Exploring the Interfaces 3: Prosody and Constituent Structure
Abstract submission deadline: February 28, 2014
Notification of Acceptance: March 10, 2014
Conference: May 8-10, 2014
Exploring the Interfaces (ETI) 3 will take place at McGill University from May 8-10, 2014. This workshop will be the last of three workshops organized by the McGill Syntactic Interfaces Research Group (McSIRG) as part of a multi-year grant to study linguistic interfaces. Following ETI 1 (Word structure) and ETI 2 (Implicatures, alternatives and the semantics/pragmatics interface), the topic of ETI 3 will be 'Prosody and Constituent Structure'.
In particular, ETI 3 will deal with issues surrounding prosodic and phonological evidence for syntactic constituent structure, with a focus on verb-initial languages.
Goals of the Workshop:
- To bring together researchers working on issues at the syntax-phonology interface (e.g. syntactic constituency, prosodic effects on word order) from the perspectives of syntax, prosody, and phonology/phonetics
- To bring together researchers working on a variety of different languages, with an emphasis on languages with default verb-initial word order
- To encourage communication and discussion about methodologies that can be used for the empirical study of prosody and thesyntax-phonology interface
Invited Speakers:
Judith Aissen (UC Santa Cruz)
Sasha Calhoun (Victoria University of Wellington)
Lauren Eby Clemens (Harvard)
Emily Elfner (McGill)
Jim McCloskey (UC Santa Cruz)
Norvin Richards (MIT)
Joey Sabbagh (UT Arlington)
Kristine Yu (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Methods Tutorials:
In addition to the regular session, we will have two tutorials on local technological tools for fieldwork, with special reference to fieldwork on prosody:
- Tutorial 1: Automatic Acoustic Alignment in Underdocumented Languages
- Tutorial 2: LingSync: An Online Tool for Field Work
Call for Papers:
In addition to eight invited speakers, we are accepting abstracts for a limited number of additional talks (30 minutes + 10 minutes discussion) and posters. We particularly welcome papers which address the following questions:
- What can prosodic and phonological evidence tell us about syntactic constituent structure?
- To what extent do syntactic, phonological and prosodic evidence agree with one another regarding constituent structure?
- What is the role of prosody in determining word order?
- Can prosodic and phonological evidence be used to help distinguish between competing syntactic accounts of how word order is derived?
We welcome abstracts dealing with these topics in any language, but would particularly welcome abstracts on verb-initial languages in keeping with the theme of the conference.
Abstracts should be anonymous and no longer than 500 words (including examples, but not counting title or references), and should be submitted in PDF format on the following easychair site by February 28, 2014:
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eti3
Please indicate on the form whether you would prefer an oral presentation, a poster presentation, or whether either would be acceptable. By default, we will first consider you for an oral presentation. Additionally, we hope to have some funding available to supplement travel costs for student presenters.
Questions may be directed to eti3.mcgill@gmail.com.
