[Lingtyp] Call for Papers: Measuring Language Complexity (Special Issue in Linguistics Vanguard)

[Katharina Ehret]

Dear colleagues,

together withAlice Blumenthal-Dramé 
<https://www.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/seminar/abteilungen/sprachwissenschaft/ls_kortmann/UFR-051011/mitarbeiter.2007-09-04.6318211807/?searchterm=blumenthal-dram%C3%A9>(University 
of Freiburg), Christian Bentz <http://www.christianbentz.de/>(University 
of Tübingen), and Aleksandrs Berdicevskis 
<https://sites.google.com/view/sasha-berdicevskis/home>(University of 
Gothenburg), it is my pleasure to serve as guest editor of the Special 
Issue on "Measuring Language Complexity" in Linguistics Vanguard.

Below I am pasting the call for papers. We are looking forward to 
receiving your abstracts by July 13, 2020.


Best wishes and stay safe,

Katharina Ehret 
<https://sites.google.com/site/katlehret/home>(University of Freiburg)



Special Issue on “Measuring Language Complexity” in Linguistics Vanguard


Ihe past decade, language complexity has been a hot and controversial 
topic in  engaging researchers from diverse areas of linguistics and 
beyond. This special issue is linked to the “Interactive Workshop for 
Measuring Language Complexity 
<http://christianbentz.de/MLC2019_index.html>”, which brought together 
complexity researchers from language typology, second language 
acquisition research, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, 
language evolution and other related fields. The workshop evaluated and 
compared different measures of language complexity by means of a shared 
task.


We are now inviting contributions to a Special Issue discussing all 
things related to measuring language complexity.


Submissions are welcome from areas like language typology, second 
language acquisition research, cognitive and psycholinguistics, 
computational linguistics, language evolution, anthropology, 
computational modelling, and other relevant fields.


We welcome theoretical contributions related to topics including:


  *

    advantages and drawbacks of complexity metrics, e.g., regarding
    their applicability to different data types (e.g. parallel,
    cross-linguistic, corpora, databases, etc.) and their robustness
    <https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W18-6002/>(cf. Berdicevskis et al.
    2018),

  *

    benchmarks for assessing and comparing the validity of complexity
    metrics,

  *

    the relevance of language complexity and complexity metrics to
    theoretical and applied linguistics,

  *

    how operationalisations of linguistic complexity relate to
    underlying constructs, i.e. what does a given metric actually measure?

  *

    the extent to which statistical complexity correlates with
    processing difficulty,

  *

    the extent to which different complexity metrics correlate,

  *

    the potential existence of trade-offs between different levels of
    language representation (e.g. morphology versus syntax).

  *

    other relevant topics related to measuring language complexity


Empirical contributions presenting results of a complexity (or 
complexity-related) metric(s) of your choice on relevant data are also 
welcome. The submission of supplementary materials, in particular code 
and data, is strongly encouraged.


Submission requirements:


Submission and acceptance of contributions will take place in a two-step 
procedure. There are no publication fees.


Abstract: Anonymised abstracts of 500-600 words, stating the theoretical 
background, objectives, data source and description of metric (if 
applicable), and results.


Paper: Target length for paper submissions is 3000-4000 words of text. 
The general submission guidelines 
<https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/lingvan#callForPapersHeader>of 
Linguistics Vanguard apply. A LaTeX template is available upon request.


Deadlines


Abstract submission: July 13, 2020

Notification of acceptance (abstract): August 12, 2020

Paper submission: December 12, 2020

Notification of acceptance (paper): April 13, 2021


Submit your abstract via EasyAbs: 
http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/SpecialIssueMLC


-- 
Dr. Katharina Ehret

Department of Linguistics
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive
Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6
Canada

Department of English
University of Freiburg
Rempartstr. 15
79098 Freiburg
Germany

Website: https://sites.google.com/site/katlehret/

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