CFP: Variation and Language Processing @ Christchurch, New Zealand

16-Jan-2013 - 18-Jan-2013
Traditionally, linguistic variation has been the concern of (variationist) sociolinguistics and work in language processing has fallen under the domain of psycholinguistics and cognitive science. Recently, however, this apparent division has been questioned because work in sociolinguistics now encompasses experimental techniques and work in psycholinguistics has begun to engage with variable naturalistic data. As the interests of these fields converge, new questions about the relationship between linguistic variation and social cognition have been generated e.g. How is linguistic variation stored in cognition? How is the 'linguistic' and the 'extra-linguistic' linked? How do we best model these connections?

Questions like these framed the first Variation and Language Processing (VALP) conference, held at the University of Chester (UK) in 2011, and we are pleased to announce the continuation of the discussion at VALP2, hosted by the New Zealand Institute for Language, Brain and Behaviour (NZILBB) and the Linguistics Department at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand).

The New Zealand Institute for Language, Brain and Behaviour is a global hub for multi-disciplinary language-based research with five cross-cutting themes: language variation and change, social cognition, bilingualism, ageing and language acquisition. The VALP conference, therefore, particularly welcomes papers and posters on topics relating to these themes.

We are delighted to announce that the invited plenary speakers at VALP2 are:

Professor Cathi Best, MARCS Auditory Laboratories, Australia
Professor Paul Foulkes, University of York, UK
Associate Professor Paul Warren, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ

Call for Papers:

We invite the submission of abstracts from any area of the language sciences dealing with research in keeping with the theme of the conference.

Abstracts, which will be peer-reviewed, should be no longer than 400 words and may be presented in either .pdf .doc or .txt format. We will use Linguist Lists's Easy Abstracts submission system. To submit, go to the VALP2 Easy Abs site. Submitted abstracts should be anonymous, with author details contained within the Easy Abstracts online form.

Accepted oral papers will be allocated 30 minutes for presentation (20 minutes for the talk and 10 minutes for questions). In addition, we also welcome poster submissions. When you submit your abstract, you will be asked to indicate whether you would be prepared to present your work (i) either as a talk or a poster paper or (ii) only as a poster.

EasyAbs: http://linguistlist.org/confcustom/valp2