SAFAL-1: The First South Asian Forum on the Acquisition and Processing of Language University of Potsdam Potsdam, Germany, September 2, 2020 |
Conference website | https://sites.google.com/view/safal2020/ |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=safal1 |
Submission deadline | March 1, 2020 |
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, the 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? Can we make certain typological predictions in processing similar to what has been done in linguistic typology? In order to answer these questions, we need to investigate languages from varied language families. For instance, recent work on the interaction of memory constraints and expectation in verb final languages vs verb medial languages has revealed that prediction processes in the former seems to be able to withstand memory constraints more than the latter (e.g., Vasishth, Suckow, Lewis, & Kern, 2010). This points to some kind of typological variability in processing which cannot be detected by investigating only group of languages.
The proposed workshop with its focus on the languages of India will contribute in starting such an initiative. India is uniquely placed to be a test-bed for such an enterprise. India has 22 official languages. The total number of individual languages is around 460, and there are many more languages and dialects that have not received official recognition. These languages cover seven language families; and multilingualism is the norm, not the exception. Frequently, individuals speak languages from different language families. This diversity in languages makes an ideal setting for the development and testing of psycholinguistic theories.
Submission Guidelines
We invite abstracts for 30+15 minute talks, and for poster presentations. Please specify 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 are not anonymous. Please ensure that there is a 2.5 cm margin on all sides, single space text, and 12 point Times New Roman font.
List of Topics
We invite abstracts on (but not limited to)
- sentence processing
- verbal semantics
- phonetic/phonological/morphological processing
- computational modeling
- corpus-based psycholinguistics
- neurobiology of language
- child language acquisition
in the context of the subcontinent’s linguistic landscape.
Invited Speakers
- Bhuvana Narasimhan is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at University of Colorado Boulder. Her research areas include descriptive semantics, how language influences thinking, and developmental psycholinguistics.
- Rajesh Bhatt is Professor of Linguistics in Department of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His broad research interests are syntax, the syntax-semantics interface, semantics, Indo-Aryan languages, Tree Adjoining Grammars and computational linguistics.
Committees
Program Committee
- Sudha Arunachalam, New York University Steinhardt
- Sakshi Bhatia, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
- Kamal Choudhary, Indian Institute of Technology Ropar
- Veena Dwivedi, Brock University
- Samar Husain, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
- Dave Kush, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
- Bhuvana Narasimhan, University of Colorado Boulder
- Vaijayanthi Sarma, Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai
- Narayanan Srinivasan, Centre for Behavioral and Cognitive Science, University of Allahabad
- Ashwini Vaidya, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
- Shravan Vasishth, University of Potsdam
- Eva Wittenberg, University of California San Diego
Organizing committee
- Samar Husain, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
- Eva Wittenberg, University of California, San Diego
- Shravan Vasishth, University of Potsdam
Venue
The conference will be held at University of Potsdam, Germany
Important Dates
- Abstract submission opens: 1st February 2020
- Abstract submission deadline: 1st March 2020
- Acceptance notification: 15th April 2020
- Workshop date: 2nd September 2020
Contact
All questions about submissions should be emailed to samar@hss.iitd.ac.in, ewittenberg@ucsd.edu, shravan.vasishth@uni-potsdam.de