The project involves several research-related aspects of the Linguistic Institute, a biennial summer school sponsored by the Linguistic Society of America covering all areas of linguistics to be held at Stanford University in July 2007. The proposal requests support for three facets of the Institute: (i) an educational component devoted to teaching research skills, (ii) a special event presenting advanced skills, and (iii) workshops focusing on particular research areas. These activities are all designed to fit with the larger institute theme 'Empirical Foundations for Theories of Language', and will feature presentations of new or emergent research methodologies or technologies.
The first part of the proposal involves support for a set of presession workshops which will teach research skills needed for courses and activities at the Institute. These workshops are intended to allow the regular session of courses to be taught at a higher level, especially appropriate for graduate students who might be at the point of defining their own research directions. The second part involves support for an advanced skills-related special workshop on 'Linear Mixed Effects Modelling'. The third part involves a series of more traditional workshops, which span the field of linguistics, on topics which include new methodologies in phonology, language acquisition research and cyberinfrastructure, ethnographic methods in sociocultural linguistics, computational approaches to writing systems and to deciphering scripts, and a large-scale workshop on the theoretical implications of Creole studies. This last workshop will involve participants from ethnically underrepresented groups, including graduate student attendees.
