EXTENDED DEADLINE – 15th May 2010

After three fruitful meetings in Utrecht (2004), Leuven (2006) and Leiden (2008), Antwerp is hosting the fourth biannual conference of the Belgian Netherlands Cognitive Linguistics Association (BeNeCLA, http://benecla.com/ ). The event is jointly organized by the University of Antwerp and Lessius University College Antwerp on Friday 17th and Saturday 18th December 2010. The two-day conference offers a venue for researchers from the Low Countries to present and discuss their research results in the various strands of cognitive linguistics. It explicitly aims at offering junior researchers, including doctoral students and postdocs, the opportunity to present their (ongoing) work. All interested scholars working in the field of cognitive linguistics or related areas are invited to submit an abstract for the conference.

Plenary speakers

Ronny Boogaart (University of Leiden)

Kristin Davidse (University of Leuven)

Irene Mittelberg (RWTH University Aachen)

Ted Sanders (University of Utrecht)

Abstracts

We invite abstracts for poster presentations and regular conference papers (20 min. talk plus 10 min. discussion), the length of which should not exceed 600 words, including references and data. Paper proposals are expected to clearly formulate the main research question(s), methodology, dataset and (expected) results.

They will be reviewed anonymously and cannot therefore include any reference to the identity of the author. In the body of your email, please include the following information: author’s name and affiliation and title of the submission. Please also indicate whether you would like your abstract to be considered for a regular or a poster presentation.

Abstracts in Dutch or English have to be submitted electronically, as attachment files in PDF format, to the following address:

coglingdagen2010@lessius.eu

Deadline for submission: extended deadline 15th May 2010

Notification of acceptance: 20th June 2010

Scientific committee

Ronny Boogaart (Universiteit Leiden), Tine Breban (FWO- KU Leuven), Bert Cappelle (Hogeschool Gent), Alan Cienki (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Timothy Colleman (UGent), Bert Cornillie (FWO- KU Leuven), Liesbeth Degand (UCLouvain), Walter De Mulder (Universiteit Antwerpen), Jan Nuyts (Universiteit Antwerpen), Esther Pascual (RU Groningen), Elena Tribushinina (Universiteit Antwerpen), Lieven Vandelanotte (FUNDP Namur), Marjolein Verspoor (RUGroningen),

Organizing committee

Frank Brisard (Universiteit Antwerpen), Geert Brône (Lessius Antwerp – KU Leuven), Astrid De Wit (Universiteit Antwerpen), Liesbet Heyvaert (FWO- KU Leuven), Tanja Mortelmans (Universiteit Antwerpen), Paul Sambre (Lessius Antwerp – KU Leuven)

Location: Utrecht University, Janskerkhof 13, Room 0.06

Arnout Koornneef

Utrecht University, UiL-OTS

Anticipating causal relations between events

Implicit causality is a property of some interpersonal verbs in which one or the other of the verb’s arguments is implicated as the underlying cause of the action or attitude. For example, people normally ascribe the underlying cause of the praising-event in a sentence fragment such as David praised Linda because to the object NP (e.g. because she had completed the assignment). In series of self-paced reading, eye-tracking and ERP experiments we showed that this pragmatic implicit causality cue is used to anticipate how the unfolding utterance will continue. Currently, we are pursuing a line of research in which we combine these insights from linguistics with knowledge from visual perception research. More specifically, using neuroimaging techniques (ERP, fMRI) this project investigates the hypothesis that two of our basic cognitive systems – vision and language – make use of the same cognitive components to anticipate causal relations between events.

The PhD positions are part of the NWO-funded Vidi research project “The Conversation Frame: Linguistic Forms and Communicative Functions in Discourse”, awarded to Dr. Esther Pascual. The program examines the relation between language, interaction and cognition, i.e. what Pascual calls ‘fictive interaction’. The main focus is on (intra-)sentential interactional structures –often expressed through direct speech– that reflect the conversational pattern of turn-taking. Examples are: “an attitude that says ‘what’s in it for me?’”, “a ‘what’s in it for me?’ attitude”. The language data will be daily and aphasic Dutch discourse from adult native speakers. The program is organized around two related PhD projects. We are inviting applications for one of these PhD projects.

-Project 1 (1,0 fte). ‘Fictive Interaction’ in Daily Dutch (vacancy 210089) The PhD candidate will examine the different forms and functions of (intra-)sentential conversational structures in various genres, through the study of a wide range of oral and written corpora of old and modern Dutch.

See for application details the separate advert at:
http://www.academictransfer.com/employer/RUG/vacancy/3379/lang/en/

-Project 2 (1,0 fte). ‘Fictive Interaction’ in Aphasic Dutch (vacancy
210090) The PhD candidate will examine the use of (intra-)sentential interactional structures as adaptation strategy in natural conversations of speech-impaired individuals with Broca’s aphasia (e.g. “Joe: ‘oh dear, oh dear’” for “Joe was really worried”; “Sugar? No!” for “I am a diabetic”).

See for application details the separate advert at:
http://www.academictransfer.com/employer/RUG/vacancy/3380/lang/en

*Deadline for applications: 1 April 2010*

Vriendelijke groeten,
Esther Pascual

English version below

Na geslaagde bijeenkomsten in Utrecht (2004), Leuven (2006) en Leiden (2008) vinden op vrijdag 17 en zaterdag 18 december 2010 de vierde cognitieve linguïstiekdagen van de Belgisch-Nederlandse Vereniging voor Cognitieve Taalkunde (BeNeCLA, http://benecla.com/ ) plaats te Antwerpen, aan de Universiteit Antwerpen en Lessius Antwerpen. Deze dagen willen een platform bieden aan cognitief georiënteerde onderzoekers uit Nederland en België. Ze hebben als doel de discussie over onderzoeksresultaten, methodologie en lopende projecten aan te zwengelen. De Coglingdagen bieden expliciet aan beginnende onderzoekers, promovendi en studenten de gelegenheid hun werk voor te stellen. Alle geïnteresseerde onderzoekers werkzaam binnen het kader van de cognitieve linguïstiek worden dan ook van harte uitgenodigd een abstract in te sturen.

Plenaire sprekers
Ronny Boogaart (Universiteit Leiden)
Kristin Davidse (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
Irene Mittelberg (RWTH University Aachen)
Ted Sanders (Universiteit Utrecht)

Abstracts
Abstracts voor posters of presentaties (20 minuten plus 10 minuten voor discussie) bevatten maximaal 600 woorden inclusief referenties en worden anoniem beoordeeld.
Ze geven duidelijk de onderzoeksvragen en onderzoeksmethode weer, de geanalyseerde data en (verwachte) resultaten.
De abstracts zullen anoniem worden beoordeeld en dienen daarom elektronisch ingediend in pdf-of Word-formaat, zonder expliciete verwijzing naar de auteur(s).
Gelieve in uw mail volgende informatie te vermelden: naam van de auteur, titel van de bijdrage en affiliatie. Gelieve ook te vermelden of u met uw bijdrage in aanmerking wenst te komen voor een lezing of poster.

Deadline inzending: 30 april 2010
Mededeling selectie: 20 juni 2010

Contactadres: coglingdagen2010@lessius.eu

Adviserend comité
Ronny Boogaart (Universiteit Leiden), Tine Breban (FWO – KU Leuven), Bert Cappelle (Hogeschool Gent), Alan Cienki (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Timothy Colleman (UGent), Bert Cornillie (FWO – KU Leuven), Liesbeth Degand (UCLouvain), Walter De Mulder (Universiteit Antwerpen), Jan Nuyts (Universiteit Antwerpen), Esther Pascual (RU Groningen), Elena Tribushinina (Universiteit Antwerpen), Lieven Vandelanotte (FUNDP Namur), Marjolein Verspoor (RUGroningen),

Organiserend comité
Frank Brisard (Universiteit Antwerpen), Geert Brône (Lessius Antwerpen en KU Leuven), Astrid De Wit (Universiteit Antwerpen), Liesbet Heyvaert (FWO – KU Leuven), Tanja Mortelmans (Universiteit Antwerpen), Paul Sambre (Lessius Antwerpen en KU Leuven)

English version

Call for abstracts
Cogling days 4, Antwerp, 17th and 18th December 2010
Biennial meeting of the Belgian Netherlands Cognitive Linguistics Association (BeNeCLA)

After three fruitful meetings in Utrecht (2004), Leuven (2006) and Leiden (2008), Antwerp is hosting the fourth biennial conference of the Belgian Netherlands Cognitive Linguistics Association (BeNeCLA, http://benecla.com/ ). The event is jointly organized by the University of Antwerp and Lessius University College Antwerp on Friday 17th and Saturday 18th December 2010. The two-day conference offers a venue for researchers from the Low Countries to present and discuss their research results in the various strands of cognitive linguistics. It explicitly aims at offering junior researchers, including doctoral students and postdocs, the opportunity to present their (ongoing) work. All interested scholars working in the field of cognitive linguistics or related areas are invited to submit an abstract for the conference.

Plenary speakers
Ronny Boogaart (University of Leiden)
Kristin Davidse (University of Leuven)
Irene Mittelberg (RWTH University Aachen)
Ted Sanders (University of Utrecht)

Abstracts
We invite abstracts for poster presentations and regular conference papers (20 min. talk plus 10 min. discussion), the length of which should not exceed 600 words, including references and data. Paper proposals are expected to clearly formulate the main research question(s), methodology, dataset and (expected) results.
They will be reviewed anonymously and cannot therefore include any reference to the identity of the author. In the body of your email, please include the following information: author’s name and affiliation and title of the submission. Please also indicate whether you would like your abstract to be considered for a regular or a poster presentation.

Abstracts have to be submitted electronically, as attachment files in PDF format, to the following address:
coglingdagen2010@lessius.eu

Deadline for submission: 30th April 2010
Notification of acceptance: 20th June 2010

Scientific committee
Ronny Boogaart (Universiteit Leiden), Tine Breban (FWO- KU Leuven), Bert Cappelle (Hogeschool Gent), Alan Cienki (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Timothy Colleman (UGent), Bert Cornillie (FWO- KU Leuven), Liesbeth Degand (UCLouvain), Walter De Mulder (Universiteit Antwerpen), Jan Nuyts (Universiteit Antwerpen), Esther Pascual (RU Groningen), Elena Tribushinina (Universiteit Antwerpen), Lieven Vandelanotte (FUNDP Namur), Marjolein Verspoor (RUGroningen),

Organizing committee
Frank Brisard (Universiteit Antwerpen), Geert Brône (Lessius Antwerp – KU Leuven), Astrid De Wit (Universiteit Antwerpen), Liesbet Heyvaert (FWO- KU Leuven), Tanja Mortelmans (Universiteit Antwerpen), Paul Sambre (Lessius Antwerp – KU Leuven)

Vrijdag/Friday/Vendredi
23 april/23 avril 2010, Universiteit Utrecht

Op 23 april 2010 organiseert Anéla, in samenwerking met ABLA en BeNeCLA, haar jaarlijkse Voorjaarsstudiedag. Het thema voor deze dag is “Toegepaste Taalwetenschap Cognitief Benaderd”, waarbij we geïnteresseerd zijn in raakvlakken tussen cognitieve, functionele en usage-based benaderingen van taal enerzijds en de Toegepaste Taalwetenschap anderzijds. Mogelijke thema’s zijn eerste of tweede taalontwikkeling, -verwerking, -onderwijs, discourse analyse, sociolinguïstiek, lexicografie en vertaalwetenschap.

In cooperation with ABLA and BeNeCLA, Anéla organizes the Anéla Spring Conference 2010. The theme is “Cognitive approaches to Applied Linguistics”, focusing on the interface between cognitive linguistic, functional or other usage-based approaches to the field of Applied Linguistics. Possible themes are language (L1 or L2) acquisition, processing, teaching, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, lexicography and translation studies.

En collaboration avec l’ABLA et BeNeCLA, l’Anéla organise sa « Journée d’études de printemps 2010 » sur le thème de l’application des approches cognitives, fonctionnelles et ‘basées sur l’usage’ en linguistique appliquée. Thèmes possibles sont acquisition du langage (L1 et L2), traitement du langage, développement langagier, enseignement des langues, analyse textuelle, analyse du discours, sociolinguistique, lexicographie et traductologie

Abstracts (200 words/woorden/môts)
voor/before/avant 31 januari/January/Janvier 2010
Indienen via: http://linguistlist.org/confcustom/anela2010

For more detail see: http://www.anela.nl

Notification of acceptance: 23 februari 2010

Organiserend comité : Marjolijn Verspoor, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen ; Elena Tribushinina, Universiteit Utrecht ; Esther Pascual, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen ; Jacqueline Evers-Vermeul, Universiteit Utrecht ; Laurent Rasier, Université Catholique de Louvain

Anéla (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Toegepaste Taalwetenschap): http://www.anela.nl/
ABLA (Association Belge de Linguistique appliquée): http://www.abla.be/
BeNeCla (Belgian Netherlands Cognitive Lingusitics Association): http://benecla.com/

Date: 11-Nov-2010 – 13-Nov-2010
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Contact Person: Jan Nuyts
Meeting Email: gramis2010@ua.ac.be
Web Site: http://webh01.ua.ac.be/gramis/conference/conference.html

Call Deadline: 15-Feb-2010

Call for Papers

We invite papers dealing with any aspect of the processes of grammaticalization and (inter)subjectification, both empirical and conceptual, from any theoretical angle, but we are especially interested in papers dealing with
- the interaction between the processes of grammaticalization and (inter)subjectification;
- the relation of grammaticalization and (inter)subjectification to other mechanisms of language change, including, most notably, analogy; and
- processes of degrammaticalization and de-(inter)subjectification: how (in)frequent are they, what kinds of factors trigger them, and what mechanisms are at work in them?

Presentations are 20 minutes, followed by 5 minutes discussion.

Abstracts of max. 4000 characters (i.e. app. 500 words; including references) should be submitted via the conference website.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: February 15, 2010
Notification of acceptance: late March, 2010

Information regarding registration, accommodation and other practical matters will be provided in the second circular, to be distributed early 2010, and will be posted on the conference website as soon as they are available.

Plenary speakers:
Kasper Boye/Peter Harder
Hilary Chappell
Bernd Heine
Heiko Narrog
Muriel Norde

Organizers: Johan van der Auwera & Jan Nuyts (Antwerp)

Tijd: 28 januari 2010, 3.30-4.30

Starting from the assumption that language is intimately related to
interaction, the main question this project addresses is: how is the
structure of interaction reflected in language structure and language
use? That is, what forms does the basic interactional pattern of
turn-taking take in grammar and discourse? In addition, I will
investigate the communicative functions of interactional structures
embedded in discourse. Finally, I will explore the processing and
communicative effectiveness of such grammatically integrated
interactional patterns.

This project focuses on fictive interaction (Pascual 2002), a
cognitive phenomenon that reflects the interactional structure of
conversation, and is manifested in language structure and use (egs.
“an attitude that says ‘what’s in it for me?’”, “a ‘what’s in it for
me?’ attitude”).

The project addresses the following questions: (i) since factual
interaction is a fundamental aspect of language use, is fictive
interaction also a fundamental linguistic structure in different
discourse genres? And (ii) does the use of fictive interaction provide
processing and communicative advantages to language users?
In order to address the linguistic structure question, a corpus study
will be undertaken, examining fictive interaction in different
discourse genres of written and spoken Dutch. To address the
communicative effectiveness question, the communicative effects of
fictive interaction in Dutch will be explored in relation to: (i) the
argumentative power of fictive interaction (in criminal trials); (ii)
the use of fictive interaction as conversational strategy (by
speech-impaired individuals with Broca’s aphasia); and (iii) the
reception of fictive interaction (processing, memory, comprehension
and emotional affect).

I hypothesise that embedded fictive interaction is essential in
different discourse genres, and can be used for a variety of
communicative functions. I also hypothesise that the use of fictive
interaction can render a discourse communicatively more effective, as compared to its descriptive alternative, partly because it is
processed more efficiently.

Date & time: December 15; 15:30-17:00

Location: Utrecht University, Janskerkhof 13, Room 0.06

Arie Verhagen

Leiden University

Intersubjectivity, Subjectivity, and Common Ground

Abstract

In this talk I will explore conceptual connections between the notions of Intersubjectivity as developed in Verhagen (2005, 2007; see also http://www.arieverhagen.nl/Documenten/CoI.html) and some other, related notions, especially Common Ground (cf. Clark 1996), in an attempt to clarify what is special about the grammatical phenomena that I labelled “constructions of intersubjectivity”. An important motivation for such an attempt at clarification is the fact that the term “intersubjectivity” is used in the literature in relation to phenomena (e.g. deixis), that I would not (without further argumentation) consider as linguistically involving intersubjectivity, despite the fact that “mutually shared information” somehow does play a role in their conventional meaning. The discussion will result in a proposal that constructions of subjectivity and of intersubjectivity can sensibly be said to profile and manage different aspects of the common ground in different ways.

References

Clark, Herbert H. (1996), Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Verhagen, Arie (2008), Intersubjectivity and the architecture of the language system. In: Jordan Zlatev, Timothy P. Racine, Chris Sinha, Esa Itkonen (eds.), The Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 307-331.

Verhagen, Arie (2005), Constructions of Intersubjectivity. Discourse, Syntax, and Cognition.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Location: Utrecht University, Janskerkhof 13, Room 0.06

Fridolin Wild

Knowledge Media Institute, Milton Keynes, UK

The Geometry of Learning

Abstract

Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is a mathematical technique for computationally modeling the meaning of words and larger units of texts. LSA works by applying a mathematical technique called Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) to a term*document matrix containing frequency counts for all words found in the corpus in all of the documents or passages in the corpus. After this SVD application, the meaning of a word is represented as a vector in a multidimensional semantic space, which makes it possible to compare word meanings, for instance by computing the cosine between two word vectors.

LSA has been successfully used in a large variety of language related applications from automatic grading of student essays to predicting click trails in website navigation. In Coh-Metrix (Graesser et al. 2004), a computational tool that produces indices of the linguistic and discourse representations of a text, LSA was used as a measure of text cohesion by assuming that cohesion increases as a functionof higher cosine scores between adjacent sentences.

Besides being interesting as a technique for building programs that need to deal with semantics, LSA is also interesting as a model of human cognition. LSA can match human performance on word association tasks and vocabulary test. In this talk, Fridolin will focus on LSA as a tool in modeling language acquisition. After framing the area of the talk with sketching the key concepts learning, information, and competence acquisition, and after outlining presuppositions, an introduction into meaningful interaction analysis (MIA) is given. MIA is a means to inspect learning with the support of language analysis that is geometrical in nature. MIA is a fusion of latent semantic analysis (LSA) combined with network analysis (NA/SNA). LSA, NA/SNA, and MIA are illustrated by several examples.

On Wednesday morning, November 18, Fridolin Wild will give a tutorial during which he will demonstrate the R-package he developed for LSA. For more information, please contact Rogier Kraf (r.kraf@uu.nl).

The Discourse op Dinsdag discussion group is intended for researchers working on discourse from a language use perspective, and offers a platform to discuss their work (in progress). For more information check our website http://www.let.uu.nl/vici.

Summary of the dissertation
English
My dissertation studies the early stages of first language acquisition. In particular, it studies the impact of the input, which is the language a child hears, on what a child says. Simply put, in usage-based linguistics is assumed that the more often a child hears something, the earlier and more often the child is going to say it. This applies
not only to single words but also to word combinations (‘constructions’) such as “where are…”. In my dissertation, I show that this is not always the case.

Using a very dense database of a boy learning German, I follow the boy’s early language development, especially the development of WH-questions, closely for one year (age 2-3) and show that not only input frequency, but also the function of linguistic constructions and the previous linguistic knowledge of the child play a role.
For example, even if a construction is very frequent in the input, the child might not use it because the construction does not serve any useful function for the child, because the child already knows a construction fulfilling the same function, or because the child does not know a more basic construction that the new construction
builds on. This shows that input frequency interacts with other factors in language acquisition.

Moreover, the dissertation shows that the acquisition of German differs from that of English because of the different composition of the input, and that the size of the corpus has a clear impact on the analysis of input frequency.

Dutch
Dit proefschrift beschouwt de invloed van de ‘input’, dus wat een kind hoort, op zijn/haar ontwikkeling van de moedertaal in de allereerste fasen van taalverwerving. Binnen de gebruiksgebaseerde (usage-based) linguïstiek wordt er over het algemeen van uitgegaan dat de input een sterke invloed uitoefent op wat een kind zelf leert te
zeggen. Simpel gezegd wordt aangenomen dat als een kind iets vaak hoort het kind dit zelf ook vaak en vroeg gebruikt. Dit geldt zowel voor enkele woorden als voor hele combinaties van woorden (‘constructies’) zoals ‘wat is dit voor…’.

Mijn proefschrift laat zien dat dit niet altijd het geval is. Met hulp van een bijzonder uitgebreid corpus wordt de vroege taalontwikkeling, specifiek de ontwikkeling van wvragen, van een Duits kind over de periode van een jaar (leeftijd 2-3) nauwlettend gevolgd. Er wordt aangetoond dat niet alleen de inputfrequentie, maar ook de functie
van constructies en de eerdere kennis van het kind invloed heeft op wat hij zegt. Zo gebruikt het kind bijvoorbeeld sommige constructies niet, hoewel zij frequent in de input voorkomen. Dit komt doordat zij voor hem geen nuttige functie vervullen, hij al een andere constructie met dezelfde functie gebruikt of doordat hij een andere, meer
basale constructie nog niet kent. Dit laat zien dat inputfrequentie met andere factoren samenwerkt.

Daarnaast toont het proefschrift aan dat de taalontwikkeling in het Duits door de andere compositie van de input anders verloopt dan in het Engels en dat de grootte van het gebruikte corpus van invloed is op de resultaten.