Internal and External Pressures Shaping Language

Overview: 

Human languages vary in their phonology, morphosyntax and semantics, but there are important constraints on this variation. What explains these typological similarities and differences across languages? Recent work has combined tools from linguistics, cognitive psychology and computer science to address this question. In addition to empirical discoveries, this has led to novel hypotheses for how similarities and differences are to be accounted for, invoking internal (e.g. cognitive) and/or external (e.g. communicative, historical, geographical) pressures on language structure. The aims of the workshop are two-fold: (i) expand the knowledge of different internal and external pressures on language, and how they explain cross-linguistic similarities and differences in different aspects of language structure, (ii) invite a critical discussion of implications of this work for the study of human cognition more generally. 

Keynote speakers:

Roni Katzir (Tel Aviv University)

Mora Maldonado (Université de Nantes)

Shane Steinert-Threlkeld (University of Washington)

Important dates:

Workshop: July 31-August 4 2023

Deadline submissions: 25 April 2023

Notification of acceptance: 20 May 2023

Registration:

Participants of the workshop need to register for ESSLLI 2023. Note that the early bird registration is until 31 May 2023.

Organization:

Milica Denić (milica.z.denic [at] gmail [dot] com)

Program committee:

Moysh Bar-Lev

Thomas Brochhagen

Fausto Carcassi

Emmanuel Chemla

Jennifer Culbertson

Richard Futrell

Tyler Knowlton

Mora Maldonado

Moreno Mitrović

Deniz Özyıldız

Marieke Schouwstra

Shane Steinert-Threlkeld

Jakub Szymanik

Wataru Uegaki

George Walkden