Report: Conference in Evolutionary Linguistics I, Guangzhou, 2009
报告：演化语言学学术会议 I，广州，2009
Ying Wai Wong 黄英伟

Conference in Evolutionary Linguistics I (首届演化语言学研讨会2 / 演化音法学讨论会) was held in Guangzhou, from 28th to 30th March, 2009. The conference was organized by Fangyan Journal from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) (中国社会科学院《方言》季刊), Bulletin of Chinese Linguistics from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) (香港科技大学《中国语言学集刊》), and Dongfang Yuyanxue from EISU (上海高校比较语言学e-研究院《东方语言学》), and co-organized by Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University (广东技术师范学院) by which venue and facilities for conference discussions were provided.

Participants were mainly scholars and postgraduate students from universities (e.g. 湖南大学, 广东技术师范学院) / research institutes (e.g. CASS) all over mainland China. Besides, there were also research students and scholars from HKUST and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).

The working language of the conference was Chinese. The conference consisted of three days of oral presentations, with no parallel session, such that audience did not have to miss any talk of interest. A large variety of languages and dialects spoken in China, with a wide geographical coverage, were talked about in presentations, ranging from Lai (来语) on Hainan Island in southern China, dialects in central China like Cantonese, Xiang, etc., to Tibetan used in western China and Mongolian in the north.

Although the conference title does not suggest a heavy focus on phonetics, a considerable portion of research reports presented in the conference made use of instrumental measurement in obtaining evidence to verify research hypotheses. Traditional acoustic methods like formant and fundamental frequency trajectories, duration measures, power analysis, waveform inspection were widely used (e.g. studies of Chaozhou entering tones by Zhu Xiaonong (朱晓农) and Hong Ying (洪英), Zhuang vowels by Zhou Xuewen (周学文), and Lhasa Tibetan glottal stops by Long Congjun (龙从军)). Besides, other physiological measures during speech production were also talked about, like electro-palatography (EPG), oral / nasal air-flow measurement, and electromagnetic articulography (EMA) data.