Call for Papers:
Deadline for submission: Wednesday, 15 June 2016, 11:59pm EST
EXTENDED deadline for submission: Monday, 20 June 2016, 11:59pm EST
We invite theoretical contributions from all subfields of generative linguistics as part of the general session. Presentations will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. In addition, there will be two poster sessions. Submissions are limited to two per author, with at most one paper being single-authored.
In addition to the general session, we also invite submissions for two special sessions listed below. You may indicate whether you would like to be considered for the special session when submitting your abstract. All abstracts will be considered for both the general session and the special sessions.
1. Linearization of syntactic structures:
Since Richard Kayne’s The Antisymmetry of Syntax, how syntactic structures are mapped onto a linear order of words has had an increasingly large part in explaining syntactic phenomena. This special session is reserved for work that investigates the role of linearization in syntax. Possible topics include:
- The role of prosody in linearization
- How syntactic derivations are involved in linearization: is linearization cyclic?
- The role linearization has in movement operations
- The role linearization has in ellipsis constructions
- The role linearization has in word order typologies
- The role linearization algorithms have in constraining syntactic representations
- Do linearization algorithms tolerate multidominant representations and if so, how?
2. Grammatical illusions at the grammar–processing interface:
This session will focus on how processing and grammar conspire to create the perception of well-formedness in structures that one might otherwise expect to be ungrammatical/unacceptable (so-called ‘grammatical illusions’; Phillips, Wagers & Lau 2011 or ‘acceptable ungrammaticality’; Frazier 2008). Illusory acceptability has been observed in a diverse range of grammatical phenomena, including verbal agreement, negative polarity items, reflexive anaphors, comparatives, center embedding structures, and verb phrase ellipsis, to name just a few. For example, experimental studies have shown that a putatively unlicensed negative polarity item in a sentence like “the bills that no democratic senators have supported will ever become law” is judged acceptable in a range of experimental contexts (Drenhaus et al. 2004; Vasishth et al. 2008; Xiang et al. 2009), a finding that has been attributed the structure of working memory (Vasishth et al. 2008). The goal of this session is to bring together psycholinguistic and theoretical viewpoints on phenomena like these, focusing in particular on how the grammar and the processor interact to produce ‘acceptable ungrammaticality’. We strongly encourage both theoretical and experimental contributions.
Abstract guidelines:
- Abstracts, including references and data, must not exceed two A4 pages in length, have 2.5 cm (1 inch) margins on all sides, and be set in Times New Roman with a font size no smaller than 11pt.
- Examples, tables, graphs, etc. must be interspersed into the text of the abstract, rather than collected at the end.
- The submission must not reveal the identity of the author(s) in any way.
- Submissions are limited to two per author, with at most one paper being single-authored.
- Abstracts must be submitted in PDF format through EasyChair by Monday, 20 June 2016, 11:59pm EST.