The island of Java is home to several major world languages. Javanese—spoken mainly in Central and East Java— is the world’s 10th or 11th largest language in number of native speakers. It has one of the oldest and fullest recorded histories of any Austronesian language. It also has been of considerable interest to scholars because of its unique speech level system. Sundanese—spoken in West Java— has over 27 million speakers, and Madurese—spoken on the neighboring island of Madura and throughout parts of East Java—is the third largest local language, with up to 13 million speakers. Geography, history, and typology bind these languages with linguistically related languages on the neighboring islands of Bali and Lombok. Each of these languages displays a range of dialects, isolects, continua, and contact varieties and yet they have received relatively little attention from linguists. With this symposium, we offer an opportunity for scholars working on any aspect of Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, Balinese, Sasak, or any non-Malay language spoken on these islands, to come together and share their findings. We aim to encourage and promote continued research on these important and unique languages.

Activity, Date, and Venue

AIFS in coperation with Universitas Negeri Malang, University of Oslo, and University of Maryland will conduct this event on:

Date : 20-22 May 2021

Time : 07.00-21.00 (different time zones)

Venue : online, via Zoom

Keynote Speakers

Ika Nurhayani is an Associate Professor and the head of the Linguistics Master Program at the Department of Language and Literature, Faculty of Cultural Studies, Universitas

Brawijaya. She received a Fulbright scholarship in 2008 and graduated from the Department of Linguistics, Cornell University, in 2013. Her research focuses primarily on Javanese phonology and syntax.

Carly Sommerlot recently completed her PhD from University of Texas at Arlington, USA with a dissertation entitled “On the Syntax of West Kalimantan: Asymmetries and A'-movement in Malayic and Land Dayak languages”. She has conducted fieldwork in western Indonesia. Currently she is an academic staff the University of Texas, Arlington, in the Linguistics and TESOL Department.

For more info:

ISLOJ: https://indoling.com/isloj/isloj-8/

ISMIL: https://indoling.com/ismil/ismil-24/