Imagine yourself as an Assistant Professor of Linguistics and German at the University of Texas about fifteen years ago, eating lunch in a diner deep in Central Texas. You have dedicated your life to the German language and the people who speak it, and all of sudden a couple of tables over, you hear a group of elderly men speaking a very distinct version of German, and try as you may, you cannot place the dialect. Then you ask them where they are from, and they tell you they’ve lived right here for generations, and that their ancestors came to Texas a long time ago!
Boas unexpectedly found a treasure in the middle of the Texas hill country. Alas, it is a fleeting treasure, as the dialect will be extinct in a few years. Do come to hear the tale of the Texas Germans, their language, the Texas German Dialect Project, and how it involved one of our Houston-Leipzig Directors, Rodney Koenig.
You should not miss Boas’s entertaining talk! Do join us on Thursday, January 28, 2016, at 6:30 p.m. at the American Red Cross Building, 2700 Southwest Freeway, Houston, TX 77098. Our customary food and beverage reception starts at 6:30 p.m. Registration will begin at 6:15 p.m., the presentation at 7:00 p.m. Meeting fees are $10 for members, $5 for students, and $15 for nonmembers, regardless of whether you participate in the reception. Ample parking is available without charge.
Please respond now to angelika@houstonleipzig.org so that we can plan properly. We are looking forward to seeing all of you!
Hans Boas says this about himself: “I am a professor for Germanic Linguistics in the Department of Germanic Studies and the Department of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. Before coming to Austin, I was a postdoctoral researcher with the FrameNet project at the International Computer Science Institute and a research fellow in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, funded by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (‘German Academic Exchange Service’). Prior to that, I studied law and linguistics at the Georg-August- Universität Göttingen, Germany. I received both my M.A. (thesis: The Passive in German) and my Ph.D. (dissertation: Resultative Constructions in English and German) in the Linguistics Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.”
Check out Prof. Boas’s astounding academic CV here: http://sites.la.utexas.edu/hcb/files/2015/09/CV-HCB-September-2015.pdf.
For a little housekeeping, annual membership fees are due. You can fill out your membership information here and pay your dues:
Membership Application (Fillable)
See you all on Thursday!