N'CLAV - Nordic collaboration on language variation is a network of researchers and research students in theoretical, descriptive and applied linguistics focussing on variation across the Nordic languages. The network is funded by NordForsk for the period 2010–2012 and it consists of twelve researcher groups, two in Denmark, one in the Faroe Islands, two in Finland, one in Iceland, four in Norway and two in Sweden.
N'CLAV brings researchers with different backgrounds and persuasions together in one network. Some of the researchers in the network have a mainly theoretical, structural approach, others a sociolinguistic approach; there are individuals and groups that focus on dialect-geographic issues whereas others have a background in language technology and computational linguistics. N'CLAV strengthens the cooperation between all of these and aims to be a strong arena for co-operation and research training as well as a base for broad cross-theoretical research on language variation. For more thorough information about the groups and their members, click on the link in the sidebar.
There are two main activities in the N'CLAV network: practical fieldwork and grand meetings.
At the yearly field trips to areas of special interest for researchers of linguistic variation, there is a special focus on giving research students and young researchers hands-on experiences with conducting empirical groundwork and, but there is also large possibilities for senior researchers to collect data. The first field work will take place in spring 2011 in the København area. For more information about fieldwork, click on the link Activities in the sidebar.
Participants in N'CLAV also gather each year for a Grand Meeting. In these scientific input in the form of academic papers, is combined with with concrete project work and networking activities. All papers are presented in plenary sessions, and there is a strong focus on young researchers, such as masters and PhD students and post doctors, in the young researchers' workshop. At the N'CLAV grand meetings, members of the network also have the opportunity to meet and develop strategies for obtaining funding for future projects from national, Nordic, and European sources. The first grand meeting will take place in Tromsø, June 8–10, 2010. This is a joint meeting for N'CLAV and ScanDiaSyn, see below. For more information about grand meetings, click on the link Activities in the sidebar.
The roots of the N'CLAV network are in the following projects and networks:
SCANDIASYN, Scandinavian Dialect Syntax, 2005–2010, funded by NordForsk.
"ScanDiaSyn - Scandinavian Dialect Syntax is a project umbrella where ten Scandinavian research groups now collaborate to systematically map and study the syntactic variation across the Scandinavian dialect continuum. The ten groups are spread across all of the five Nordic countries and one self-governed area (the Faroe Islands). Three non-Nordic groups and a group working on Finnish dialect syntax are liaised with the project through a NordForsk network.
In addition to scientific dissemination (papers, dissertations etc.) a concrete output from the collaboration will be the first pan-Scandinavian dialect collection ever: The Nordic Dialect Corpus. This corpus will be electronically available for researchers. The main responsibility for building the dialect corpus lies with the Text Laboratory at the University of Oslo. An additional aim is to develop pedagogical overviews on the basis of the investigations in the project."
NORMS, Nordic Center of excellence in Microcomparative Syntax, 2005–2010, funded by NOS-HS
"NORMS (Nordic Centre of Excellence in Microcomparative Syntax) is a five-year project to map, document, and analyze the complex patchwork of dialectal variation throughout the Scandinavian language continuum, from Iceland in the west to the Swedish-speaking areas of Finland in the east, and from the Norwegian settlements on Svalbard in the north to Denmark’s German border in the south. Unlike previous studies of Scandinavian dialects, this one focuses on grammar rather than words and pronunciation."
NLVN, Nordic Language Variation Network, 2006–2009, funded by NordForsk.
"Nordic Language Variation Network (NLVN) is a cooperative effort of six excellent research groups to investigate issues of linguistic variation from a partly sociolinguistic and partly theoretical, generative perspective. In general there is a certain degree of tension and disagreement between these two schools with respect to both methods and to fundamental ontological questions, and the primary objective of NLVN is to create a forum for constructive confrontation and discussion between sociolinguists and grammarians so that a deeper and broader understanding of causes, limitations, and basis for linguistic variation can be established."