35.3339, Confs: Complexity in Language Sciences

Tue Nov 26 03:05:08 UTC 2024

LINGUIST List: Vol-35-3339. Tue Nov 26 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.3339, Confs: Complexity in Language Sciences

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Date: 22-Nov-2024
From: Georgeta Cislaru [georgeta.cislaru at sorbonne-nouvelle.fr]
Subject: Complexity in Language Sciences

Complexity in Language Sciences

Date: 12-Dec-2024 - 13-Dec-2024
Location: Paris (Maison de la Recherche, 4 rue des Irlandais, 75005
Paris), France
Contact: Georgeta Cislaru
Contact Email: georgeta.cislaru at sorbonne-nouvelle.fr

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics

Meeting Description:

While speaking, writing, listening and reading are easy, simple,
natural activities for those who practice them on a daily basis, what
can be said about the cognitive and linguistic processes that underlie
them? What about the languages in which these activities are
practiced, and the theories and models developed to explain and
represent the mechanisms involved? And finally, what can be said about
individuals (speakers, listeners, writers, readers) who have not yet
finished the learning process of these activities (children in the
language acquisition phase, adults learning a second language),
especially given that certain processes that may prove particularly
difficult or even impossible (e.g.: writing in deaf people)?

The question of complexity quickly arises, and the notion is regularly
invoked in the language sciences, though often in a vague and
intuition-driven way. In practice, this question of complexity takes
on different forms depending on who is formulating it
(psycholinguists, linguists, descriptive or model scientists, etc.)
and who is targeted by it (speakers, listeners, natives, non-natives,
learner s, atypical subjects, etc.). In short, how complex, for whom
and why? Is it necessary or contingent complexity? To answer these
questions, we need to know what kind of complexity we're talking
about: conceptual (e.g. representation of time and reference in
languages), formal (e.g. phonological, graphic, morphological and
syntactic structure of a language) or physiological (unnatural
articulatory gestures, material constraints)? Does one complexity call
for another (e.g. does the complex conception of time in a language
call for a complex syntax, does formal complexity imply cognitive
complexity and vice versa?).

The aim of this conference is to discuss the current state of the art
on complexity in the language sciences. It will offer the opportunity
to examine the history and use of the notion of complexity in
linguistics, through a variety of theoretical and epistemological
perspectives. Its ambition is to bring together oral and written
linguists, NLP/computer scientists and psycholinguists, etc., to
discuss the complexity that runs, to varying degrees, through the
different components of language and discourse (segmental,
suprasegmental, morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic). The
expected result is to craft a concept that will work for the
community, however stratified it may be, since the criteria on which
it is based are obviously many:
 •      For the linguist, complexity is that which is not simple to
represent and model, because (i) it is not easily predictable (e.g.
unexpected constructions, productions that escape general rules), (ii)
it could be of a continuous nature, and therefore difficult to isolate
or categorize (e.g. the prosodic level of representation as opposed to
the segmental level; opaque or indefinite reference)[1]. A complex
element is also an observable that can be described but which resists
explanation (e.g. errors in deaf writing).
 •      For the human subject, everything that is unnatural and
therefore difficult to produce or to hear (such as a foreign language)
would be complex. Complexity would also refer to units which are
linguistically underspecified, and thus ambiguous or implicit,
entailing a high cognitive load.

December 12th

9h-9h30 : Opening session - « Complexity » as seen by the organizers
9h30-10h30 : Invited talk- Didier Grandjean (Swiss Center for
Affective Sciences, U. of Geneva, Switzerland), La complexité au cœur
de l’émotion

10h30-10h50 : Coffee break

Session 1
10h50-11h20 : Pascale Feldkamp Moreira and Yuri Bizzoni (Aarhus U.,
Denmark),  Levels of Complexity in Literary Language: A Preliminary
Study
11h20-11h50 : Quentin Feltgen (Ghent U., Belgium), Language as a
complex system from a structural and diachronic perspective
11h50-12h20 : Evie A. Malaia (U. of Alabama, United States),
Linguistic Communication as Information Compression and Extraction:
Towards a Unified Framework for Framing Language Complexity

12h20-14h : Lunch

14h-15h : Invited talk - Sylvain Kahane (MoDyco, U. of Paris Nanterre,
France), Longueurs des dépendances ou flux de dépendances : deux
mesures de complexité syntaxique et deux façons de voir les
contraintes sur la mémoire à court terme

15h-15h20 : Coffee break

Session 2
15h20-15h50 : Charles Redmon (U. of Essex), Meghavarshini Krishnaswamy
(U. of Arizona, United States) and Indranil Dutta (Jadavpur U.,
India), Context-dependency in measures of articulatory complexity
15h50-16h20 : Núria Gala, Francesca Di Garbo and Pascale Colé (U. of
Aix Marseille, France), Vers une mesure de la complexité des mots
dérivés : que mesure-t-on et dans quel but ?

Session 3
16h20-16h50 : Daniel Walter (Emory U., Oxford College, United States),
Understanding morphosyntactic complexity through a functionalist,
psycholinguistic perspective: The resilience of noun-phrase agreement
structures in standard German
16h50-17h20 : Nico Lehmann (U. of Humboldt, Berlin, Germany), Clausal
complexity across registers in German and Persian

December 13th

9h-10h : Invited talk - Thomas François (UCLouvain, Belgique), Evaluer
automatiquement la complexité textuelle : quels défis reste-t-il après
101 ans de recherches en lisibilité ?

10h-10h20 : Coffee break

Session 4
10h20-10h50 : Trung Hieu Ngo (U. of Nantes, France), Nicolas Béchet
(South Brittany U., France) and Delphine Battistelli (U. of Paris
Nanterre, France), Complexity as a regression task
10h50-11h20 : Oksana Ivchenko, Natalia Grabar (U. of Lille, France),
Detection of Complexity in General and Medical-language Texts Using
Eye-Tracking Data

Session 5
11h20-11h50 : Adrien Dadone (U. of Vincennes-Saint Denis, France), Les
sourds signeurs à l’épreuve de la complexité syntaxique de l’écrit
: le cas de la subordonnée relative
11h50-12h20 : Mireille Esther Gettler Summa, Raphaël Prénovec,
Chunxiao Yan, Caroline Bogliotti and Anne Lacheret Dujour (U. of Paris
Nanterre, France), Eléments de Complexité Syntaxique dans des Ecrits
de Scripteurs Sourds en Langue Française

12h20-14h : Lunch

14h-15h : Invited talk - Alice Blumenthal-Dramé (U. of Freiburg,
Germany), Complexity measures and online language processing: Does one
size fit all languages?

15h-15h20 : Coffee break

Session 6
15h20-15h50 : Tess Wensink, Karen Lahousse (KU Leuven, Belgium),
Cécile De Cat (U. of Leeds, Great Britain), Katerina Palasis (U. of
French Riviera) and Béatrice Busson (KU Leuven, Belgium),
Disentangling Structural and Developmental Complexity in the
Acquisition of C’est-clefts in L1 French
15h50-16h20 : Nathalie Gettliffe (U. of Strasbourg, France), Définir
et mesurer la complexité en acquisition du Français Langue
Étrangère et Seconde
16h20-16h50 : Christophe Parisse (U. of Paris Nanterre, France), Loïc
Liégeois (Paris Cité U., France), Christophe Benzitoun (U. of
Lorraine, France), Caroline Masson (Sorbonne nouvelle U.) and
Christine da Silva-Genest (U. of Paris Nanterre, France), Comment
évaluer la complexité syntaxique des productions orales enfantines ?

17h-18h – Round table

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