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Welcome to RCLT
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The
Research Centre for Linguistic Typology (RCLT) is part of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences within La Trobe University. The Centre is located north of the main Bundoora campus and is within walking distance of tram stop number 61 (tram route 86). |
What do we do at the RCLT?
The Research Centre for Linguistic Typology (RCLT) is committed to comprehensively documenting and analysing the linguistic structures of endangered and previously undescribed or under-described languages. This commitment is part of a worldwide enterprise to document and preserve for posterity as much of the world's linguistic and cultural diversity and heritage as possible. Analyses are based on primary linguistic data collected through extensive immersion fieldwork in speech communities across the world, and, wherever possible, data are archived in international digital archives. Research at the RCLT covers many areas of the world, though we have particular strengths in the languages of the Tibeto-Burman family and the languages of the Amazon and Papua New Guinea. All research is cast within the larger framework of typological linguistics, thus drawing on and contributing to our theoretical understanding of human language, culture and cognition. The RCLT undertakes typological investigations, following an inductive methodology, putting forward generalisations concerning the nature and mechanism of the human language ability and associated cognitive capacities, and investigates relationships between languages, both in terms of historical development and genetic links, and the influence of contact phenomena between geographically contiguous languages within a linguistic area. This research enables us to lay the foundation for scientific understanding concerning the reasons for and mechanisms of language development.
Our interest in linguistic typology also represents a significant contribution to meeting the challenges of language documentation since the languages we encounter involve structures, contrasts and categories that have not been previously identified or that are little understood. Only through comparative typological work can these aspects of languages be described accurately, and this is the pathway to our collective/internationally developing understanding of exactly what is involved in linguistic and cultural diversity.
Why the RCLT is a good place to be
The RCLT has, at any one time, several Postdoctoral Fellows and several postgraduate students aside from the regular members. Each member documents an endangered language based on immersion fieldwork, and each one participates in the typological discussions as well. Each year there are also a number of Visiting Fellows who contribute to the highly intellectual ambience of the Centre. What makes the RCLT a good place to be is the fact that there are so many linguists all working on similar projects (doing immersion fieldwork and documenting a language) and within a similar typological/functional theoretical orientation, and we have many structured and unstructured activities to stimulate interaction and exchange among the members and between the members and other linguists at La Trobe University and outside the University.
Scholars from other universities who undertake research on language documentation and description and on linguistic typology are encouraged to consider carrying out their postdoctoral fellowship or spending their sabbatical at the Centre. We can provide a room, a computer, and an intellectual ambience of the highest order. We also welcome enquiries from students interested in applying for a PhD scholarship to work on documentation of an endangered language.
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