We are pleased to announce that the plenary lectures will be given by distinguished scholars, who work in related yet different fields, which guarantees a wide perspective or indeed a variety of perspectives on language contact, language variation and contact-induced phenomena.
The following keynote speakers have confirmed their participation:
- Adele Goldberg, Princeton University, USA
- Elżbieta Muskat-Tabakowska, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
- Ad Backus, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
- Peter Bakker, Aarhus University, Denmark
- Maciej Eder, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
- Alexander Onysko, Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt, Austria
Adele Goldberg is a leader in the usage-based constructionist approach to language, which emphasizes the existence and relevance of a complex network of learned pairings of form and function (constructions). The approach has been inspired by work in cognitive linguistics and connectionism (neural nets). She investigates functional, statistical, and processing factors that combine to explain the creative but constrained use and interpretation of language in typical and atypical populations, and in child and adult learners. Inspired by recent advances in large Language Models, she aims to better understand the extent to which LMs produce and comprehend natural language as a means to better understand human language. She is M. Taylor Pyne professor of psychology at Princeton, affiliated with programs in linguistics, cognitive science, and Princeton’s Language and Intelligence initiative. She has been elected a fellow of the Linguistic Society of America, the Cognitive Science Society, the Association of Psychological Science, and the Humboldt Foundation. She served as president of the Cognitive Science Society (2022-2023) and earned an honorary doctorate for her linguistics work from FAU, Erlangen (2024).
Elżbieta Muskat-Tabakowska, Professor Emerita at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In the years 2002-2012, Head of the UNESCO Chair for Translation Studies and Intercultural Communication. Prof. Muskat-Tabakowska is a scholar researching English linguistics, a specialist in Cognitive Linguistics and translation theory, conference interpreter and the translator of numerous literary and historiographical texts. She has authored seven monographs on linguistics and translation theory and over 250 original articles, published in Poland and abroad. Prof. Muskat-Tabakowska worked as a Visiting Professor at several European universities. She is the author of a second-degree programme in translation, accredited by the European Master’s in Translation network.
Peter Bakker (Aarhus University) is specialized in new languages (pidgins, creoles, mixed languages, twins’ languages). He works at the interface between linguistics, history, and anthropology. He has published widely on these topics, including typological features of creole languages and mixed languages, as well as on indigenous languages of the Americas, Basque and Romani. Currently he coordinates a project on the genesis and history of Karriols, the extinct Dutch-lexifier creole of the former Danish West Indies. His recent book publications include A grammar of 18th century Haitian Creole (in press), Pidgins, creoles, and language contact in Danish and Dutch colonial contexts (2024, co-editor with K.F. Bøegh), Fieldworkers and women in and around the Basque Country (2018, co-author) and Creole Studies – Phylogenetic Approaches (2017, co-editor). His articles cover a wide range of subjects: from languages created by twins, pidgins, Basque-Amerindian contacts, morphology, the genesis of the Michif language, mixed languages, grammaticalization in creole languages as well as several sketches of pidgins.
Ad Backus is a Professor of Linguistics and Sociolinguistics at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. He has worked on codeswitching and other aspects of language contact, and on the application of a usage-based perspective to explanations of contact data and other aspects of language use. His work, often co-written with colleagues, has appeared in various journals and co-authored books. He is also the current Editor of the International Journal of Bilingualism.
Maciej Eder (https://maciejeder.org/) is the director of the Institute of Polish Language (Polish Academy of Sciences), chair of the Committee of Linguistics at the Polish Academy of Sciences, principal investigator of the project Computational Literary Studies Infrastructure, co-founder of the Computational Stylistics Group, and the main developer of the R package ‘Stylo’ for performing stylometric analyses. He is interested in early modern literature, but mostly in quantitative approaches to style variation. These include measuring style using statistical methods, authorship attribution based on quantitative measures, as well as “distant reading” methods to analyze dozens (or hundreds) of literary works at a time.
Alexander Onysko is Full Professor in English Linguistics at the University of Klagenfurt. His main research interests and publications are in the areas of World Englishes, Language Contact, Bi/Multilingualism, and Cognitive Linguistics. He often combines theories and approaches from these fields in his research. His major current foci are on the application of conceptual metaphors in multilingual contexts and on Englishes in Aotearoa New Zealand. He is the editor of the series Bloomsbury Advances in World Englishes and co-editor of the journal AAA (Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies). Some of his publications include Language Contact and World Englishes (2016), Metaphor Variation in Englishes Around the World (2017, with Marcus Callies), Processes of language contact in English influence on German (2019), Reconceptualizing language contact phenomena as cognitive processes (2019), Research Developments in World Englishes (2021), and Englishes in a Globalized World: Exploring Contact Effects on Other Languages (2022, with Peter Siemund).