DGFS 2003: Workshop on Language Development

[Heike Behrens]

CALL FOR PAPERS

Workshop "Linguistic Knowledge in Language Acquisition"
at the 25th Annual Meeting of the German Linguistics Society
(Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft)
in Munich (February 26-28, 2003)

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
The way in which linguistic knowledge is conceptualised is of critical
importance for any acquisition theory. Both nativist and constructivist
theories have to provide a characterization of  the kind of linguistic
knowledge which is activiated or acquired in the acquisition process.
Furthermore, the cognitive processes which contribute to and interact in

language development need to be assessed. Such interactions could
take place with respect to language internal processes, or general
cognitive categorization and pattern abstraction processes, or even
auditive and visual abilities.

A central aspect of language acquisition is the analysis of input
structures. This workshop focuses on the relationship between language
internal and language external knowledge. The contributions should
provide empiral approaches to characterize the representational and
procedural knowledge which is active in a given stage of development.
In particular, we would like to focus on questions such as:

(A)  Which are the "general" cognitive abilities relevant for the
acquisition of linguistic knowledge, and how do they contribute to
the acquisition of linguistic knowledge?

(B) Are there necessary interactions between different structural
domains?

(C)  Do linguistic representations stay the same over time or do they
change? If they change, how can we demonstrate that recoding processes
take place?

(D) Which learning contexts and processes lead to the
establisment of explicit, meta-linguistic knowledge?

We welcome abstracts addressing both unimpaired and impaired
language development. If the number of abstracts submitted exceeds
the number of available presentation slots, we will give preference to
constributions which provide empirical tests for their claims or propose

new methodologies (corpus, experimental, computational) to address
these issues.

SUBMISSION
We invite abstracts (in  German or English) for a 30 minute
presentation. Abstracts should not exceed one page (max.of 400 words)
and should be sent to the workshop organizers electronically or by
regular mail.

IMPORTANT DATES
deadline for abstract submission: August 15, 2002
notification of acceptance: September 1, 2002
program announcement: September 15, 2002
workshop: February 26-28, 2003

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
Heike Behrens
email:     behrens at eva.mpg.de
Max Planck Institut für evolutionaere Anthropologie
Inselstrasse 22
04103 Leipzig, Germany

Dagmar Bittner
email:    anbitt at t-online.de
Institut fuer Linguistik
Universitaet Potsdam
Postfach 601553
14415 Potsdam, Germany