Call for Papers: Special Issue on “Measuring Language Complexity” in Linguistics Vanguard

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Kat Ehret

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Jun 5, 2020, 4:51:19 AM6/5/20
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Dear colleagues,


together with Alice Blumenthal-Dramé (University of Freiburg), Christian Bentz (University of Tübingen), and Aleksandrs Berdicevskis (University of Gothenburg), it is my pleasure to serve as guest editor of the


Special Issue on “Measuring Language Complexity” in Linguistics Vanguard


Please find the call for papers below.


Looking forward to receiving your submissions,


Katharina Ehret (University of Freiburg)





Call for Papers


In the past decade, language complexity has been a hot and controversial topic in  engaging researchers from diverse areas of linguistics and beyond. This special issue is linked to the “Interactive Workshop for Measuring Language Complexity”, which brought together complexity researchers from language typology, second language acquisition research, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, language evolution and other related fields. The workshop evaluated and compared different measures of language complexity by means of a shared task.


We are now inviting contributions to a Special Issue discussing all things related to measuring language complexity. 


Submissions are welcome from areas like language typology, second language acquisition research, cognitive and psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, language evolution, anthropology, computational modelling, and other relevant fields.


We welcome theoretical contributions related to topics including:


  • advantages and drawbacks of complexity metrics, e.g., regarding their applicability to different data types (e.g. parallel, cross-linguistic, corpora, databases, etc.) and their robustness (cf. Berdicevskis et al. 2018),

  • benchmarks for assessing and comparing the validity of complexity metrics,

  • the relevance of language complexity and complexity metrics to theoretical and applied linguistics,

  • how operationalisations of linguistic complexity relate to underlying constructs, i.e. what does a given metric actually measure?

  • the extent to which statistical complexity correlates with processing difficulty, 

  • the extent to which different complexity metrics correlate, 

  • the potential existence of trade-offs between different levels of language representation (e.g. morphology versus syntax).

  • other relevant topics related to measuring language complexity


Empirical contributions presenting results of a complexity (or complexity-related) metric(s) of your choice on relevant data are also welcome. The submission of supplementary materials, in particular code and data, is strongly encouraged.


Submission requirements:


Submission and acceptance of contributions will take place in a two-step procedure. There are no publication fees.


Abstract: Anonymised abstracts of 500-600 words, stating the theoretical background, objectives, data source and description of metric (if applicable), and results. 


Paper: Target length for paper submissions is 3000-4000 words of text. The general submission guidelines of Linguistics Vanguard apply. A LaTeX template is available upon request.


Deadlines


Abstract submission: July 13, 2020

Notification of acceptance (abstract): August 12, 2020

Paper submission: December 12, 2020

Notification of acceptance (paper): April 13, 2021



Submit your abstract via EasyAbs: http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/SpecialIssueMLC

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