Welcome to RCLT 

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 RCLT?
The main business of the Centre consists in putting forward inductive generalisations about human language. For instance, it enquires whether all languages have classes of noun and verb. It investigates the interrelation between different grammatical categories -- if gender choice depends upon number is it always the case that there are more genders in singular than plural? And it looks at how languages change -- in what circumstances and from what sources do languages develop tones? And why and how do languages lose tones? The Centre organises a bi-annual International Workshop on topics in typological theory. During the year, various seminars and workshops are also held at the Centre.

Why the RCLT is a good place to be
The RCLT has, at any time, several Postdoctoral Fellows and several postgraduate students. 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 description and in typological issues are encouraged to consider carrying out their postdoctoral fellowships or spending their sabbatical at the Centre.

Content Approved by: Director, RCLT
Page maintained by: Executive Officer
Last Updated: 20 October, 2009 10:34 AM