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<div class="moz-forward-container"> <b>CALL FOR PAPERS - EXTENDED
DEADLINE<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>
</p>
<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>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify">*
Confirmed invited speakers: </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify">
- Sonia Cristofaro, Sorbonne University Paris</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify">
- Ilja Serzant, University of Potsdam</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify"><br>
</p>
<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 14</b>, 2023 </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify">*
notification of acceptance: <b>May 17</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>
<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 14</b>, 2023.
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</p>
<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>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%" align="justify"><br>
</p>
<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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