Workshop on Interface Conditions

 

July 21-26, 2008

Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

 

A workshop on interface conditions, in the memory of Tanya Reinhart will be held in conjunction with the 18th International Congress of Linguists (CIL 18).

For more information, visit the website (http://www.cil18.org ) or contact the organizer at [email protected].

Organizer: Anna Maria Di Sciullo (Universite du Quebec à Montreal)

Sponsors: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

              Major Collaborative Research Initiative on Interface Asymmetries 

               Fonds quebecois de recherche sur la societe et la culture

 

 

Invited speakers: Tecumseh Fitch, Sandiway Fong, Jim Higginbotham, Norbert Hornstein, Eric Reuland, Mark Steedman, Charles Yang

 

Description

Works in Minimalism aim at reducing interface conditions, including the Binding theory and theta-theory, to deeper properties of the grammar (e.g., Hornstein 2002, Kayne 2002), thereby approaching explanation of linguistic phenomena. Works on the properties of interfaces bring to fore the role of computational efficiency and processing considerations in sentence production and comprehension (e.g., Reinhart 2006, Yang 2005).  The purpose of this workshop is to discuss the interactions of grammar specific properties and computational/processing properties, and their effects at the interfaces.  The workshop, more broadly, aims at exploring further the three factors that according to Chomsky (2006) enter into to growth of language in the individual, and in particular the independent principle of efficient computation (Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch 2002; Fitch & Hauser 2004).

 

Call for Papers

In addition to the invited talks, a small number of papers will be accepted for presentation at the conference. We invite submissions for thirty-minute talks (20 minutes for presentation plus 10 minutes for questions) on research focusing on the role of computational efficiency and human processing restrictions in language growth. Papers focusing on how language independent principles can explain key properties of language are encouraged to apply. A representative, but not exhaustive, list of topics for potential papers includes the following:  

  

·  The manifestation of language independent principles at the interfaces.

·  Language and language independent principles determining language growth.

·  The architectural constraints that determine and limit possible attainable languages.

 

 

Important Dates:

● August 31, 2007: Deadline for submitting the abstract.

● November 31, 2007: Notification of acceptance.

● February 15, 2008: Deadline for submitting the final version of the accepted

 abstract for publication in the proceedings of  CIL18.

● September 30, 2008: Deadline for submitting the final version of the presented

 paper to be published in CD.

 

Form and submission of abstracts:

An abstract(.pdf or .doc file) should be up to 3-pages long, including data and references.

The abstract should start with the title of the paper, followed by the text of the abstract.

Please do not include the author's name in the abstract. On a separate page, please give

the author's name, affiliation, e-mail address, telephone number, mailing address, the paper title and the session number(title).

 

Please send the abstract and the author's information to both [email protected] and [email protected].