Call for abstracts

The study of cross-linguistic variability between languages has been a central question in linguistic theory and has delivered important insights on language. This focus on cross-linguistic variation is essential for formulating and testing linguistic theories: A theory of grammar should be a theory of all possible human grammars. Similarly, a theory of the psychology of language should be based on cross-linguistic evidence: Although grammars are language-specific, speakers' minds and brains are species-specific and function according to the same principles (Bock, Eberhard, Cutting, Meyer, & Schriefers, 2001).

However, the majority of psycholinguistic research focuses almost exclusively on European languages: as of 2009, one could find psycholinguistic studies on less than 1% of the world’s languages (Jaeger & Norcliffe, 2009; Norcliffe, Harris, & Jaeger, 2015). This is a problem, because much of our theory-building is based on a limited group of languages, ignoring a treasure trove of syntactic, morphological, and semantic variation that could hold the key to our understanding of how the mind works. In particular, cross-linguistic data may help answer questions such as: What are the processing strategies and constraints that can be deemed universal, i.e. holding across all languages? What is the cross-linguistic variability with regard to processing strategies across languages? Can we make certain typological predictions in processing similar to what has been done in linguistic typology? In order to answer these questions, we need to investigate languages from varied language families. For instance, recent work on the interaction of memory constraints and expectation in verb final languages vs verb medial languages has revealed that prediction processes in the former seems to be able to withstand memory constraints more than the latter (e.g., Vasishth, Suckow, Lewis, & Kern, 2010). This points to some kind of typological variability in processing which cannot be detected by investigating only group of languages.

The proposed workshop with its focus on the languages of India will contribute in starting such an initiative. India is uniquely placed to be a test-bed for such an enterprise. India has 22 official languages. The total number of individual languages is around 460, and there are many more languages and dialects that have not received official recognition. These languages cover seven language families; and multilingualism is the norm, not the exception. Frequently, individuals speak languages from different language families. This diversity in languages makes an ideal setting for the development and testing of psycholinguistic theories.

We invite abstracts on (but not limited to)

  • sentence processing
  • verbal semantics
  • phonetic/phonological/morphological processing
  • computational modeling
  • corpus-based psycholinguistics
  • neurobiology of language
  • child language acquisition

in the context of the subcontinent’s linguistic landscape.