Second Call for Papers
Conference on Rational Approaches in Language Science (RAILS)
24-26 October, 2019
Saarbruecken, Germany
The language sciences increasingly have in common their adoption of rational probabilistic approaches, such as Bayesian, Information Theoretic, and Game Theoretic frameworks. The goal of this conference is to bring together speech and language researchers whose scientific contributions reflect the full diversity of disciplines and methodologies — from speech to discourse, on-line processing to corpus-based investigation, through to language change and evolution — that have benefited from, and share, such rational explanations.
Keynote speakers:
Gerhard Jaeger, University of Tuebingen
Bayesian typology
Gina Kuperberg, Tufts University and Massachusetts General Hospital
What a probabilistic computational approach can tell us about us about the neurobiology of language comprehension
Hannah Rohde, University of Edinburgh
Why are you telling me this: Comprehension as a process of reverse engineering
Rory Turnbull, University of Hawai'i at Manoa
Phonetic reduction, natural selection, and bounded rationality
We seek submissions from across the language sciences — including speech science, theoretical linguistics, empirical linguistics, psycholinguistics and neuroscience, computational linguistics, as well as language development, change and evolution — which apply rational probabilistic explanations to linguistic phenomena, or bring novel experimental findings to bear on such accounts.
Submissions in the form of a 400 word abstract (excluding references), in text format, are to be submitted electronically at: http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/rails2019
Submissions open: 1 May
Submissions due: 1 June
Notification of acceptance: 1 July
Conference: October 24-26
Submission will be considered for either oral or poster presentation. Details on the submission format and procedure are also available at the conference web-page: http://rails.sfb1102.uni-saarland.de
Scientific and financial support for this conference comes from the Collaborative Research Center SFB1102 “Information Density and Linguistic Encoding”: sfb1102.uni-saarland.de
Conference organizers:
Matthew Crocker (chair)
Bistra Andreeva
Stefania Degaetano-Ortlieb
Vera Demberg
Robin Lemke
Noortje Venhuizen