36.3052, Confs: 4th International Conference "Prominence in Language" (Germany)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3052. Thu Oct 09 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3052, Confs: 4th International Conference "Prominence in Language" (Germany)

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Date: 09-Oct-2025
From: Michelle Vuong [m.vuong at em.uni-frankfurt.de]
Subject: 4th International Conference "Prominence in Language"


4th International Conference "Prominence in Language"
Short Title: ICPL IV

Date: 23-Apr-2026 - 24-Apr-2026
Location: Cologne, Germany
Contact Email: ICPL-IV-2026 at uni-koeln.de
Meeting URL:
https://sfb1252.uni-koeln.de/veranstaltungen/internationale-tagungen-workshops/icpl-iv-2026

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Language Acquisition;
Psycholinguistics

Submission Deadline: 03-Dec-2025

Prominence relations establish a ranking between linguistic units,
such as prosodic units, arguments of a verb, and discourse referents.
Prominence is one of the key notions in language and communication: it
accounts, for instance, for prosodic highlighting and for the building
of linguistic structure and discourse representations. The CRC 1252
Prominence in Language (University of Cologne) investigates the role
of prominence from an interdisciplinary linguistic perspective,
involving phonology and phonetics, morpho-syntax, semantics, discourse
pragmatics and multimodality both in spoken and in signed languages.
It also links up with social cognition and narratology. Current
research efforts are devoted to language in typical usage settings,
such as written genres comprising larger discourse segments and
everyday conversation, i.e. interactive communication. A recently
added focus is individual and population-specific variability, which
affects speaker perspective and dialogic communication in general.
The International Conference “Prominence in Language” has been running
in Cologne since 2015, with the second and third issue having taken
place in 2018, and 2022. The Fourth International Conference
“Prominence in Language” (ICPL IV) will take place in April 2026. It
aims at advancing the understanding of the notion of prominence in
language and at promoting the exchange among researchers working on
prominence-related phenomena from various perspectives and
disciplines. We invite contributions employing quantitative and
qualitative research methods, synchronic and diachronic perspectives,
cross-linguistic research, modelling, psycho- and neurolinguistic and
cognitively oriented approaches as well as applied ones, both in
spoken and in signed languages.
A (non-exhaustive) list of topics to be addressed at ICPL IV may
include for instance the following:
1. the encoding and decoding of prominence
2. language-specific and universal prominence scales and structures
(e.g., animacy scale, referentiality scale, metrical scale, thematic
role hierarchy) 
3. factors determining the ranking of entities in discourse (e.g.,
agentivity, topicality, activation) 
4. the role of prominence in the tense-aspect-modality systems
5. the relation between the prominence status of entities in discourse
and their availability as perspective-takers
6. prominence of propositions (e.g., rhetorical relations,
argumentative relations)
7. prominence and multimodality
8. prominence and individual variation
9. prominence and clinical populations
10. prominence and gender/sex
11. psycho- and neurolinguistic underpinnings of prominence relations 
12. dynamic modeling of prominence
13. language comparison and cross-linguistic perspectives
14. prominence in language acquisition, bilingualism and
multilingualism
15. studying prominence using large language models
Invited Speakers: tba
Abstract Submission:
We ask for the submission of abstracts on prominence-related phenomena
by December 3, 2025, 23:59 anywhere on earth. An author may be
(co-)author of several contributions, but every contribution must have
a different presenting author. Anonymized two-page abstracts must be
submitted with the format given in the template provided. Abstracts
should be submitted via OpenReview. Please note that OpenReview
requests corresponding authors to register with their system two weeks
in advance.
The link for abstract submission will be provided on the website:
https://sfb1252.uni-koeln.de/veranstaltungen/internationale-tagungen-workshops/icpl-iv-2026
Important Dates:
December 3, 2025, AoE - Deadline for submission (there will be NO
deadline extension)
January 23, 2026 - Notification of Acceptance
April 23-24, 2026 - Conference in Cologne



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