposals

Upon receipt by the organising committee, all submitted abstracts will be stripped of identifying markers (name, university, etc.) and sent to a team of peer reviewers. When reviewing abstracts, the team will take into account the following:

  • Suitability to conference theme
  • Theoretical relevance
  • Research design
  • Direction of analysis/conclusions
  • Structure and clarity

Sample Submission

Title: Writing practices across the lifespan: the transition from school to university

Abstract: Educational transitions have been described as significant life events involving self-redefinitions, the acquisition of new social roles and identities and decisions about future and education (Ecclestone, Biesta & Hughes, 2010).  However, little is known about the role of writing in these transitional experiences, especially for marginalized groups in educational settings. Similarly, the development of writing abilities across contexts and throughout the lifespan has been scarcely explored (Bazerman, 2020; Bazerman, 2013; Naftzinger, 2020). By relying on a New literacy Studies perspective (Barton & Hamilton, 2012; Barton 2007; Gee, 2000; Papen, 2005) this study seeks to understand how students’ writing practices change and evolve during the transition from school to university and across different settings in everyday life. Such an understanding could help to promote well-informed policies to support students’ writing development across educational stages, specifically for groups traditionally excluded from higher education (Lillis, 2001). Based on a longitudinal design, this study follows a group of students from low-income backgrounds in Chile from their last year of school to their first year at university. During this transitional period, students will be asked to: 1) participate in “talking around text” interviews (Baker, 2018; Ivanic, 1998; Lillis, 2001), 2) submit a sample of writing pieces, and 3) complete a writing log. All these data will be analysed by using both a scheme code (Gaisler & Swarts, 2019) according to research questions and a constant comparison method to obtained emergent categories (Charmaz, 2013). In this presentation, initial results of this study will be introduced. With these findings, I hope to contribute to a better understanding of how students from less privileged backgrounds face a diverse range of writing practices as well as identify which meanings they attribute to them in the context of their daily lives and life projects.

Further Guidance

For further guidance on writing abstracts, Shungo Suzuki from LAEL at Lancaster University has kindly shared his experiences and advice here:

Shungo Suzuki

Publication Guidelines

Speakers will also be invited to submit their papers for publication in Papers from the Lancaster Linguistics and English Language Postgraduate Conference. This is a peer-reviewed, open-access online publication featuring full papers from the annual Lancaster Linguistics and English Language Postgraduate Conference. For previous years’ publications please visit the Papers from LAEL PG.

PhD Defense: Mara Moita, NOVA University of Lisbon

On Thursday 20th January 2022, Mara Moita, researcher at NOVA CLUNL’s LiFE group , defended her PhD thesis in Linguistics  at NOVA University of Lisbon.

Title:

The Acquisition of Syntactic Dependencies with Movement in Deaf Children with Cochlear Implant: A movement deficit?

The PhD exams took place at 2:30pm in Auditorium 223 in Almada Negreiros College, on the Campolide Campus at NOVA University of Lisbon.

Original source

 

PhD Defense: Aníbal José Ribeiro Serra, University of Evora

On Friday, 12th November, 2021, Aníbal José Ribeiro defended her PhD thesis in Linguistics  at the University of Evora.

Title:

O Português, língua de herança nos Estados Unidos: O caso de Hudson, Massachusetts

 

Thesis Directors:

Maria Filomena Gonçalves

Joseph Abraham Levi

 

Members of the PhD committee:

Isabel Margarida de Oliveira Duarte (University of Porto)

Manuel Célio Conceição (University of Algarve)

 

PhD Defense: Joana Zahner da Silva Matos, University of Minho

On Friday, 22nd October, 2021, at 2pm (GMT),  Joana Zahner da Silva Matos  will defend her PhD thesis  in Language Sciences, German Linguistics  to a panel at The University of Minho. The PhD defense is a public event, and you can join by clicking on the Zoom link below. For more information, please see below.

Title:

“Kland, Kländer, Klanden? Aquisição do plural por falantes portugueses de alemão língua segunda”

How to join:

The defense will be presented via Zoom.  The link to the event is provided below, along with the ID code and Password.

Zoom: Please click here to join. ID: 884 4660 8616. Password: 280633.

Abstract:

In the acquisition of the nominal morphology of German as a first language (L1) plural markers appear early but their stabilisation occurs late, around 6 years of age (Kauschke et al., 2011). As far as the acquisition of German as a second language (L2) is concerned, most empirical studies have focused on the successive acquisition of two languages in childhood (Günay, 2016). These show that L2 children at an initial stage also employ overgeneralization strategies and that the differences with respect to L1 acquisition are quantitative rather than qualitative in nature. The present experimental study focuses on the acquisition of the German plural by native speakers of European Portuguese (EP) who started acquiring German from adolescence onwards. We aim to abstract the pluralization patterns applied by these speakers, identifying the strategies used in the initial phase of acquisition and assessing whether crosslinguistic influence effects are observable. The influence that certain linguistic and extralinguistic factors, such as lexical knowledge, amount and type of exposure to the target language and motivation, may have on the selection of L2 plural morphemes is also analysed.

We tested 120 speakers, divided into three groups: L2 (n=80), 2L1 (n=20) and L1 (n=20). The linguistic tasks applied include a lexical decision test, a plural elicitation task with nonce words and an elicitation task targeting the case system. In addition, a detailed sociolinguistic questionnaire was also applied. The main results show that at an early stage of acquisition L2 speakers employ pluralisation strategies based on frequency criteria and much more gender-based when compared to L1 and 2L1 speakers. Higher proficiency levels, as well as greater exposure to the target language and greater motivation are significantly associated with a progression in pluralisation patterns and the production of later-acquired plurals. The reduced use of the {-s} morpheme, that is the regular plural marker in Portuguese, shows that it was not overgeneralised and that there is no crosslinguistic influence from the L1. The 2L1 speakers are very close to the L1 speakers as far as the use of plural morphemes is concerned. However, as they are returnee speakers, some effects of the reduced exposure to German on the later acquired forms can already be observed, which may be interpreted as effects of language attrition.

Keywords: L2 German; late L2 acquisition; 2L1 returnee speakers; plural.

Members of the PhD committee:

Prof. Isabel Cristina Costa Alves Ermida (President), Escola de Letras, Artes e Ciências Humanas da Universidade do Minho.

Prof. Ana Maria Lavadinho Madeira, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa;

Prof. Ana Margarida Abrantes, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas da Universidade Católica;

Prof. Maria do Pilar Barbosa, Escola de Letras, Artes e Ciências Humanas da Universidade do Minho;

Prof. Cristina Maria Moreira Flores (supervisor), Escola de Letras, Artes e Ciências Humanas da Universidade do Minho;

Prof. Idalete Maria Silva Dias, Escola de Letras, Artes e Ciências Humanas da Universidade do Minho.