Teach-ins

Teach-ins will take place on Tuesday, June 30, 2026.

Each session will run for the full day.

More details, including registration information, will be announced soon!

Program

Phonological typology

Instructors: Shelece Easterday (University of Hawai'i at Mānoa), Natalia Kuznetsova (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore), and Kate Lindsey (Boston University)

This teach-in is an introduction to the study of phonological typology. It will begin with an overview of the major topics, methods, and approaches to the cross-linguistic study and comparison of segmental and suprasegmental patterns, including signed languages. We will discuss practical and conceptual challenges in conducting research in phonological typology, including issues rooted in fieldwork and linguistic description practices as well as those related to data coding. We will then specifically focus on the application of diachronic typological methods to phonology and the related challenges, with particular attention to how patterns of synchronic variation, including sociolinguistic variation, can illuminate processes of change. Throughout the teach-in, methods, approaches, and challenges will be illustrated using data and findings from influential studies on segmental inventories, phonotactic patterns, word prosodic patterns, as well as from the authors’ own research. The teach-in will conclude with a summary of the most important take-home messages and a group exercise, during which participants will have the opportunity to apply different methodological approaches, covered during the course, to design a model study in phonological typology. This class assumes no prior experience with phonological typology; however, a basic familiarity with phonological concepts and cross-linguistic comparison will be helpful.

Schedule:

• Session 1: Introduction to phonological typology (90 minutes)
• Session 2: Challenges in phonological typological research (90 minutes)
• Session 3: Diachronic phonological typology (90 minutes)
• Session 4: Conclusion, group exercise and discussion (90 minutes)

Mande languages in a typological and areal perspective

Instructors: Maria Khachaturyan (Lacito, CNRS; University of Helsinki), Denis Creissels (University of Lyon), Maria Konoshenko (University of Helsinki), Valentin Vydrin (Inalco; Llacan, CNRS)

This teach-in introduces Mande languages from typological and areal perspectives. The first session gives an overview of the family and its linguistic features, some of which are typologically unique. We provide basic background on family-internal variation and family-external influences. The second session zooms into phonology and phonetics with a special focus on tone. All Mande languages have multiple level tone contrasts, and some have complex surface tonal rules. We also explore patterns of contact-induced variation in tone studied for the first time in tonal languages of Africa. The third session revolves around the constituent order, S – Aux – O – V – X, its underlying syntax and especially the status of postverbal arguments expressed by adpositional phrases. We study two syntactic domains, relative clauses and reflexivity, both of which feed into illustrating the controversial syntax of adpositional phrases. In the final session we give an general overview of the equative, locational, existential and possessive clauses of Mande languages in a typological and areal perspective, and discuss in more detail the typologically unique phenomenon of argument-predicate reversal found in the equative clauses of several Mande languages. Each section concludes with suggestions of further research in the respective domain. No prior knowledge of Mande or African languages is required.

• Session 1. Introduction: a typological portrait of Mande languages
• Session 2. Topics in phonetics and phonology, with a special focus on tone
• Session 3. Topics in morphosyntax I: Reflexivity, relativization, constituent order
• Session 4. Topics in morphosyntax II: Equative, locational, existential and possessive clauses

Practical R for quantitative typology

Instructors: Marc Allassonnière-Tang (CNRS) (& potentially others)

In this teach-in, we will learn how to read and compile different linguistic databases (Grambank and D-place). Then, we will practice two tasks that are highly frequent in publications: creating maps and running mixed models that control for area and language family. The practice session will give participants the opportunity to test their own hypotheses and be familiar with the code. Participants do not need to be familiar with programming or statistics. All participants are required to install R and R studio https://rstudio-education.github.io/hopr/starting.htmlon their laptop and bring their laptops for the session. The session will not be exhaustive due to the time limit. However, the session is intended to serve as an introduction to help orient participants to learn more on their own (if they want to) after the class.

• Session 1. Reading databases into R (Grambank and D-place as basic examples)
• Session 2. Creating maps (world and specific areas)
• Session 3. TRunning mixed models that control for geographic area and language family as random effects
• Session 4. Practice session

Describing languages using Neural Speech Processing Models: Recent advances and illustration with two creole languages

Instructors: William Havard & Emmanuel Schang