17.1433, Calls: Morphology/France;Cognitive Science/Germany

Tue May 9 18:33:53 UTC 2006

LINGUIST List: Vol-17-1433. Tue May 09 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.1433, Calls: Morphology/France;Cognitive Science/Germany

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1)
Date: 09-May-2006
From: Fabio Montermini < fabio.montermini at univ-tlse2.fr >
Subject: Forum de Morphologie / 5e Décembrettes 

2)
Date: 08-May-2006
From: Susanna Bartsch < bartsch at zas.gwz-berlin.de >
Subject: Lexical Bootstrapping in Child Language Acquisition and Child Conceptual Development 

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 14:28:18
From: Fabio Montermini < fabio.montermini at univ-tlse2.fr >
Subject: Forum de Morphologie / 5e Décembrettes 

Full Title: Forum de Morphologie / 5e Décembrettes 

Date: 07-Dec-2006 - 08-Dec-2006
Location: Toulouse, France 
Contact Person: Fabio Montermini
Meeting Email: decembrettes at univ-tlse2.fr
Web Site: http://www.univ-tlse2.fr/erss/decembrettes2006/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Morphology 

Call Deadline: 31-May-2006 

Meeting Description:

The 'Décembrettes' is an annual conference which is organized by the Morphology
group within the ERSS. It brings together a number of French and foreign
scholars working in the field of morphology in Toulouse, on the first week in
December. The 2006 edition is organized in parallel with the Forum de
Morphologie, a morphology conference organized in France since 1997. 

International Morphology Conference
Forum de Morphologie - 5e Décembrettes

Toulouse, December 7-8, 2006
Université de Toulouse - le Mirail

Analogy and lexical pressure in morphology

- First call for papers -

The Forum de Morphologie originated from the collaboration of a group of French
researchers in the domain. In 1997 it organized in Lille its first international
morphology conference, which was followed by a second edition in Toulouse in
1999, and a third edition in Lille in 2002. The proceedings of these conferences
were published in the Silexicales series at the University of Lille III.

In parallel, the morphology component of the ERSS (UMR 5610) research unit
organizes since 2002 the ''Décembrettes'', a morphology conference which takes
place every year in Toulouse at the beginning of December, and which regularly
gathers French and foreign researchers.

In 2006 the two conferences will join to begin a single event called Forum de
Morphologie / 5e Décembrettes, which will take place in Toulouse on December, 7-8.

One of the two days of the conference will be devoted to a thematic session on
''Analogy and lexical pressure in morphology'', a topic both theoretically and
descriptively crucial for our scientific community. The second day there will be
a general session devoted to communications on any aspect of morphological
research. 

The organizers invite contribution proposals for 20 minutes talks on any domain
of morphological analysis; all theoretical perspectives are welcome. 

Method of submission:
Abstracts, in English or in French, should be strictly anonymous and should
contain no more than 1.000 words. On a separate  sheet, contributors should
indicate their name, affiliation and the e-mail address  at which they wish to
be contacted. Abstracts should be sent by e-mail (preferably in PDF format, or
in RTF) to the following address: decembrettes at univ-tlse2.fr before May 31, 2006.

Invited speakers
Geert Booij (Leiden) ; Luigi Burzio (John Hopkins, Baltimore) ; Sergio Scalise
(Bologna)

Scientific committee
Gilles Boyé (ERSS, Nancy 2) ; Georgette Dal (STL, Lille III) ; Bernard Fradin
(LLF, Paris 7) ; Nabil Hathout (ERSS, Toulouse - le Mirail) ; Françoise
Kerleroux (Modyco, Paris X) ; Fiammetta Namer (Atilf, Nancy 2) ; Marc Plénat
(ERSS, Toulouse - le Mirail) ; Florence Villoing (UMR 7023, Paris 8)

Selection committee
Denis Apothéloz (Atilf, Nancy 2) ; Teresa Cabré (U. Autónoma de Barcelona) ;
Hélène Giraudo (LPL, Aix-Marseille 1) ; Nicola Grandi (Milano Bicocca) ;
Laurence Labrune (ERSSAB, Bordeaux 3) ; Fabio Montermini (ERSS, Toulouse - le
Mirail) ; Jasmina Milicevic (Dalhousie) ; Vito Pirrelli (CNR, Pisa) ; Angela
Ralli (Patras) ; Michel Roché (ERSS, Toulouse - le Mirail) ; Christoph Schwarze
(Konstanz)

Calendar :

-March 2006 : first call for papers
-May 31, 2006 : deadline for abstracts submission
-July 15, 2006 : notification of acceptance
-September 2006 : definitive program
-December 7-8, 2006 : conference

Organizing committee
Christine Fèvre-Pernet; Nabil Hathout; Fabio Montermini; Nicole Serna

Contact
UMR 5610
Maison de la Recherche
Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail
5, allées Antonio Machado
F-31058 - Toulouse Cedex 9
France

Tel. 05-61-50-36-02
Fax 05-61-50-46-77
Web : http://www.univ-tlse2.fr/erss/decembrettes2006/
E-mail : decembrettes at univ-tlse2.fr

-------------------------Message 2 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 14:28:23
From: Susanna Bartsch < bartsch at zas.gwz-berlin.de >
Subject: Lexical Bootstrapping in Child Language Acquisition and Child Conceptual Development 

Full Title: Lexical Bootstrapping in Child Language Acquisition and Child
Conceptual Development 

Date: 05-Oct-2006 - 07-Oct-2006
Location: Munich, Germany 
Contact Person: Susanna Bartsch
Meeting Email: bartsch at zas.gwz-berlin.de

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science 

Call Deadline: 31-May-2006 

Meeting Description:

Lexical Bootstrapping in Child Language Acquisition and Child Conceptual Development

Theme session
To be held at the 
Second International Conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association, 
Munich, 5-7 October 2006

For our special paper session, we would like to invite researchers interested in
an exploratory discussion about lexical bootstrapping in child language and
conceptual development, and willing to present their own studies as
contributions to this discussion. 

Second Call for Papers 

LEXICAL BOOTSTRAPPING IN CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND CHILD CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT

Theme session
To be held at the 
SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE GERMAN COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS ASSOCIATION, 
Munich, 5-7 October 2006

PLEASE NOTE: 
- DEADLINE EXTENSION
- CLARIFICATION ABOUT CONTENTS OF SUBMITTED ABSTRACTS
- POSSIBILITY OF PUBLICATION 

Apart from some few exceptions (Brown 1958, Nelson 1973), the research on child
lexical development did not receive much attention from students of child
language in the 1960s and 1970s. In opposition to some statements found in the
more recent literature (Rothweiler & Meibauer 1999), this fact is not really
surprising when one considers the very influential role then played by formal
linguistics with its primacy of syntactic structures and the view of lexicon and
semantics as something rather epiphenomenal. From the 1980s on, this state of
affairs has changed dramatically. 

For one thing, over the last 25 years or so, there has been more and more
interest in topics related to child lexical acquisition. Over these several
years, the research has issued many relevant theoretical insights resp.
assumptions, and methodologies about lexical development, such as the view of
individual differences in early vocabulary composition in terms of a continuum
between referential and expressive style (Nelson 1973) and the holophrastic
nature of early words (Nelson 1985), the differentiation between expressive and
receptive vocabulary, as well as the use of correlational methods (Bates et al.
1988), or the role of domain-general cognitive skills of categorisation and
theory of mind (Tomasello 2003), amongst several others. 

Secondly and most importantly, this body of research (much of which has been
done within functionalist-cognitivist frameworks) seems to allow for the
formulation of general assumptions concerning child language development in
general, as well as the interplay between language and conceptual development.
Thus, especially studies focussing on within- and cross-domain developmental
correlations seem to provide evidence for a Lexical Bootstrapping Hypothesis
(Dale et al. 2000, Dionne et al. 2003), i.e., the assumption that early lexical
development, as mapping of words to referents or their conceptualisations, and
even to whole propositions, is not only prior to, but also pre-requisite for the
emergence of morpho-syntactic constructions (which, incidentally, are not
fundamentally different from words, in that they are equally form-meaning
pairs). The lexical bootstrapping hypothesis presupposes an early stage in
lexical development characterized by the learning of archilexemes, a term
originally proposed by Zemb (1978), as grammarless lexemes composed of form and
concept only, here understood as the means by which the child begins to cognize
and categorize the world. Such assumption on the fundamental role of early
lexical acquisition for later language development as a whole challenges the
view about the primacy of syntax over lexicon and semantics that has been
postulated in these 50 years of formal linguistics. 

For our special paper session, we would like to invite researchers interested in
an exploratory discussion about lexical bootstrapping in child language and
conceptual development, and willing to present their own studies as
contributions to this discussion.

Empirical, methodological and theoretical contributions dealing with aspects of
word learning in the one-word phase (and perhaps also before) that might predict
diverse aspects of later language and conceptual development of typically
developing and impaired children may focus on one or more of the following
questions and topics (evidently, other suggestions are equally welcome):

- How can measures of, and assumptions on, early lexical development (vocabulary
size, vocabulary composition, vocabulary growth rate, vocabulary style,
vocabulary spurt, critical mass, others?) be correlated to measures of later
grammatical emergence and development (emergence and proportion of multi-word
utterances, Mean Length of Utterance, development of inflectional paradigms and
use of function words, realisation of argument constructions, others?) How
reliable are such correlations? 

- How can the study of early lexical development shed light on the issue of
individual variance and developmental language disorders? Can aspects of early
word learning (expressive vs. referential style, dissimilar timing of vocabulary
development, peculiarities in vocabulary composition, peculiarities in the
conceptual mapping, others?) provide criteria for a differentiation between mere
individual variance and developmental disorder, as well as for a differentiation
between transient and persistent disorders? Can such aspects be used in the
context of early diagnosis of such disorders?

- Which cognitive processes underlie word learning as both word-to-concept
mapping and categorization task? Are there constraints and principles at play?
What is the nature of such constraints--are they domain (=language) specific or
domain general? How are they related to later language and conceptual development?

- Does a notion of lexical bootstrapping in language acquisition preclude other
bootstrapping mechanisms in the stages before the emergence of grammar, such as
prosodic, semantic, syntactic bootstrapping, or can interplay amongst these
types of bootstrapping mechanisms be assumed? 

- Related to the last question, how does the child construct her mental lexicon?
How is it structured--is this structure modular or network-like or anything
else? Which processes of reorganisation are at work along development?

- Can early words (at least partially) be seen as holophrases in that they (at
least partially) refer to whole propositions? Which developmental change(s)
takes place in the transition from holophrastic one-word utterances to
multi-word utterances?

- Which evidences can be drawn from studies of word learning in children with
cognitive developmental disorders (Down Syndrome, Williams Syndrome, others?),
as well as in blind and deaf children?

- Which insights can be drawn from research based on (i) corpora analyses; (ii)
computer learning simulations; (iii) neural activation in experimental
situations, such as categorisation tasks; (iv) lexical/conceptual processing in
adults with and without language disorders (e.g. aphasia)?

- Which similarities, differences or peculiarities can be observed when
comparing mono- and multilingual word learning, as well as comparing monolingual
and cross-linguistic studies?

Depending on the number of contributions, the special session will take place at
one or two days of the conference. 

The theme session will be framed by a paper introducing the topic of lexical
bootstrapping in child language and conceptual development and, again depending
on the number of contributions, one or two discussion rounds.

BEFORE SENDING IT, MAKE SURE PLEASE THAT YOUR ABSTRACT:

- indicates EXPLICITLY how and to which extent YOUR STUDY IS RELATED TO THE
HYPOTHESIS OF LEXICAL BOOTSTRAPPING in child language and conceptual
development. Does your study support or refute the lexical bootstrapping
hypothesis? If yes, how and to which extent? If not, why not?

- is detailed, i.e., it is about 1000 WORDS LONG, not including list of
references, tables, diagrams, etc.;

- indicates explicitly and in detail the EMPIRICAL BASIS of your study; this
holds also for theoretical works, i.e., theoretical work might rely, for
instance, on empirical studies of other researchers, but please NOT SOLELY ON
INTROSPECTIVE METHODS;

- contains a LIST OF THE REFERENCES mentioned.

DEADLINE EXTENSION

The deadline for abstract submission was extended to 31 May 2006. Participants
will be notified of the acceptance of their papers by 1 July 2006. Participants
should send us an updated abstract of their papers by 21 September 2006.

Please send your abstracts exclusively as email attachments (doc- or rtf-files) to:

Susanna Bartsch			
bartsch at zas.gwz-berlin.de	

Dagmar Bittner
dabitt at zas.gwz-berlin.de 

The conference languages are German and English.

The organizers are preparing a PROPOSAL FOR PUBLICATION of the presented papers
in the series COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS RESEARCH (CLR) (Mouton de Gruyter) edited by
Dirk Geeraerts, John Taylor, and René Dirven. 

REFERENCES

Bates, E., Bretherton, I., & Snyder, L. 1988. From First Words to Grammar.
Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Brown, R. 1958. Words and things. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Dale, P. S., Dionne, G., Eley, T. C., & Plomin, R. 2000. Lexical and grammatical
development: A behavioural genetic perspective. Journal of Child Language, 27/3,
619-642.

Dionne, G., Dale, P. S., Boivin, M., & Plomin R. 2003. Genetic evidence for
bidirectional effects of early lexical and grammatical development. Child
Development, 74, 394-412.

Hoey, M. 2005. Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language. London & New
York: Routledge. 

Marchman, V. A. & Bates, E. 1994. Continuity in lexical and morphological
development: A test of the critical mass. Journal of Child Language, 21/2, 339-366.

Nelson, K. 1973. Structure and strategy in learning to talk. Chicago: Univ. Press.

Nelson, K. 1985. Making sense: The acquisition of shared meaning. Developmental
psychology series. Orlando: Academic Press.

Pinker, S. 1984. Language Learnability and Language Development. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.

Rothweiler, M. & Meibauer, J. (eds.) 1999. Das Lexikon im Spracherwerb: Ein
Überblick. In: Meibauer, J., & Rothweiler, M. (eds.). 1999. Das Lexikon im
Spracherwerb. UTB für Wissenschaft;Mittlere Reihe, 2039. Tübingen: Francke.

Rescorla, L., Mirak, J., & Singh, L. 2000. Vocabulary growth in late talkers:
Lexical development from 2;0 to 3;0. Journal of Child Language, 27, 293-311.

Zemb, J. M. 1978. Vergleichende Grammatik Französisch Deutsch: Comparaison de
deux systèmes. Mannheim et al.: Bibliographisches Institut.

Tomasello, M. 2003. Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language
acquisition. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.

Susanna Bartsch
Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung (ZaS)
Centre for General Linguistics, Typology, and Universals Research
Jägerstr. 10-11
10117 Berlin
Germany

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