26.369, Calls: Lang Acquisition, Neuroling, Psycholing, Semantics, Syntax/Malta

Tue Jan 20 22:23:14 UTC 2015

LINGUIST List: Vol-26-369. Tue Jan 20 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.369, Calls: Lang Acquisition, Neuroling, Psycholing, Semantics, Syntax/Malta

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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 17:22:58
From: Valentina Bianchi [valentina.bianchi at unisi.it]
Subject: Hard sentences: how to measure clausal complexity?

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Full Title: Hard sentences: how to measure clausal complexity? 
Short Title: SLI Workshop 4 

Date: 24-Sep-2015 - 26-Sep-2015
Location: Valletta, Malta 
Contact Person: Cristiano Chesi
Meeting Email: cristiano.chesi at iusspavia.it
Web Site: http://www.um.edu.mt/events/congressosli2015/workshop4 

Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition; Neurolinguistics; Psycholinguistics; Semantics; Syntax 

Call Deadline: 20-Feb-2015 

Meeting Description:

Hard sentences: how to measure clausal complexity?
SLI Workshop 4

The workshop ''Hard sentences: how to measure clausal complexity?'' is a satellite workshop of the annual conference of the SLI (Società di Linguistica Italiana). 

The aim of this workshop is to compare the different ways of measuring the complexity of sentences which have emerged in various subfields of linguistics (e.g.: psycholinguistics, L1 and L2 acquisition, aphasiology, computational linguistics), so as to promote a more interdisciplinary approach.

Invited Speakers:

Nino Grillo (Unibersity of Stuttgart)
Flavia Adani (University of Potsdam)

Call for Papers:

In various contexts, it is crucial to be able to precisely measure the complexity of sentences:

1. Typical language development in children can be evaluated by observing specific phases through which language complexity gradually increases

2. By contrast, atypical language development is characterized by significantly more extended evolutive phases and by the lack of specific constructions in which the complexity of grammatical relations exceeds the child’s resources (e.g.  Jakubowicz et al. 1998)

3. The severity of an agrammatic deficit is proportional to the difficulty to produce or comprehend complex structures (e.g. Grillo 2008, Firedmann 2008)

4. The proficiency levels in second language are assessed on the basis of criteria like the “comprehension of the main ideas in a complex text” (CEFR)

Although the concept of complexity is crucial for many areas of language studies, there still is no consensus on the way in which complexity should be measured:

a) Does “complex” equal “less frequent” (Tomasello 2003) or “less familiar” (Mak et al. 2002)?

b) Should a complexity measure take into account what is known about the psycho-neurological processes from sound perception to sentence parsing (Chesi & Moro 2013)?

c) Are there specific morpho-syntactic factors that may allow us to precisely assess the complexity of a sentence (Friedmann et al. 2009)?

d) Can compositional semantics account for how complex the interpretation of an expression will be?

This workshop is intended to assess the validity of various possible measure metrics, and to compare the different approaches in various domains, ranging from L1 and L2 acquisition to cases of language disorder (aphasias, SLI, deafness etc.)

Abstracts consisting of 2-3 pages (4000-6000 characters) must be sent to:
cristiano.chesi at iusspavia.it

The deadline is February 20 2015.

Organizing Committee:

Cristiano Chesi (IUSS, Pavia)
Andrea Moro IUSS, Pavia)
Valentina Bianchi (University of Siena)

Scientific Committee:

Valentina Bambini
Adriana Belletti
Valentina Bianchi
Chiara Branchini
Anna Cardinaletti
Cristiano Chesi
Guglielmo Cinque
Maria Teresa Guasti
Andrea Moro
Luigi Rizzi
Francesca Volpato

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