Author: Damien De Meyere

Profile vacancy Applied Linguistics French (100%)

Damien De Meyere

At the Department of Linguistics of the Faculty of Arts at KU Leuven, there is a full-time vacancy of lecturer (100%) within the academic staff in a tenure track (5 years). We want to hire an internationally oriented linguist with expertise in applied linguistics and French, an excellent research record and teaching experience in applied linguistics. KU Leuven’s Department of Linguistics is a highly internationally oriented centre for research and training in linguistics. The research unit is committed to research on a wide range of languages, with a focus on different research methods, theoretical frameworks and phenomena. Candidates have a profile that complements existing expertise within the Department of Linguistics and bridges with other departments and centres within and outside the Faculty of Arts.

Duties

Research

• You carry out research in the field of applied linguistics, in at least one of the following domains, with a focus on French: multilingualism, written language skills or text analysis.

• You use state-of-the-art quantitative and/or qualitative techniques for applied linguistic research in your research.

• You take initiatives to acquire competitive funding and actively participate in the development of future (interdisciplinary) research projects.

• Besides a strong applied linguistic profile, you develop cross-disciplinary research lines and collaborations with scientific fields in which the analysis of multilingualism and multilingual communication also play a central role, such as translation and interpretation science, psycholinguistics, communication science or Digital Humanities.

• You will join the research group in the Department of Linguistics with which your research shows the strongest affinity. At the same time, you support and develop initiatives that build the bridge between your own research and the other scientific domains mentioned above, within and outside the Faculty of Arts (e.g. through active membership in the Centre for Applied Language Research, the Leuven Institute for Artificial Intelligence or initiatives relating to Digital Humanities).

Education

You will provide a teaching assignment in the Bachelor’s in Applied Linguistics (“Bachelor Toegepaste taalkunde”, KU Leuven – Antwerp Campus) and in the Master’s in Multilingual Communication (“Master Meertalige communicatie”, KU Leuven – Antwerp Campus), and possibly one course in the Master’s in Multilingual Communication in Brussels, with a clear commitment to the quality of the programmes as a whole, and in line with KU Leuven’s educational vision. Your teaching assignment will initially mainly be linked to the Antwerp Campus, but you are willing to provide future teaching assignments on other campuses of the faculty, and in teaching programmes related to the above-mentioned programmes, where deemed convenient.

The following course units are indicatively part of the teaching assignment of the sought candidate:

Master Multilingual Communication

• Cases in multilingual communication: French (taught in French; 6 ECTS)

• Digital text design: French (taught in French; 3 ECTS)

• Multimodal text design: French (taught in French; 3 ECTS)

• Research methodology (taught in Dutch, 4.5 out of 9 ECTS)

OR Advanced research methods (taught in English, 4.5 out of 9 ECTS) on Campus Brussels)

Bachelor Applied Linguistics

• French language proficiency 2 (probably from 2024-2025) (taught in French; 2 out of 10 ECTS, i.c.w. a teaching assistant)

• French text analysis and production (probably from 2025-2026) (taught in French; 4 ECTS)

You will also further contribute to the Faculty’s pedagogical project by supervising bachelor’s and master’s theses in the above-mentioned courses and participating in initiatives for the training of young researchers in your area of expertise (e.g. as part of the compulsory doctoral training).

You develop your teaching approach, taking advantage of the opportunities for educational professionalisation offered by the faculty and the university.

Service

• Within the institution, you have an active presence on the Antwerp Campus of the Faculty of Arts.

• You contribute to the further development of the multilingualism and multilingual communication component at the KU Leuven Campus Antwerp, in interaction with the wider region. You represent us in the region and act as a contact person between the university and local bodies where appropriate.

• You are willing to provide academic, social and internal service. You actively work on forms of regional and international cooperation with actors in your field to strengthen the links between the programmes and the field. You participate in information and recruitment events and extra-muros activities.

• In time, you will also take up management tasks on campus and in the Faculty.

Profile

• You have a PhD in (applied) linguistics (or equivalent relevant degree) with a specialisation in French and with a specific focus on multilingualism, written language skills or text analysis.

• Your profile as a researcher with expertise in quantitative and/or qualitative linguistic analysis techniques complements the existing research focus of the Department of Linguistics at the Faculty of Arts.

• You possess excellent didactic qualities for academic teaching and can present an excellent research dossier. Research quality is reflected in several high-level international publications.

• You have organisational skills and a collaborative attitude.

The teaching curriculum for this position also consists of Dutch-language course units. The administrative language of KU Leuven is Dutch. If you have no or insufficient Dutch at the time of recruitment, KU Leuven provides a training offer that should allow you to participate in board meetings. Before teaching in Dutch, you will be given the opportunity to acquire the knowledge of Dutch required for this purpose.

Offer

We offer full-time employment in an intellectually challenging environment. You will be appointed as a tenure-track lecturer for a period of 5 years; thereafter, upon positive evaluation, you will be appointed as a senior lecturer. To facilitate scientific integration and research in the first period, start-up funding of 110,000 euro is offered to new professors who do not have substantial other funding.

KU Leuven is a research-intensive, internationally oriented university conducting both fundamental and applied scientific research. It has a strong inter- and multidisciplinary focus and strives for international excellence. To this end, it actively cooperates with its research partners at home and abroad. It offers its students an academic education based on high-level scientific research.

KU Leuven is well equipped to welcome foreign professors and their families and provides practical support in the areas of immigration and administration, housing, childcare, learning Dutch, partner career coaching, etc.

KU Leuven aims to create an environment in which all talents can develop to their maximum potential, regardless of gender, age, cultural origin, nationality or disability. If you have any questions regarding accessibility or support opportunities, please contact us at diversiteit.HR@kuleuven.be.

Interested?

More information can be obtained from prof. dr. Elke Peters, campus dean of the Antwerp Campus of KU Leuven (Faculty of Arts), elke.peters@kuleuven.be; from prof. dr. Karen Lahousse, coordinator of the Department of Linguistics (Faculty of Arts), karen.lahousse@kuleuven.be and from the dean of the Faculty, prof. dr. Liesbet Heyvaert, liesbet.heyvaert@kuleuven.be.

For problems with online applying, please contact solliciteren@kuleuven.be.

Please enclose with your application a detailed research proposal for a period of 3 years (maximum two pages) and a vision statement on teaching (maximum two pages) in Dutch or in English.

You can apply for this job no later than February 13, 2023 via the  online application tool 

KU Leuven seeks to foster an environment where all talents can flourish, regardless of gender, age, cultural background, nationality or impairments. If you have any questions relating to accessibility or support, please contact us at diversiteit.HR@kuleuven.be.

Linguists’ Day 2021

Damien De Meyere

Friday 22 October 2021, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

This year’s edition of the annual Linguists’ Day of the LSB (Linguistic Society of Belgium) will be organised on Friday 22 October 2021 at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).

Call for papers

We invite submissions for papers (20’ presentation + 10’ discussion) on any topic in linguistics. Papers can be in any of the three Belgian national languages (Dutch, French, German) or in English. Abstracts cannot exceed 500 words (without references) and should clearly indicate the topic, the objectives, data and method and (provisional) results. Deadline for submission is Wednesday 30 June 2021. Please submit your abstract via EasyChair. At the beginning of September 2021, you will be informed about acceptance of your abstract.

Venue

All activities (lectures and lunch) will be organised on the Etterbeek Campus of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Elsene) within walking distance from the Etterbeek train station and the Pétillon metro station. Note that if the public health situation makes it impossible to organise the Linguists’ Day on campus, the conference will take place online.

Conference fee

Attendance is free of charge (this holds for both members and non-members). If you want to present at the conference, you are required to become a member of the LSB. This means that you have to be registered on the website and have paid the annual contribution of € 40 if you wish to obtain the latest volume of the Belgian Journal of Linguistics for 2018, € 20 without.

Award

The LSB board will be organising a Best Paper Presentation Award for PhD students. If you wish to participate, please mention this explicitly in your abstract.

Important dates

  • 30 June 2021: deadline submission abstracts
  • early September 2021: notification of acceptance
  • 22 October 2021: Linguists’ Day

On behalf of the organizers
Thomas Hoelbeek
Laura Rosseel

International Workshop on the Expression of Contrast and the Annotation of Information Structure in Corpora

Damien De Meyere

18-19 November 2021 
Location: Online or hybrid (in Leuven + streaming), Belgium 

The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers working on the encoding and analysis of information-structural concepts, and particularly contrast, in naturally attested data. 

In the last decades, quite some attention has gone to the concept of contrast in research on information structure. There is an ongoing discussion about the role of contrast in the conceptual framework: while most linguists consider contrast to be compatible with both focus and topic, creating the subtypes contrastive focus and contrastive topic (Repp & Cook 2010; Repp 2010, 2016; Büring 2016; Cruschina 2021b), some have argued that contrast is an autonomous information-structural category (Vallduví & Vilkuna 1998; Molnár 2002). A lot of researchers study the interaction of contrast with other domains of language, in particular syntax (Repp 2009; Lahousse et al. 2014; Cruschina & Remberger 2017; Cruschina 2021a) and prosody (Brunetti et al. 2010; Brunetti et al. 2012; Repp & Drenhaus 2015; Riester et al. 2020; Seeliger & Repp 2020). Moreover, contrast has been shown to be encoded by different linguistic means, such as contrastive adverbials (e.g. Csűry 2001; Hamma & Haillet 2002; Dupont 2019; Harthan 2019; Brysbaert & Lahousse 2020), and clefts (e.g. Hedberg 1990; Davidse 2000; Scappini 2013; Destruel & Velleman 2014; Lahousse & Borremans 2014; Lahousse et al. 2014; Bourgoin 2017). 

From a methodological point of view, this workshop mainly focuses on the identification of information-structural concepts (such as contrast) in naturally attested language. The annotation of these concepts in corpora of spontaneous speech is not straightforward (Ritz et al. 2008; Cook & Bildhauer 2011, 2013) and the concept of contrast proves to be particularly difficult in this respect, because it can be superposed on both topics and foci, and can be marked by various prosodic, syntactic and lexical means. Although a few initiatives have recently been taken to develop annotation guidelines for information structure (Götze et al. 2007; Brunetti et al. 2016; De Kuthy et al. 2018; Riester et al. 2018), there is no consensus on the “best practice”.

Call for Papers: 

The questions addressed in this workshop include (but are not limited to): 
– How can the concept of contrast be defined? 
– What is the link between contrast and other concepts of information structure (topic and focus)? How can we deal with “overlaps” between or “combinations” of information-structural concepts? 
– How does contrast interact with syntax / prosody / lexicon / etc. ? 
– How is contrast encoded in spontaneous language in different languages? Which prosodic / syntactic / lexical means are used to mark contrast? 
– Which information-structural concepts are particularly challenging to annotate in corpora, and may lead to poor inter-annotator agreement? 
– Are the existing annotation methods cross-linguistically applicable? Are there differences between text types, discursive genres, …? 
– How is contrast controlled for in experiments? How can this feed into corpus research? 

Submission guidelines: 
– Abstracts are invited for 30-minute presentations plus 10 minutes for discussion. 
– Abstracts should be anonymous and no longer than two pages (including references, examples, tables and figures), in Times New Roman font size 12, with margins of at least 2.5 cm (1 inch). 
– Abstracts should be written in English. 
– Submissions are limited to a maximum of two per author (with at most one single-authored paper). 
– Abstracts should be submitted in PDF format through EasyChair by 20 August 2021: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=contrastannotationis. 

Important dates: 
– 20 August 2021: deadline for abstract submission 
– 20 September 2021: notification of acceptance 
– 20 October 2021: deadline for registration 
– 18-19 November 2021: workshop (fully online or hybrid (in Leuven + streaming), in line with the sanitary restrictions at that moment)

Job: Doctoral fellow, Ghent University

Damien De Meyere

On behalf of the Ghent Centre of Digital Humanities and LT³ – Language and Translation Technology Team at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication at Ghent University we are delighted to accept applications for a fully funded 4 year PhD project in the field of digital humanities methods with a focus on research of a NLP toolchain in literary research with enhanced multilingual workflows as part of the Horizon 2020 INFRA Research project – Computational Literary Studies.

Specifically, the candidate will address the development of digital humanities methods in the following ways:
– Research the development of a NLP toolchain in literary research with enhanced multilingual workflows;
– Develop with a team of researchers a suite of workflows and prototypes to facilitate common research tasks within literary studies using NLP enrichments; this includes: named entity recognition, relational extraction, and sentiment analysis;
– Work to optimise the availability of fundamental NLP tools within a workflow for historical literary texts using case studies from KBR (the Royal Library of Belgium) multilingual serial publication collection.

For more information and how to apply, please visit the application link provided below.

Web Address for Applications: https://www.ugent.be/en/work/scientific/doctoral-fellow-13

Contact Information:
Assistant Professor Julie M Birkholz
julie.birkholz@ugent.be

LOT Summer School 2021

Damien De Meyere

The Online LOT Summer School 2021 is organised by LOT in collaboration with the University of Leuven (KU Leuven). The school offers 18 courses with both national and international teachers, as well as additional activities such as research discussion groups, poster sessions, and a public lecture by Peter Hagoort. The LOT school is now open for PhD students in Linguistics. 

Tuition: 100 EUR
Tuition Explanation: 100 euros for 1 week; 175 euros for 2 weeks 

Registration: 06-Apr-2021 to 25-May-2021
Contact Person: Brigit van der Pas
Email: lot@uva.nl

Apply on the web: https://lotschool.nl/events/lot-summer-school-2021/

Registration Instructions:
https://lotschool.nl/events/lot-summer-school-2021/ 

PLIN Day 2021: Linguistics applied to Business Language in a multilingual and multicultural world

Damien De Meyere

2021 PLIN Day, Friday May 7h, Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and/or online (depending on the COVID19-related situation and measures)

CALL for short papers – Deadline extended until 15 February 2021

The PLIN Day is an annual one-day thematic conference hosted by the Linguistics Research Unit of the Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium). The conference has established itself over the years as an international forum for the exchange of ideas among scholars and has brought together researchers from all over the world.

The 2021 PLIN Day will take place on Friday, May 7th and is devoted to “Linguistics applied to Business Language in a multilingual and multicultural world”. It offers academics, professionals, undergraduate and postgraduate students an excellent opportunity to access, share and discuss cutting-edge research in the field. The following (non-exhaustive) list of themes will be covered this year:

  • The use of (corpus) linguistic methods in the study of organizational communication and/or the characteristics of business language
  • Research on techniques and practices for clear and simple communication within organizations. This includes techniques for simplifying documents issued by organizations in order to enhance accessibility.
  • The challenges of the use of “English as a lingua franca” in organizational communication and, more generally, of communication in English between native and non-native speakers within organizations.
  • Intercultural communication in multilingual business communication

The core of the conference will consist in keynote sessions but participants will also have the opportunity to present their most recent research and/or work in progress during a ‘short papers’ session.

Keynote speakers

Isabelle Clerc, Université de Laval
Thierry Fontenelle, European Investment Bank
Michael Handford, Cardiff University
Geert Jacobs, Universiteit Gent

CALL for short papers

In addition to the keynote sessions, a ‘short papers’ session will be organized to enable participants to present their most recent research and/or work in progress. We invite abstracts (between 300 and 500 words) addressing topics such as:

  • (Corpus) linguistic methods applied to the study of organizational communication
  • Analyses of functional and formal characteristics of business language
    • Clear and simple (written or oral) communication within organizations
    • “English as a lingua franca” in organizational communication
    • Communication in English between native and non-native speakers within organizations
    • Intercultural communication in multilingual business communication

We welcome contributions about languages other than Dutch, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

The short papers will be presented in English (10-minute presentation + 5 minutes for questions).

Abstract submissions (in English, between 300 and 500 words) should be sent by 15 February 2021 to the following address: plindayucl@uclouvain.be. Abstracts submitted as an attached document need to be anonymized (the name/s of the author/s should feature in the email message).

Acceptance for short papers will be notified by 15 March 2021.

For more information: https://uclouvain.be/fr/instituts-recherche/ilc/plin/plinday2021.html 

Important dates

15 February 2021: New deadline for abstract submissions
1 March, 2021: Registration opens
15 March 2021: Notification of acceptance for a short paper presentation
7 May, 2021: PLINDay 2021

Organizing committee

Sylvie De Cock, Université catholique de Louvain 
Thomas François, Université catholique de Louvain
Philippe Hiligsmann, Université catholique de Louvain
Adeline Müller, Université catholique de Louvain
Tran Hanh Trang Pham, Université catholique de Louvain
Laura Penha-Marion, Université catholique de Louvain

Scientific committee

Andrea Catellani, Université catholique de Louvain
Isabelle Clerc, Université de Laval
Sylvie De Cock, Université catholique de Louvain 
Amandine Dumont, Université catholique de Louvain
Thierry Fontenelle, European Investment Bank
Thomas François, Université catholique de Louvain
Michael Handford, Cardiff University
Philippe Hiligsmann, Université catholique de Louvain
Geert Jacobs, Universiteit Gent
Adeline Müller, Université catholique de Louvain
Sandrine Roginsky, Université catholique de Louvain
Lieve Vangehuchten, Universiteit Antwerpen

International Conference on Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy

Damien De Meyere

The International Conference on Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy has been established as an international forum for building and developing research on psychotherapy from a conversation analytic perspective. In 2021, the focus of the conference will be the psychotherapy relationship.

Interest in the relationship between therapist and client has been central from the earliest days of psychotherapy. There is much agreement that the therapeutic relationship bears a significant relation to treatment outcome; it can help make therapy effective and provide a healing context for change. Most of the research on the therapy relationship to date has used quantitative methods drawn from clients, therapists or observers’ appraisal (e.g., based on questionnaires or checklist type measures). Much less energy has been committed to the detailed examination of the specifics of in-therapy events and how that may develop our qualitative understanding of how a therapy relationship is achieved through therapists’ and clients’ talk and conduct.

Conversation Analysis (CA), which examines the moment-by-moment sequential organization of social interaction in everyday and institutional contexts, has provided many insights into our understanding of how important psychotherapeutic ‘business’ is accomplished. This includes the psychotherapy relationship, but also many other kinds of important phenomena grounded in talk & conduct such as the alliance, empathy, emotional displays, epistemics and change, just to name a few.

Call for Papers:

The overarching theme of this conference pertains to the psychotherapeutic relationship. Interest in the relationship between therapist and client has been central from the earliest days of psychotherapy. There is much agreement that the therapeutic relationship bears a significant relation to treatment outcome; it can help make therapy effective and provide a healing context for change. Most of the research on the therapy relationship to date has used quantitative methods drawn from clients, therapists or observers’ appraisal (e.g., based on questionnaires or checklist type measures). Much less energy has been committed to the detailed examination of the specifics of in-therapy events and how that may develop our qualitative understanding of how a therapy relationship is achieved through therapists’ and clients’ talk and conduct.

Conversation Analysis (CA), which examines the moment-by-moment sequential organization of social interaction in everyday and institutional contexts, and related disciplines have provided many insights into our understanding of how important psychotherapeutic ‘business’ is accomplished. This includes the psychotherapy relationship, but also many other kinds of important phenomena grounded in talk & conduct such as the alliance, empathy, emotional displays, epistemics and change, just to name a few.

The aim of this conference is to bring together researchers and practitioners from an international community to discuss new findings, methodological innovations and practical applications in this growing area of applied CA work. We welcome submissions that align with the conference theme, but also papers that address any relevant aspects of interactional practices used in psychotherapeutic contexts. Submissions that address relevant neighbouring forms of institutional practice (e.g., psychiatric consultations; psychological assessment; support-oriented help lines, home support visits, coaching and counselling) are also welcome. We hope the conference will be of interest to people from a variety of academic backgrounds (including psychotherapy, counselling, psychiatry, social work, linguistics, psychology, and sociology) and to practitioners from a wide-range of institutional settings who employ therapeutic practices in their work. Information regarding the conference format (e.g., in person or online) will be provided later in the year.

PRESENTATION FORMATS:

  1. Conference Paper
  • Brief report on empirical work addressing some relevant aspect of psychotherapeutic interaction
  1. Data Session
  • Discussion of video- or audio recordings and transcripts of psychotherapeutic interactions and/or sequences
  1. Workshop
  • Interactive forum that addresses important connections between psychotherapy and interaction research

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Please visit our website: https://www.iccap.ugent.be

SUBMISSION DEADLINE:
Wednesday, March 31, 2021. Submission will open February 1. All submissions must be sent to: iccap2021@ugent.be. Please only use the submission form when you submit your abstract. The programme committee will send notices of acceptance by May 1, 2021.

CONFIRMED PLENARY SPEAKERS:
Professor Robert Elliott, University of Strathclyde/Glasgow
Professor Alexa Hepburn, Rutgers University/ New Jersey

We look forward to seeing you in Ghent in October!

CONTACT INFORMATION
Please direct any questions to Claudio Scarvaglieri or Peter Muntigl at iccap2021@ugent.be

For further information please consult our conference website: https://www.iccap.ugent.be

Full Post Doc position, Project Language Productivity at Work

Damien De Meyere

In the framework of an interdisciplinary project on productivity in grammar (constructions), we are currently hiring one full-time postdoc bursary (International Mobility) for one year.

Degree requirements:
PhD in (corpus) Linguistics

The candidates are expected to have a solid background in quantitative corpus linguistics, and more specifically in distributional (vector space) semantics. Excellent skills in R (and preferably also in Python) are required.

We are looking for independent researchers with management / coordination skills, who are able to share their knowledge with PhD students within a large interdisciplinary consortium.

Candidates should have an excellent knowledge of English.

Ghent University offers a one-year full-time contract starting on 1 March 2021. Successful candidates will be employed as research staff member under the regime of international mobility (with regular health insurance, etc.). Information for incoming international staff can be found at https://www.ugent.be/en/work/talent/next-steps.

Contact one of the project supervisors for more information. More information about the project and its supervisors can be found at www.languageproductivity.ugent.be

Supervisors:
Peter Lauwers (PI), Jóhanna Barðdal, Timothy Colleman, Renata Enghels, Rob Hartsuiker, Miriam Taverniers.
Co-supervisors: Ludovic De Cuypere, Alice Foucart, Anne-Sophie Ghyselen.

The deadline for applications is 7 February 2021.

Applications should be submitted to the application email provided below and should consist of:

  • A detailed CV, including degree grades and title of Master Thesis and PhD Thesis, and
  • A letter of motivation in English, which should also mention specific skills in quantitative corpus linguistics

Shortlisted candidates will be interviewed shortly after the 14th of February.

Application Deadline: 07-Feb-2021

Email Address for Applications: languageproductivity@ugent.be
Contact Information:
Prof Peter Lauwers
Email: peter.lauwers@ugent.be

Construction grammars in and between minds, communities, computers

Damien De Meyere

The international conference ICCG11 will take place at the University of Antwerp (UAntwerpen), Belgium, 18-20 August 2021. ICCG11 will cover a broad range of topics related to various constructionist approaches to language, including but not limited to cognitive construction grammar, embodied construction grammar, fluid construction grammar, radical construction grammar, sign based construction grammar, frame semantics. The conference also acts as a forum of discussion between different approaches. The theme of this edition of the conference is the following: how do constructions model language in minds, communities, or computers? Submissions for presentations, posters, or workshops are particularly welcomed along the lines of this theme, but submissions may also be related to other aspects of constructionist linguistics.

Call for Papers:

PRESENTATION FORMATS:
Full papers will be allotted 20 minutes, followed by 5-7 minutes for discussion. Posters will be presented in a special session and remain on display during the conference.

SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS FOR THE GENERAL SESSION:
Abstracts for General Session papers and posters can be submitted until 15 February 2021. Please visit https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/conferences/construction-grammars/calls-and-circulars/, where you will also find a submission template (or go to the submission facility directly: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iccg11).

Abstracts should not exceed 400 words (exclusive of references) and should clearly state research questions, approach, method, data and (expected) results. Abstracts should also list three to five keywords.

Since all abstracts will be submitted to blind review, no author-specific information must be available in the text of the abstract or in the file metadata.

Abstracts will not be edited for typing, spelling, or grammatical errors after submission. Therefore, abstracts should comply with the layout requirements:
– Abstracts must be single-spaced and fully justified. The standard font will be Calibri, size 11. Margins should be set at 2,54 cm (1 inch) all around.
– References will have a hanging indent of 1,27 cm (0.5 inch).
– Submit the abstract as a .doc, .docx or .odt document. If it contains special characters, please send a PDF version to iccg11uantwerpen.be.

EXISTING SUBMISSIONS:
If you already submitted an abstract for the conference during the first call before postponement due to COVID19, the following guidelines apply:
– In case your abstract was accepted, it remains accepted
– You are given the opportunity to revise your accepted abstract until the new submission deadline
– If you plan on presenting on a different topic instead, please make a new submission (do not replace an existing submission in this case!)
– If you no longer want to present your accepted abstract, please notify us, so that we can remove it
– In case your abstract was not accepted, you are free to submit a new, revised version of your abstract, which will be treated as a new submission

MULTIPLE PAPERS:
One person may submit a single-authored abstract and a co-authored one (not as first author) or two co-authored abstracts (only one as first author). Note that keynote papers within workshops count as ordinary papers.

EVALUATION:
Abstracts submitted to the general session and to the poster session will be evaluated by two members of the Scientific Committee. Workshop papers receive two evaluations by Scientific Committee members and one by the workshop convenor(s).

NOTIFICATIONS:
Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by 31 March 2021.

Taal & Tongval 2020: Perspectives for research on language variation and change

Damien De Meyere

27 November 2020, Ghent, Belgium 

Increasingly, ever larger data collections become available for research into language variation and change, both of existing and new data, structured as well as unstructured. At the same time, surprising combinatorial possibilities arise in the diversity of data collections. Next to the increasing digitization of existing data in research on language and speech, also new types of data emerge. Digital communication for instance gives rise to new forms of networks forming and influencing language, and in large amounts. Does this lead to new research questions and techniques, and does it afford new insights? Or can also the classic fundamental questions be answered in a more directed way using larger amounts of data? 

At the same time, new techniques are being developed to process and analyse (large amounts of) language data. Recent years have seen a rapprochement between computer science, computational linguistics, and historical variation linguistics. Computational methods, for instance, make large amounts of language data more easily accessible for further analysis, and facilitate the identification of patterns of variation and change in them. Besides methods imported from other scientific fields, this also concerns specific techniques for the analysis of language and speech, such as Natural Language Processing or acoustic analysis. New approaches in dialectometry with large and diverse data collections, and research on variation based on large language corpora and computer-mediated communication (CMC) have in recent years led to numerous new findings. What is the current state of art, and what new insights may we expect into the rise and spread of language variation, both looking back into the past and forward into the future? How do we deal with variation in space (diatopic) and time (diachronic)? How do we treat structural and semantic (both onomasiological and semasiological) features? The availability of big data clearly forces us to return to the basic questions of linguistic research.

Call for Papers: 

Meanwhile, different types of research have already delivered a number of promising results. The 2020 edition of the Taal & Tongval symposium therefore focuses on the budding perspectives that ‘big data’ affords for research on language variation and change. We request abstracts for 20-minute presentations focussing on one or more of the questions raised above. Researchers working on aspects of language variation and change in the Low Countries are particularly encouraged to submit abstracts, but abstracts concerning more general theoretical questions or research on variation in other languages are also welcome. 

Abstracts and presentations can be in Dutch or English. 

Anonymous abstracts of 300-500 words can be submitted until 1 May 2020 by attachment to an email to taalentongval2020@ugent.be. Name(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s) should be given in the text of the email. Notification of acceptance will be given by 20 May 2020.