34.2691, Calls: The South Asian Forum on the Acquisition and Processing of Language (SAFAL 2023)

Wed Sep 13 23:05:02 UTC 2023

LINGUIST List: Vol-34-2691. Wed Sep 13 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 34.2691, Calls: The South Asian Forum on the Acquisition and Processing of Language (SAFAL 2023)

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Date: 14-Sep-2023
From: Pranab Bagartti [huz208216 at iitd.ac.in]
Subject: The South Asian Forum on the Acquisition and Processing of Language (SAFAL 2023)

Full Title: The South Asian Forum on the Acquisition and Processing of
Language (SAFAL 2023)
Short Title: SAFAL 2023

Date: 08-Dec-2023 - 08-Dec-2023
Location: Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India
Contact Person: Samar Husain
Meeting Email: samar at hss.iitd.ac.in
Web Site: https://sites.google.com/view/safal2023

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; Language Acquisition;
Neurolinguistics; Psycholinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics

Call Deadline: 07-Oct-2023

Meeting Description:

The study of cross-linguistic variability between languages has been a
central question in linguistic theory and has delivered important
insights on language. This focus on cross-linguistic variation is
essential for formulating and testing linguistic theories: A theory of
grammar should be a theory of all possible human grammars. Similarly,
a theory of the psychology of language should be based on
cross-linguistic evidence: Although grammars are language-specific,
speakers' minds and brains are species-specific and function according
to the same principles (Bock, Eberhard, Cutting, Meyer, & Schriefers,
2001).

However, a majority of psycholinguistic research focuses almost
exclusively on European languages: as of 2009, one could find
psycholinguistic studies on less than 1% of the world’s languages
(Jaeger & Norcliffe, 2009; Norcliffe, Harris, & Jaeger, 2015). This is
a problem, because much of our theory-building is based on a limited
group of languages, ignoring a treasure trove of syntactic,
morphological, and semantic variation that could hold the key to our
understanding of how the mind works. In particular, cross-linguistic
data may help answer questions such as: What are the processing
strategies and constraints that can be deemed universal, i.e. holding
across all languages? What is the cross-linguistic variability with
regard to processing strategies across languages? Equally, we can ask
about the growth of grammars in young children in mono-, bi- and
multilingual contexts and how such studies can inform us about the
universality of language acquisition as well as the specifics that
concern individual languages. In order to answer such questions, we
need to investigate languages from varied language families. Recent
work on the interaction of memory constraints and expectation in verb
final languages vs verb medial languages, for example, has revealed
that prediction processes in the former seem to be able to withstand
memory constraints better than the latter (e.g., Vasishth, Suckow,
Lewis, & Kern, 2010).  Work within language acquisition suggests that
lexical features such as animacy and gender in contrast to
phonologically driven rules are harder for children to acquire and
that there are effects of typology on both the speed of language
acquisition and the observed trajectories. Such typological
variability and our ability to make certain typological predictions in
psycholinguistics cannot be determined by studying languages of a
single family or a single geographical region.

SAFAL with its focus on the languages of India is an initiative that
seeks to address the needs as outlined above. India is uniquely placed
for such an enterprise with 22 languages in the 8th Schedule, over 450
recognised individual languages (Ethonologue) and many more languages
and dialects that have not received official recognition. These
languages cover seven language families with multilingualism as the
norm rather than an exception among the speakers. Frequently,
individuals speak languages from different language families. This
linguistic diversity provides a rich context  for the development and
testing of psycholinguistic theories.

I have additionally added a link for the abstract submission.

2nd Call for Papers:

We invite abstracts for 30+15 minute talks, and for poster
presentations in the areas listed here. Please specify explicitly if
your submission is intended to be a talk or a poster.

The maximum length for the abstract is 3 pages. This includes example
sentences, figures, and bibliography. The abstracts may be anonymised.
Please ensure that there is a 2.5 cm margin on all sides, that the
text is single-spaced, and that you use a 12-point Times New Roman
font. IPA symbols may be used as necessary.

Note: Abstracts should report completed experiments, not experiment
design.

We invite abstracts and presentations on:

phonetic/phonological/lexical/sentence/discourse processing

computational modeling

corpus-based psycholinguistics

neurobiological investigations of language

language acquisition in mono-/bi-/multilingual contexts

and all other areas of psycholinguistics in the context of the
subcontinent’s linguistic landscape.

Submission link: https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/SAFAL2023

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