Full Title: ESSLLI 2023 Workshop: Internal and External Pressures Shaping Language

Date: 31-Jul-2023 - 04-Aug-2023
Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia
Contact Person: Milica Denić
Meeting Email: [email protected]
Web Site: https://sites.google.com/view/iepsl-esslli2023workshop/home?authuser=0

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; Computational Linguistics; General Linguistics; Psycholinguistics; Typology

Call Deadline: 25-Apr-2023

Meeting Description:

Human languages vary in their phonology, morphosyntax and semantics, but there are important constraints on this variation. What explains these typological similarities and differences across languages? Recent work has combined tools from linguistics, cognitive psychology and computer science to address this question. In addition to empirical discoveries, this has led to novel hypotheses for how similarities and differences are to be accounted for, invoking internal (e.g. cognitive) and/or external (e.g. communicative, historical, geographical) pressures on language structure. The aims of the workshop are two-fold: (i) expand the knowledge of different internal and external pressures on language, and how they explain cross-linguistic similarities and differences in different aspects of language structure, (ii) invite a critical discussion of implications of this work for the study of human cognition more generally.

Keynote speakers:

Roni Katzir (Tel Aviv University)
Mora Maldonado (Université de Nantes)
Shane Steinert-Threlkeld (University of Washington)

Call for Papers:

We invite theoretical, experimental and/or computational work on topics that include (but are not limited to):

- Novel internal and/or external pressures which may shape language structure
- Interaction among competing internal and/or external pressures on language
- Novel empirical generalizations that may be explained by internal and/or external pressures on language
- Distinguishing among competing explanations of cross-linguistic similarities and differences
- Synthesis of existing work which may shed light on which pressures (don’t) matter for which aspects of language structure
- Implication of work on cross-linguistic similarities and differences for the study of human cognition more generally

We invite anonymized submission of abstracts of 2 pages (12 pt font; 1in or 2.5cm margins) — with an extra page for references of figures — on new research on topics related to those listed above by 25 April 2023.

Please submit via EasyChair (to the track 'ESSLLI 2023 Workshop: Internal and external pressures shaping language'): https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=esslli2023