The National Science Foundation will support the 19th annual Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop (CGSW), to be hosted by The Graduate Center of The City University of New York on June 3-5, 2004. CGSW is a major international conference, widely recognized as the world's premier venue for generative linguists studying the syntax (sentence structure) of the Germanic languages, organized on an annual basis since 1984. This year's edition will feature a special focus on variation across Dutch and English dialects, with keynote addresses by Professors Hans Bennis and Alison Henry. Professor Bennis, the director of the P.J. Meertens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, will report specifically on the recent completion of the first volume of the syntactic atlas of the dialects of Dutch, a major milestone in comparative Germanic syntax. Professor Henry, an internationally renowned specialist on syntactic variation in English, will report on ongoing research on the differences between standard English and its dialects, focusing particularly on Belfast English. Alongside the two keynote addresses, the program includes sixteen papers selected by a peer-review process, presented by linguists from six European countries and the United States. The complete program as well as other important information about the event is accessible on-line at: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/dept/lingu/events/CGSW19/index.html.
In current theoretical research, studies that compare the linguistic phenomena of different languages play a pivotal role in establishing and refining the theoretical machinery. Comparative linguistic research conducted within the confines of a particular language family has proved particularly conducive to answering detailed questions about the universal principles and language-particular parameters (i.e., points where languages differ from each other). The Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop is the primary forum for the dissemination of research results in the domain of syntactic variation within the Germanic language family, as well as variation between the Germanic languages and other languages. The program of CGSW19 features comparative studies on the Scandinavian languages, Dutch and German and their dialects, syntactic variation in English (including diachronic variation), differences between Germanic and other languages (such as Bangla, French and Greek), as well as the acquisition of the Germanic languages by (first or second language) learners - a state-of-the-art palette of ongoing research on syntactic variation within and beyond the Germanic language family, furthering the development of generative syntactic theory.
