LINGUIST List 22.3452 Thu Sep 01 2011 Calls: Typology, Ling Theories, General Ling/USA Editor for this issue: Alison Zaharee <alisonlinguistlist.org> New! Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:             http://multitree.linguistlist.org/ LINGUIST is pleased to announce the launch of an exciting new feature: Easy Abstracts! Easy Abs is a free abstract submission and review facility designed to help conference organizers and reviewers accept and process abstracts online. Just go to: http://www.linguistlist.org/confcustom, and begin your conference customization process today! With Easy Abstracts, submission and review will be as easy as 1-2-3! Directory         1.     Frederick J. Newmeyer , Formal Linguistics and Grammatical Complexity Message 1: Formal Linguistics and Grammatical Complexity Date: 31-Aug-2011 From: Frederick J. Newmeyer <lingconfu.washington.edu> Subject: Formal Linguistics and Grammatical Complexity E-mail this message to a friend Full Title: Formal Linguistics and Grammatical Complexity Date: 23-Mar-2012 - 24-Mar-2012 Location: Seattle, WA, USA Contact Person: Frederick J. Newmeyer Meeting Email: < click here to access email > Web Site: http://depts.washington.edu/lingconf/index.php Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Typology Call Deadline: 31-Oct-2011 Meeting Description: Can One Language be 'More Complex' Than Another? For many decades, the received wisdom in the field of linguistics was that languages could not differ in terms of their overall complexity. As Fromkin and Rodman put it their celebrated textbook: ‘All languages are equally complex and equally capable of expressing any idea in the universe.’ The equal complexity hypothesis has been challenged recently, most notably in two compilations of papers edited by Miestamo, Sinnemäki, and Karlsson (2008) and Sampson, Gil, and Trudgill (2009). Most of the authors in these volumes look at language from a typological-functional perspective. The interesting question for us is whether formal linguistics (broadly defined, and encompassing formal approaches to processing) has anything to contribute to the debate. One can imagine a wide range of positions. For example, one might take the view that it follows from the nature of UG that all languages are necessarily equally complex. Or one might hypothesize that UG places no limits whatever on differential complexity. This workshop will be devoted to whether there are complexity differences among the world's languages and to whether it is a reasonable task to attempt to devise a metric by which relative complexity might be computed. Invited Speakers: Peter Culicover, Ohio State University John A. Hawkins, University of Cambridge and UC Davis Lisa Matthewson, University of British Columbia Andrea Moro, Institute of Advanced Study, Pavia Ljiljana Progovac, Wayne State University Call for Papers: Abstracts are solicited for 35-45 minute talks devoted to these questions. Please email your abstract to the address on the web page and confine the text of the abstract to one printed page, with another page (if desired) devoted to examples and references. The deadline for the receipt of abstracts is October 31, 2011. Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 01-Sep-2011       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.