Athabaskan/Dene Languages Conference 2012 Call For Papers

The Athbabskan/Dene Languages Conference meets annually to discuss issues relevant to the Athabaskan languages. This year's conference will be held in Bellingham, a place not known as Athabaskan territory. It is, however, home to Ed Vajda, renown scholar of the Dene-Yeniseian Hypothesis connecting Dene language with the Yeniseian languages of Siberian. Vajda will co-host the conference with Sharon Hargus of University of Washington.

Bellingham is also a good choice in terms of logistics, being easily accessible from Athabaskan/Dene regions in Alaska, Canada, the Pacific Northwest, and Arizona/New Mexico.

I received the following announcement from the conference organizers:

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The 2012 Athabaskan/Dene Languages Conference will take place at Western Washington University, August 15-17. Themes of this year's conference are verbal prefixation and revitalization of Athabaskan languages. Case studies of any aspect of the disjunct prefixes of understudied Athabaskan languages are particularly encouraged. It is requested that presenters familiarize themselves with the historical/comparative framework for verbal prefixation in Leer 2006 and take this as a point of departure.

The conference will be organized roughly as follows:

• Aug 15: Descriptive studies
• Aug 16: Revitalization
• Aug 17: Comparative/historical studies

One-page abstracts summarizing papers to be presented should be e-mailed to Sharon Hargus (sharon [at] u.washington.edu) by June 15.

Ed Vajda and Sharon Hargus