<div dir="ltr">Apologies for cross-posting!<div><br></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%">Call for Papers: Special Collection
in Linguistics Vanguard, Corpus Linguistics and Typology Areas</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%">You are invited to submit a short
paper (3000-4000 words) on the theme of “Efficiency in human languages: corpus
evidence for universal principles” by November 1, 2019. </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 6pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">Efficient
communication involves minimization of communicative costs during information
transfer. These costs are related to articulation (e.g. the word <i>dinosaur</i>
is costlier than <i>frog</i>, and plural forms in many languages are costlier
than singular forms) and processing (e.g. long syntactic and semantic
dependencies are costlier than short ones). A famous example is Zipf’s law of
abbreviation, which has been explained as a manifestation of the general
principle of least effort. More recent studies discuss efficient language
patterns found in corpus data, using concepts from information theory, such as
surprisal and informativity. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">The aim
of this special issue is to present corpus evidence from diverse languages
which supports the idea of efficiency as a universal principle determining the
rational behavior of language users, which shapes language structure in the
long run. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">Some of
the core questions include: </span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt 0.75in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">•<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">What are the specific predictions generated by the principle of
efficiency for different linguistic phenomena and how can we falsify them?</span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt 0.75in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">•<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">How do different manifestations of efficiency interact with each
other and with other communicative and cognitive pressures and principles, such
as analogy and learnability, and how do we distinguish between them?</span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt 0.75in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">•<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">What is the role of concepts and methods from information theory
that can be used to operationalize efficiency? </span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt 0.75in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">•<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">Can we show how efficient choices of individual language users become
conventionalized, and by doing so, avoid the danger of teleological explanation?
</span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt 0.75in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">•<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">Which role do extralinguistic factors (e.g. population size)
play in the development and retainment of efficient patterns in a language?</span></p>
<p class="gmail-MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin:0in 0in 12pt 0.75in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">•<span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">What kind of corpora should be used for testing efficiency? How
comparable must they be across languages, registers, and formats?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 6pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">We
invite psycholinguists, functional and cognitive linguists, typologists,
discourse analysts and other experts working on different aspects of efficiency
to submit a short paper to the special issue.
Submissions are due November 1 2019 and they should report quantitative
corpus-based studies that address manifestations of communicatively efficient
behavior in various domains (lexicon, phonology, morphosyntax, pragmatics,
etc.). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 6pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">Linguistics
Vanguard is an online, multi-modal journal and authors are encouraged to
include interactive content, such as audio, video, software, raw data, etc.
Because the journal is online-only, special collections are "virtual
collections" linked by shared keywords. Details about the journal can be
found at </span><span style="color:black"><a href="http://www.degruyter.com/lingvan" style="color:blue"><span style="font-size:12pt">www.degruyter.com/lingvan</span></a></span><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 6pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(68,68,68)">Authors
(and journal subscribers) will have free access to the entire special
collection. There are no publication costs. All authors may post a PDF on their
personal website one year after publication.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(68,68,68)">Questions
can be directed to the editors, Natalia Levshina (<a href="mailto:natalevs@gmail.com">natalevs@gmail.com</a>) and Steven
Moran (</span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(86,90,92)"><a href="mailto:steven.moran@uzh.ch">steven.moran@uzh.ch</a>)</span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(68,68,68)">. </span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%"></span></p><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><font size="2">Natalia Levshina</font><div><font size="2">postdoctoral researcher</font></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px">Project "Grammatical Universals" </span><br style="font-size:12.8px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">Leipzig University (IPF 141199)</span><br style="font-size:12.8px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">Nikolaistraße 6-10</span><br style="font-size:12.8px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">04109 Leipzig</span><br></div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>