Call for Papers

The research topics include, but are not limited to:

● Analysis of computational models that process linguistic data (e.g., LLMs, neural language models, parsers) to yield insights into questions about human language comprehension, production, or acquisition.

● Presentation and/or analysis of language resources and human subject data that can yield insights into questions about human language comprehension, production, or acquisition.

● Aligning computational models with human subject data to understand and reverse-engineer what computations humans perform during language comprehension, production, or acquisition.

● Forward-looking positions about what and how the cognitive science, linguistics, and NLP fields can (or should) contribute to one another.

● Modeling sufficient conditions and pressures that shape the emergence of human-like communicative systems.

A more comprehensive description of the workshop scope is:

● Models of lexical acquisition, including phonology, morphology, and semantics.

● Models of semantic interpretation, including psychologically realistic notions of word and phrase meaning and composition.

● Models of incremental parsers for diverse grammar formalisms and their psychological plausibility.

● Psychologically plausible models of discourse and dialogue processing.

● Models of speaker-specific linguistic adaptation and/or generalization.

● Models of first and second language acquisition and bilingual language processing.

● Models of language disorders, such as aphasia, dyslexia, or dysgraphia.

● Datasets or resources for modeling language comprehension, production, or acquisition in low-resource languages.

● Models of linguistic information propagation and language evolution in communities.

● Analyzing computational models that process linguistic data (e.g., LLMs, neural language models, parsers) from the above perspectives.

We are pleased to announce the following invited speakers for the 2026 edition:

● Claire Stevenson (University of Amsterdam)

● Cory Shain (Stanford University)

Submission Link

CMCL accepts only direct submissions through the START platform (Submission link TBA). 

We will not accept commitments of ARR-reviewed papers.

Submission Types

We invite three types of submissions:

1. Archival, regular workshop submissions that present original, unpublished research that are between 4 to 8 pages in length.

2. Non-archival submissions of extended abstracts that present preliminary results (from 2 to 4 pages + references).

3. Non-archival cross-submissions of long/short papers that present relevant research submitted/published elsewhere.

Other submission details:

● To support double-blind reviewing, all submissions must be fully anonymized. This includes removing the authors’ names and their affiliations.

● Authors must indicate if the paper is archival (1) or non-archival (2, 3) when submitting the paper. In other words, authors are not allowed to change the archival/non-archival mode after receiving the reviews/decision.

● Only regular workshop papers submitted via (1) will be included in the proceedings, but all types of papers will have a presentation opportunity in the workshop.

● Submissions must follow the LREC formatting guidelines (https://lrec2026.info/authors-kit/) and be submitted as a PDF file.

● The appendix does not count toward the page limit, but the appendix cannot exceed 10 pages.

● Final versions of accepted papers will be given one additional page of content (up to 9 pages) to address reviewers’ comments.

● We encourage all authors submitting to CMCL 2026 to include an explicit ethics statement on the broader impact of their work, or other ethical considerations after the conclusion but before the references. The ethics statement will not count toward the page limit.

● Non-archival papers (2, 3) will be reviewed through a separate process from archival papers (1), although the timeline is the same; specifically, non-archival papers will be evaluated with more priority to broader considerations, such as the fit of the topic with the workshop, the status of the paper (e.g., accepted elsewhere or not), and the entire diversity of the topic/community in the workshop, as well as the soundness of the paper.

● There is no anonymity period for CMCL 2026. This means that authors may publish preprints of the submitted work at any time.

● This year, we will not host a shared task.

Cross-Submission Policy

For archival submissions (1), CMCL will reject papers that are under review or will be submitted to other conferences, including the ARR cycles. The only exception is if the cross-submitted counterpart venue is a fully non-archival workshop. For non-archival submissions (2, 3), we will allow the submission of papers that have been or could be published elsewhere, but again, authors cannot change the submission to be archival after submission.

CMCL 2026 will provide in-person/remote presentation slots for both oral and poster presentations. 

The organizers will make the decision between oral or poster presentations based on multiple factors (e.g., the overall balance of the topics).