The diversity of the world’s languages is on the verge of becoming dramatically reduced in the decades to come. Partly due to the attention that has been drawn to this problem, the field of linguistics has been moving towards taking the diversity of languages more fully into account. The dramatic change in the amount and the nature of primary data that is being collected and analyzed has proven to have, and will continue to have, a profound influence on our insights into the human language faculty. The EUROCORES programme “Better Analyses Based on Endangered Languages (EuroBABEL)” will solidify this development and strengthen the impact of European research on linguistics as a whole. By conducting the research in close cooperation with researchers in the countries where endangered languages are spoken, the process of linguistic description, documentation and analysis of underdescribed languages will be accelerated.
The EuroBABEL programme is crucially different from, and complements, existing documentation initiatives in that our emphasis lies on bringing the newly gathered data to bear on the development of linguistic theory and all areas concerned with the study of language. The programmel covers a number of projects that will work on primary data, both newly collected and archival material, in order to concentrate on the analysis and the use of the results to expand and correct our insights into the structure and nature of human language.
Following agreement with funding organisations in Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Switzerland, Turkey, UK and US the European Science Foundation has launched a Call for Outline Proposals for Collaborative Research Projects (CRPs) to be undertaken within the EUROCORES Programme “EuroBABEL: Better Analyses Based on Endangered Languages” in March 2008.
This programme aims to support high quality multidisciplinary research and is expected to run for 3-4 years; it includes national research funding as well as support for networking and dissemination activities managed by the ESF. The participating funding organizations have brought together a research budget of approx. 5 Mio Euros.
Outline Proposals were to be submitted by Tuesday 20 May 2008, 12:00 PM. Full Proposals were invited by 30 June 2008 with Tuesday 16 September 2008, 12:00 PM as deadline for submission. Funding decisions were finalized in April 2009.
To download the EuroBABEL Call for Outline Proposals click here.
EuroBABEL Theme proposal |
EUROCORES is a truly “bottom-up” funding mechanism, where - through its annual call for theme proposals – the ESF solicits new ideas from the scientific community with a view to creating large-scale collaborative research programmes in and across all scientific domains. Out of these submitted ideas - called EUROCORES theme proposals – around five will be selected each year to be developed into EUROCORES programmes. The names of the people who submitted the EuroBABEL theme proposal, and in this way stood at the basis of the EuroBABEL programme, can be downloaded here. |
