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<b>CALL FOR PAPERS<br>
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify"><b>Workshop
"Efficiency in </b><b>grammar</b><b>: Patterns and
explanations"</b> <br>
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify">*
<b> July 5</b>, 2023, University of Freiburg, Germany </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify">*
meeting website: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://laurabecker.gitlab.io/workshop.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://laurabecker.gitlab.io/workshop.html</a><br>
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify">*
Confirmed invited speakers: </p>
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- Sonia Cristofaro, Sorbonne University Paris</p>
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- Ilja Serzant, University of Potsdam</p>
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify"><b>==
IMPORTANT DATES ==</b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify">*
abstract submission deadline: <b>May 1</b>, 2023 </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify">*
notification of acceptance: <b>May 8</b>, 2023</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify">*
workshop date: <b>July 5</b>, 2023 </p>
<br>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify"><b>==
AIMS AND SCOPE ==</b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify">Efficiency
has been shown to be of high importance in human communication
in various ways, allowing to save efforts with maximal benefits
of successful transfer of information in the production and
processing of speech (cf. Fedzechkina 2014; Gibson et al. 2019;
Levshina 2022). </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height:
100%" align="justify"> Already Zipf (1935) showed that more
frequent or predictable expressions tend to be shorter than
equivalent less frequent or predictable grammatical expressions.
Such patterns are efficient as they allow us to save production
and processing costs with frequent expressions while maintaining
successful communication. Related to that, work from an
information-theoretic perspective has shown robust
crosslinguistic evidence for a preference towards uniform
information density (e.g. Jaeger 2010). We also coding
efficiency with grammatical expressions across languages. This
was already noted by Greenberg (1966), who showed that the more
frequent function (e.g. singular) tends to have no overt or
shorter markers as opposed to the less frequent functions (e.g.
plural). Similar associations between the
frequency/predictability and the length of a grammatical marker
were found in recent crosslinguistic, quantitative corpus
studies (cf. Guzmán Naranjo & Becker 2021, Stave et al.
2021). Research in phonetics has also shown that frequency,
predictability and informativity can impact the acoustic
duration of lexical and grammatical elements (e.g. Barth 2019;
Bell et al. 2009; Cohen Priva 2008; Jurafsky et al. 2001;
Seyfarth 2014). Coding efficiency is also at play in reference
tracking, where referents can be realized through longer
(lexical) and shorter (pronominal or zero) forms, depending on
their contextual predictability (c.f. Chafe 1976; Ariel 1990). </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height:
100%" align="justify"> Efficiency has also been related to
certain types of word order preferences across languages.
Preferred word orders have been argued to involve lower
production and processing costs compared to other word orders.
It is well known that minimal syntactic domains or dependencies
tend to be preferred over longer dependencies in the world's
languages (e.g. Dryer 1992; Futrell et al. 2015; Gibson 1998;
Hawkins 2014). This is efficient, as minimal structures to be
held in the working memory require less resources than larger
structures during language production and processing. Another
way in which efficiency has been argued to account for word
order relates to the accessibility of syntactic units. More
specifically, there is a crosslinguistic preference for shorter
or simpler elements to precede longer or heavier ones (cf.
Behagel 1909/10; Hawkins 2014), which saves processing cost (cf.
MacDonald 2013). </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height:
100%" align="justify"> Yet, we are still far from understanding
in when and how efficient probabilistic variation becomes a part
of grammar and leads to typological preferences for efficient
grammatical patterns. Related to that, the explanatory role of
efficiency for crosslinguistic preferences is still very much
under debate in typology. Some researchers view communicative
efficiency as the driver of diachronic developments towards
efficient patterns and take efficient coding as an attractor
state (e.g. Haspelmath 2021; Kiparsky 2008; Seržant & Moroz
2022). Others have argued for efficient patterns to be the
outcome of several, unrelated diachronic processes that do not
involve efficiency as the driver of change (e.g. Becker 2022;
Cristofaro 2019, 2021). </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height:
100%" align="justify"> We invite the <b>submission of abstracts</b>
concerned with – including but not limited to – the following
issues: </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height:
100%" align="justify"> <b>*</b> evidence for different types of
efficiency in grammar within and across languages (e.g. from
psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics or typology)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height:
100%" align="justify"> <b>*</b> evidence for grammatical
phenomena where efficiency plays no role / only a minor role</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height:
100%" align="justify"> <b>*</b> other factors that efficiency
interacts with</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height:
100%" align="justify"> <b>*</b> how and under which
circumstances efficient grammatical structures develop</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height:
100%" align="justify"> <b>*</b> efficiency as an explanatory
factor for grammatical structure(s) within and across languages</p>
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify"><b>==
SUBMISSION ==</b></p>
<br>
Anonymized abstracts of max. <b>500</b> words (excluding
examples, tables, references) should be submitted in PDF format.
Please send the abstract to <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated
moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="mailto:laura.becker@linguistik.uni-freiburg.de"
moz-do-not-send="true">laura.becker@linguistik.uni-freiburg.de</a>
in PDF format by <b>May 1</b>, 2023.
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<b>== FORMAT ==</b>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify">The
workshop will take place at the University of Freiburg and is
planned as a primarily in-person meeting. However, if necessary,
we will offer a hybrid format to accommodate online
presentations. </p>
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<b>== ORGANIZATION ==</b>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify">Laura
Becker, University of Freiburg (<a
href="mailto:laura.becker@linguistik.uni-freiburg.de"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext" moz-do-not-send="true">laura.becker@linguistik.uni-freiburg.de</a>)
</p>
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