30.2621, Calls: Discourse Analysis, General Linguistics, Linguistic Theories, Text/Corpus Linguistics, Typology, Cognitive Science / Linguistics Vanguard (Jrnl)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-30-2621. Wed Jul 03 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.2621, Calls:  Discourse Analysis, General Linguistics, Linguistic Theories, Text/Corpus Linguistics, Typology, Cognitive Science / Linguistics Vanguard (Jrnl)

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================================================================


Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2019 16:53:49
From: Natalia Levshina [natalevs at gmail.com]
Subject: Discourse Analysis, General Linguistics, Linguistic Theories, Text/Corpus Linguistics, Typology, Cognitive Science / Linguistics Vanguard (Jrnl)

 
Full Title: Linguistics Vanguard 


Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; Discourse Analysis; General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Text/Corpus Linguistics; Typology 

Call Deadline: 01-Nov-2019 

Call for Papers: Special Collection in Linguistics Vanguard, Corpus
Linguistics and Typology Areas

You are invited to submit a short paper (3000-4000 words) on the theme of
''Efficiency in human languages: corpus evidence for universal principles'' by
November 1, 2019. 
Efficient communication involves minimization of communicative costs during
information transfer. These costs are related to articulation (e.g. the word
dinosaur is costlier than frog, and plural forms in many languages are
costlier than singular forms) and processing (e.g. long syntactic and semantic
dependencies are costlier than short ones). A famous example is Zipf's law of
abbreviation, which has been explained as a manifestation of the general
principle of least effort. More recent studies discuss efficient language
patterns found in corpus data, using concepts from information theory, such as
surprisal and informativity. 

The aim of this special issue is to present corpus evidence from diverse
languages which supports the idea of efficiency as a universal principle
determining the rational behavior of language users, which shapes language
structure in the long run. 

Some of the core questions include: 
- What are the specific predictions generated by the principle of efficiency
for different linguistic phenomena and how can we falsify them?
- How do different manifestations of efficiency interact with each other and
with other communicative and cognitive pressures and principles, such as
analogy and learnability, and how do we distinguish between them?
- What is the role of concepts and methods from information theory that can be
used to operationalize efficiency? 
- Can we show how efficient choices of individual language users become
conventionalized, and by doing so, avoid the danger of teleological
explanation? 
- Which role do extralinguistic factors (e.g. population size) play in the
development and retainment of efficient patterns in a language?
- What kind of corpora should be used for testing efficiency? How comparable
must they be across languages, registers, and formats?

We invite psycholinguists, functional and cognitive linguists, typologists,
discourse analysts and other experts working on different aspects of
efficiency to submit a short paper to the special issue. Submissions are due
November 1 2019 and they should report quantitative corpus-based studies that
address manifestations of communicatively efficient behavior in various
domains (lexicon, phonology, morphosyntax, pragmatics, etc.). 

Linguistics Vanguard is an online, multi-modal journal and authors are
encouraged to include interactive content, such as audio, video, software, raw
data, etc. Because the journal is online-only, special collections are
''virtual collections'' linked by shared keywords. Details about the journal
can be found at www.degruyter.com/lingvan. 
Authors (and journal subscribers) will have free access to the entire special
collection. There are no publication costs. All authors may post a PDF on
their personal website one year after publication.
Questions can be directed to the editors, Natalia Levshina
(natalevs at gmail.com) and Steven Moran (steven.moran at uzh.ch).




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