While interest in the spoken language among Romance scholars dates back a long time, work in this field of research has expanded rapidly since the 1960s. Systematic recording, transcription and documentation of spoken language data has been undertaken for several Romance languages. Despite this, Romance linguistics is still far behind other disciplines as far as size of corpora and availability of electronic corpora are concerned.

The Freiburg workshop is intended to bring together linguists who are working on corpora of Romance languages or using spoken data for their research. Contributions may include:

• theoretical and methodological reflections on issues such as collecting, transcribing, publishing and analysing spoken language corpora
• presentation of current or recent corpus projects and tools for analysing electronic corpora
• presentation of the results of recent research on varieties of Romance, for which spoken language corpora were used.

Date, address and conference schedule: The workshop is scheduled for October 6th until October 8th 2000. It will take place in building 'Wilhelmstrasse 26' of Freiburg's Albert-Ludwigs University, Humanities' Campus (building no. 21 on the plan of Freiburg university). The nearest stop of public transport is "Stadttheater" (about 300 m away).

Panels and panel contributions: There will be two parallel panels on the following topics:

• Panel A: Corpus projects, language data management and tools for analysis
• Panel B: Corpus-based studies on spoken varieties of Romance languages

A total of about 45 papers will be read during the conference. The abstracts are available here for reading and download. (The delay for paper submissions is over - sorry, no more paper proposals may be accepted.)

Registration, fees and payment options: Please send us your address and personal information by e-mail; you will then receive the registration form and further information by ordinary mail. You will be asked to pay a conference fee of 50 EUR (or its equivalent). This covers the documentation of the workshop, refreshments during conference breaks and the conference dinner. Undergraduate students and unemployed scholars will pay a reduced fee of 30 EUR.

Travel: By airplane: The closest airport is at Basel-Mulhouse (EuroAirport). The EuroAirport and Freiburg are connected by the SBG-AirBus bus line which runs almost hourly. Travel time 1 hour. Information: SBG-Verkaufsbüro Freiburg, phone +49 / 7 61 / 3 61 72.
Between Frankfurt Airport Station and Freiburg, there is an hourly service by direct IC/EC trains. Travel time 2 hours. Information: TravelService Deutsche Bahn, phone +49 / 18 05 / 99 66 33.
Between Zurich airport and Freiburg, there is an hourly train service, with change of trains at Zurich Central Station and Basel SBB in most cases.

By train: Freiburg may be reached by IC/EC trains of the Hamburg-Köln-Basel line (hourly) and by ICE trains connecting Hamburg, Frankfurt, Basel and Switzerland (every two hours). Information: TravelService Deutsche Bahn, phone +49 / 18 05 / 99 66 33. The conference building is a 5-10 minutes' walk away from the Central station.

By car: Leave highway A5 Frankfurt-Basel at "Freiburg Mitte" exit. Follow the main road which leads into the city until you reach the first traffic lights. Turn left into Werderring or Wilhelmstrasse (cf. city map). There is no free parking available next to the conference building. Please ask at your hotel for a possibility to leave your car or use one of the numerous covered car parks in the city center. There are two of them nearby: Universitätsbibliothek parking and Kollegiengebäude car park (about 8 EUR per day).

Accomodation: Freiburg offers a huge variety of hotels, though most of them with rather high prices. Please note that October is a very busy period for tourism in Freiburg, so do not wait too long before making your hotel reservation.

The following hotels are near to the conference building. The prices mentioned in the following list refer to the average costs for bed and breakfast in single (EZ) or double rooms (DZ). All the hotels are located in D-79098 Freiburg. Please add the regional code +49 / 7 61 in front of all phone or fax numbers. The numbers (1) to (10) refer to the city map:

• Colombi Hotel (1), Am Colombi-Park, tel.: 2 10 60, fax: 3 14 10 (EZ 300 DM, DZ 460 DM)
• Dorint-Kongress-Hotel (2), Konrad-Adenauer-Platz 2, tel.: 3 88 90, fax: 3 88 91 00 (EZ 280 DM, DZ 300 DM)
• InterCityHotel (3), Bismarckallee 3, tel.: 3 80 00, fax: 3 80 09 99 (EZ 200 DM, DZ 235 DM)
• Hotel Rheingold (4), Eisenbahnstrasse 47, tel.: 2 82 10, fax: 2 82 11 11 (EZ 190 DM, DZ 230 DM)
• Hotel Victoria (5), Eisenbahnstrasse 54, tel.: 20 73 40, fax: 20 73 44 44 (EZ 170 DM, DZ 220 DM)
• Park Hotel Post (6), Eisenbahnstrasse 35-37, tel.: 38 54 80, fax: 3 16 80 (EZ 160 DM, DZ 240 DM)
• Hotel Minerva (7), Poststrasse 8, tel.: 2 02 06 16, fax: 2 02 06 26 (EZ 150 DM, DZ 200 DM)
• Hotel Am Rathaus (8), Rathausgasse 4-8, tel.: 29 61 60, fax: 2 96 16 66 (EZ 135 DM, DZ 210 DM)
• Hotel Barbara Garni (9), Poststrasse 4, tel.: 29 62 50, fax: 2 66 88 (EZ 130 DM, DZ 170 DM)
• Hotel Markgräfler Hof (10), Gerberau 22, tel.: 3 25 40, fax: 3 79 47 (EZ 150 DM, DZ 200 DM)

There are accommodations of the economy category outside the city center. To get information or to book, you may contact the tourist office: Freiburg Wirtschaft und Touristik, Rotteckring 14, D-79098 Freiburg, tel.: +49 / 7 61 / 38 81 01, fax: +49 / 7 61 / 3 70 03, e-mail <touristik@fwt-online.de>, or the workshop’s convenor.

For further information please contact:

• Claus D. Pusch
  Albert-Ludwigs-Universität
  Romanisches Seminar
  Werthmannplatz 3
  D-79085 Freiburg im Breisgau
  Fax ++49 / 7 61 / 2 03 31 95
  E-mail pusch@uni-freiburg.de