Speech Patterns and (Dis)fluency Markers: Insights from Spoken Corpora
Short Title: SpoCor

Date: 31-Oct-2025 - 31-Oct-2025
Location: Bucharest, Romania
Contact: Oana Niculescu
Contact Email: [email protected]
Meeting URL: https://lingv.ro/2025/04/01/spocor/

Linguistic Field(s): Text/Corpus Linguistics

Submission Deadline: 28-Aug-2025

We are pleased to invite you to the first International Workshop on Speech Patterns and (Dis)fluency Markers: Insights from Spoken Corpora (SpoCor) organised at the Romanian Academy Institute of Linguistics in Bucharest.
Date: October 31, 2025
Venue: Casa Academiei, Calea 13 Septembrie nr. 13, 050711, Bucharest, Romania
Keynote speakers: Maria Candea (Sorbone Nouvelle), Loulou Kosmala (Université Paris-Est Créteil)
Convenor: Oana Niculescu (Romanian Academy Institute of Linguistics “Iorgu Iordan – Alexandru Rosetti”)
Contact: [email protected], [email protected]
Conference fee: 200 RON (40 €); 100 RON (20 €) for students or online participation
Languages: English, French, Romanian

Held within the DIS-Ro research grant (https://lingv.ro/gar2023-dis-ro-758-23-11-2023/), this workshop explores the distinctive features of oral discourse through the lens of spoken corpora. For centuries, linguistics focused on written language as ‘the norm’, and all features of language were studied based on written and often constructed artificial examples. Spoken corpora have enabled a shift in the way we view language, e.g. from a product-based to a process-based view on grammar (Haselow 2017), from an inherently-fluent view on communication to stipulating a fluency-disfluency continuum (Crible 2018), from a verbally-centred communication to a multimodal construction of meaning (Kosmala 2024). Data from speech corpora complement experimental findings regarding language processing and the way in which this differs in first versus second language acquisition. Moreover, spoken corpora bring valuable information regarding gender speech patterns (Cheshire 2002, Candea & Brown 2022), as well as age-based variation (Trimaille & Candea 2021).

Bringing together researchers working on speech data from Romanian and other languages, we aim to discuss methodological challenges, linguistic patterns, and discourse phenomena captured in spoken corpora. We especially welcome cross-linguistic approaches, while also allowing single-language studies. During the workshop, we aim to address the following questions:
• What are the distinctive grammatical, lexical, and pragmatic features of spoken language? How do these features vary across speech styles (e.g. in monologues vs. dialogues)?
• How does spoken language vary across social, regional, and age groups?
• What is the role of (dis)fluencies in spontaneous speech?
• How do speech planning and processing differ in native and non-native language?
• What is the role of gestures in discourse structuring and meaning construction?
• What are the main challenges in the design, annotation and exploitation of spoken corpora?

Apart from these questions, we welcome submissions addressing the following topics:
- Track 1 Variation in speech patterns and sociolinguistics
- Corpus-informed perspectives on spoken grammar
- Functional syntax in interaction: elisions, repetitions and repairs
- Age, gender and regional variation in speech
- Speech tempo and articulation rate across speakers or tasks
- Track 2 Fluency and disfluency in context
- Production and perception of (dis)fluency markers
- Disfluencies as structuring elements in speech
- Language-specific disfluency patterns
- Track 3 Spoken corpora and methodologies
- Corpus design and data collection
- Annotation schema for spoken corpora
- Multimodal corpora and annotation challenges
- Tools and new technologies for spoken corpora
- Track 4 Patterns in non-native speech and (dis)fluencies
- Assessing fluency in non-native speech
- Temporal patterns in native and non-native speech
- Track 5 Multimodality and speech in action
- Gesture, gaze, and body movement in repair and planning
- Temporal alignment across modalities in fluent vs. disfluent speech
- Turn-taking and interactional management of disfluency
- Co-speech gestures and their temporal coordination

Submission guidelines:
- Presentations will be allocated 20 minutes each, plus 10 minutes for discussion. The number of submissions is limited to one single-authored and one co-authored abstract per author (or two co-authored ones).
- Abstracts no longer than 700 words (excluding references) should be submitted in PDF format to [email protected].
- Abstracts should clearly state: the title of the papers, 5 key-words, the objectives of the talk, type of data used and the methodology employed, main findings followed by a brief discussion of the results. The name and affiliation of the authors should only be mentioned in the e-mail body.

The workshop will be held in a hybrid format, with both on-site and online participation options. While we strongly encourage in-person attendance, online participation can be accommodated in specific cases. The event offers a platform for sharing resources, tools, and insights into the analysis of speech in real-life contexts.
A selection of the papers will be published in Revue Roumaine de Linguistique (WoS indexed).

Important dates:

Abstract submission deadline: August 28, 2025
Notification of acceptance/rejection: September 10, 2025
Author(s) registration deadline: September 26, 2025
SpoCor Workshop: October 31, 2025