Official Program for the
2026 NARNiHS Research Incubator
North American Research Network in Historical Sociolinguistics
2026 Research Incubator
07-09 May 2026
Entirely online via video-conference!
All NARNiHS members welcome! Not a NARNiHS member yet?
Follow these easy instructions to sign up for membership: https://narnihs.org/?page_id=2
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Thursday, 07 May 2026 – all baseline times are U.S. Eastern Time
08:30-09:00 (05:30-06:00 Seattle ; 14:30-15:00 Berlin)
Zoom room open for casual conversation
8:55 – Opening remarks – Joshua Bousquette, NARNiHS Convenor
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Session 1: Conflict and Contact; Change and Resilience
Moderator: Joshua Bousquette – University of Georgia, USA
09:00-09:30 (06:00-06:30 Seattle ; 15:00-15:30 Berlin)
The Arrival of Southern English in Oklahoma
– Andrew Chase Carter – University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
09:30-10:00 (06:30-07:00 Seattle ; 15:30-16:00 Berlin)
The Gates of Verbal Mistreatment: The Sociopragmatics of Conflict Discourse in the Talmud
– RB Perelmutter and Bogi Perelmutter – University of Kansas, USA
10:00-10:30 (07:00-07:30 Seattle ; 16:00-16:30 Brussels)
Definiteness in motion: DP variation and scribal influence in Medieval Latin Hagiography
– Francesca Digiaro – Universiteit Gent, Belgium
10:30-11:00 (07:30-08:00 Seattle ; 16:30-17:00 Berlin)
Break
11:00-12:00 (08:00-09:00 Seattle ; 17:00-18:00 Berlin)
Incubation of ideas from the panel – collaborative brainstorming and collective discussion
– [1 hour] led by: Joshua Bousquette – University of Georgia, USA
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Session 2: Orality, Discourse, and Social Meaning
Moderator: Mark Richard Lauersdorf – University of Kentucky, USA
12:00-12:30 (09:00-09:30 Seattle ; 18:00-18:30 Berlin)
Reconstructing speaker biographies through oral language data
– Tobias Weber and Emily Brown – GESIS (Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences), Germany; California State University, Fullerton, USA
12:30-13:00 (09:30-10:00 Seattle ; 18:30-19:00 Berlin)
Can You Document Language Death in Public Digital Spaces? : Indo-Portuguese Creole on YouTube as a Historical Sociolinguistic Corpus
– Meenakshi Rajeev – Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India
13:00-13:30 (10:00-10:30 Seattle ; 19:00-19:30 Madrid)
From Prestige to Obsolescence: The Life Cycle of Tap [ɾ] in RP over a Century
– Delia Belando – Universidad de Murcia, Spain
13:30-14:00 (10:30-11:00 Seattle ; 19:30-20:00 Berlin)
Break
14:00-15:00 (11:00-12:00 Seattle ; 20:00-21:00 Berlin)
Incubation of ideas from the panel – collaborative brainstorming and collective discussion
– [1 hour] led by: Mark Richard Lauersdorf – University of Kentucky, USA
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Friday, 08 May 2026 – all baseline times are U.S. Eastern Time
08:30-09:00 (05:30-06:00 Seattle ; 14:30-15:00 Berlin)
Zoom room open for casual conversation
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Session 3: Social Change and (Competing) Language Norms
Moderator: Anna Havinga – University of Bristol, England
09:00-09:30 (06:00-06:30 Seattle ; 15:00-15:30 Berlin)
Final Fortition in Polish-American English in Trempealeau County, WI
– Calvin Kosmatka – University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
09:30-10:00 (06:30-07:00 Seattle ; 15:30-16:00 Berlin)
Demographics of Vernacularization in Early Modern Book Printing in Europe 1450-1830
– Peeter Tinits – Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany
10:00-10:30 (07:00-07:30 Seattle ; 16:00-16:30 Berlin ; 17:00-17:30 L’viv)
Competing Pre-Soviet and Soviet Norms in Ukrainian Feminisation: Language Contact and Diaspora Standardisation in the 20th Century
– Olena Synchak – Department of Slavic Studies, University of Klagenfurt, Austria
10:30-11:00 (07:30-08:00 Seattle ; 16:30-17:00 Berlin)
Break
11:00-12:00 (08:00-09:00 Seattle ; 17:00-18:00 Berlin)
Incubation of ideas from the panel – collaborative brainstorming and collective discussion
– [1 hour] led by: Anna Havinga – University of Bristol, England
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Session 4: Immediacy and Distance – Examining our Sources of Data
Moderated Meta-Discussion
Moderator: Mark Richard Lauersdorf – University of Kentucky, USA
12:00-13:30 (09:00-10:30 Seattle ; 18:00-19:30 Berlin)
Panelists:
Joshua Bousquette – University of Georgia, USA
Angela Hoffman – Uppsala universitet, Sweden
– Discussants – the assembled audience
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Saturday, 09 May 2026 – all baseline times are U.S. Eastern Time
08:30-09:00 (05:30-06:00 Seattle ; 14:30-15:00 Berlin)
Zoom room open for casual conversation
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Session 5: Words and their Meaning in Social/Historical Context
Moderator: Joe Salmons – University of Wisconsin-Madision, USA
09:00-09:30 (06:00-06:30 Seattle ; 15:00-15:30 Berlin ; 18:30-19:00 Hyderabad)
A Historical Sociolinguistic Approach for Analysing the Lexicon of Anglo-Indian English
– Smita Joseph – The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India
09:30-10:00 (06:30-07:00 Seattle ; 15:30-16:00 Berlin)
Haushalter or Boss: language use among Hutterites in reference to community management
– Cameron Wollmann – Independent Scholar, Canada
10:00-10:30 (07:00-07:30 Seattle ; 16:00-16:30 Berlin ; 17:00-17:30 Tel Aviv)
From Kinship Terms to Onomastic Morphemes: Semantic Bleaching, Cliticization, and Orthographic Fusion in Phoenician Personal Names
– Tal Bernstein, Letizia Cerqueglini, Shai Gordin – Tel Aviv University (2x), Israel; Ariel University, Israel
10:30-11:00 (07:30-08:00 Seattle ; 16:30-17:00 Berlin)
Ope, You Want a Brat, or No?: Performing Wisconsin English
– Tia Sadlon – University of Edinburgh, Scotland
11:00-11:30 (08:00-08:30 Seattle ; 17:00-17:30 Berlin)
Break
11:30-12:30 (08:30-09:30 Seattle ; 17:30-18:30 Berlin)
Incubation of ideas from the panel – collaborative brainstorming and collective discussion
– [1 hour] led by: Joe Salmons – University of Wisconsin-Madision, USA
12:30-12:35 (09:30-09:35 Seattle ; 18:30-18:35 Berlin)
Closing remarks – Joshua Bousquette – NARNiHS Convenor