Full Title: Variation and Change: A challenge for Linguistic Representations? - Workshop at DGfS 2025 Conference

Date: 05-Mar-2025 - 07-Mar-2025
Location: Mainz, Germany
Contact Person: Mathias Scharinger
Meeting Email: [email protected]
Web Site: https://dgfs.de/en/content/events/annual-conferences

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Neurolinguistics; Psycholinguistics; Sociolinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics
Subject Language(s): English (eng)
German (deu)

Call Deadline: 15-Aug-2024

Meeting Description:

The anual meeting of the DGfS (German Linguistic Society) will be held in Mainz in March 2025. Part of the program are several symposia (workshops). The overall conference theme is on Variation and Change. This workshop is very close to the conference theme. Its title is:
»Variation and Change: A challenge for Linguistic Representations?«

Call for Papers:

We invite researchers to submit proposals for the workshop »Variation and Change: A challenge for Linguistic Representations?«
The workshop ('Arbeitsgruppe'; AG) will be held at the Annual Meeting of the German Linguistics Society (DGfS) in Mainz, Germany (March 5-7th, 2025).

Linguistic representations – conceived of as cognitive correspondents of basic linguistic categories such as phonemes, morphemes, words, and phrases – are exposed to dynamic processes within and between groups of language users, and even within individual speakers. Variation on all levels of linguistic description can and do occur on intra- and inter-individually, and may eventually lead to change. Despite change and variation, certain aspects of linguistic representations appear to remain stable, thereby guaranteeing communication within and between groups of language users across space (e.g., regiolects/dialects) and time (e.g., generations). Current empirical research provides evidence for a paradigm shift, in that variation – oftentimes modelled as »noise« – is now taken seriously and analyzed or modelled in its own right. In this vein, the proposed AG deals with open questions such as the following:
• Questions of identification: What factors lead to linguistic forms being conceptualized as variants of a linguistic variable?
• Questions of scopus: Are the linguistic variants involved in variation conceptualized with different linguistic functions and/or attitudes? What is the primary focus of the representations, are there focal points of representation among certain linguistic variants? What do these depend on (e.g., functions, attitudes, or other factors)?
• Questions of cognitive effort: Is there a variational overload in the sense that variation above a certain level can no longer be processed cognitively? Where is the limit?
• Questions of language change: What circumstances lead to variation being represented as change? How can the change be modelled? Is there even a representational difference between variation and change?
The workshop intends to bring together interdisciplinary researchers working on General Linguistics, Variational Linguistics, Psycho- and Neurolinguistics, Sociolinguistics and Dialectology.

Confirmed keynote speakers
Penelope Eckert (Stanford University)
Aditi Lahiri (Oxford University)

Abstracts should be submitted for 30-minute slots (ca. 20 minutes for presentation, max. 10 minutes for questions). Abstracts should not exceed 300 words or 1 page, and should not contain more than three references. The final version will not include figures. Please submit a pdf file containing your abstract via e-mail (to: [email protected]). The pdf file should include the title of talk, name(s) of author(s), affiliation(s), and e-mail address(es). Abstracts and presentations must be in English.

Important dates:
Abstract deadline: August 15th, 2024
Notification of abstract acceptance: mid-September, 2024
Conference dates: March 5-7th, 2025

Looking forward to your participation! Best wishes from the organizing committee!
Alfred Lameli (Philipps-Universität Marburg)
Mathias Scharinger (Philipps-Universität Marburg)