29.3276, Calls: Cog Sci, Historical Ling, Neuroling, Psycholing/Australia

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3276. Mon Aug 27 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.3276, Calls: Cog Sci, Historical Ling, Neuroling, Psycholing/Australia

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Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2018 14:15:29
From: Robert Mailhammer [R.Mailhammer at westernsydney.edu.au]
Subject: Language Processing and Language Change

 
Full Title: Language Processing and Language Change 

Date: 10-Dec-2018 - 12-Dec-2018
Location: Adelaide, South Australia, Australia 
Contact Person: Robert Mailhammer
Meeting Email: R.Mailhammer at westernsydney.edu.au

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; Historical Linguistics; Neurolinguistics; Psycholinguistics 

Call Deadline: 30-Sep-2018 

Meeting Description:

Organisers:
Robert Mailhammer (Western Sydney University)
Elena Smirnova (Université de Neuchâtel)

Explaining internal language change has been the Gordian Knot of historical
linguistics. Traditional approaches to language change make no attempt to
motivate events of change [1]. Theories that do address causes of internal
language change have taken mainly one of two stances: either it is a
by-product of language use or it is functional. Neither approach has so far
provided conclusive proof for their views. Theories of the first kind have had
some success in accounting for sound change [2], but perhaps less so in other
domains of language. The main problem of functional theories has been that the
relevant functional aim, such as local improvement [3], prototypicality [4] or
economy [5], have somewhat subjective. However, in recent years work has
targeted more tangible parameters: [6] explicitly names a reduction in
cognitive processing costs a goal of language change, [7] does this implicitly
by using learnability by algorithms as test “subjects”, [8] discusses
evolutionary and game-based models. The availability of sophisticated
methodology to investigate language processing, together with the availability
and processability of large historical language corpora make it possible to
develop approaches that examine connections between language processing and
language change:

References:
[1] Hill, E. 2009. Die Präferenztheorie der historischen Phonologie aus
junggrammatischer Perspektive. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 28, 231-263 
[2] Solé, M. J. & D. Recasens (eds.). 2012. The Initiation of Sound Change.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. 
[3] Vennemann, Th. 1993. Language change as language improvement'', in: Ch.
Jones (ed.), Historical linguistics: Problems and perspectives, 319-344.
London: Longman. 
[4] Bybee J. (2010). Language, Usage and Cognition. Cambridge. Cambridge
University Press. 
[5] Gelderen, E. v. 2004. Grammaticalization as Economy.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. 
[6] Hawkins, J.A. 2004. Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars. Oxford
University Press 
[7] Schaden, G. 2012. International Journal of Pragmatics 4. 261-292 
[8] Deo, Ashwini. 2015. Annual Review of Linguistics 1. 179–197


Call for Papers:

We solicit papers in this workshop that ideally will discuss approaches that 
- try to assess whether documented cases of language change follow a prefer
structures with low processing costs;
- explore the connection between language processing and language change
experimentally and/or theoretically;
- investigate the connection between language acquisition, processing and
language change;
- investigate aspects of processing that could be relevant to language change
and vice versa.

We are happy to announce the following confirmed speakers:

Brett Baker (The University of Melbourne)
Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky (University of South Australia)
Laurence Bruggeman (Macquarie University)
Rikke Bundgaard-Nielsen (Western Sydney University)
Matthias Schlesewsky (University of South Australia)

Abstracts for a 30-minute oral presentation in this workshop, which is part of
the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Australian Linguistic Society, should be sent
in PDF format (not exceeding 500 words excluding figures, tables and
references) to R.Mailhammer at westernsydney.edu.au by 30 September 2018.
Notifications of acceptance will sent by mid-October.




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