Final Call for Papers:

LFG18: The 23rd International Lexical-Functional Grammar Conference

                                  17 July - 19 July 2018
                             University of Vienna, Austria

Conference website: http://lfg2018.univie.ac.at/

Conference e-mail (NOT for abstract submission): dewei.che 'at' univie.ac.at

Abstract submission deadline:  15 February 2018, 23:59 GMT

Abstracts should be submitted using the online submission system at
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lfg18

Invited speakers:  Joan Bresnan, others T.B.C.

Workshop: a workshop on "Information Structure: Form and Interpretation" will
be held on 20 July 2018. This workshop invites contributions on the marking and
interpretation of information structure, including focus, topic, contrast and givenness
in the context of non-transformational grammars. Further information is provided below, and please see http://lfg2018.univie.ac.at/program/workshop/ for full details.


LFG18 welcomes work within the formal architecture of Lexical-Functional Grammar
as well as typological, formal, and computational work within the 'spirit of LFG' as a
lexicalist approach to language employing a parallel, constraint-based framework. The conference aims to promote interaction and collaboration among researchers interested in non-derivational approaches to grammar, where grammar is seen as the interaction of (perhaps violable) constraints from multiple levels of structuring, including those of syntactic categories, grammatical relations, semantics and discourse.


SUBMISSIONS: TALKS AND POSTERS

The main conference sessions will involve 45-minute talks (30 min + 15 min discussion), and poster presentations. Contributions can focus on results from completed as well as ongoing research, with an emphasis on novel approaches, methods, ideas, and perspectives, whether descriptive, theoretical, formal or computational. Presentations should describe original, unpublished work.

DISSERTATION SESSION
As in previous years, we are hoping to hold a special session that will give students the chance to present recent PhD dissertations (or other student research dissertations). The dissertations must be completed by the time of the conference, and they should be made publicly accessible (e.g., on the World Wide Web). The talks in this session should provide an overview of the main original points of the dissertation; the talks will be 20 minutes, followed by a 10-minute discussion period.

Students should note that the main sessions are certainly also open to student submissions. Students who present papers in either session will receive a small subvention towards their conference costs from the International LFG Association (ILFGA).

TIMETABLE

Deadline for abstracts:  15 February 2018, 23:59 GMT
Notification of acceptance:  30 March 2018
Conference:  17 July - 20 July 2018


SUBMISSION SPECIFICATIONS

The language of the conference is English, and all abstracts must be written in English.

All abstracts should be submitted using the online submission system. Submissions should be in the form of abstracts only. Abstracts can be up to three A4 pages: two pages total for text, plus one page for diagrams and examples. Abstracts should be in 10pt or larger type, with margins of at least 2cm on all four sides, and should include a title. Omit name and affiliation (including in PDF document properties), and avoid obvious self-reference.

Please submit your abstract in .pdf format (or a plain text file). If you have any
trouble converting your file into .pdf please contact the Program Committee at the
address below. (On the Easychair submission system, if you upload your abstract as a .pdf file, please simply type 'abstract attached' in the abstract box.)

The number of submissions is not restricted. However, in the interests of high
participation and broad representation, each author should be involved in a maximum of two oral papers and can only be a single author of one. There are no restrictions on poster presentations. Authors may want to keep this in mind when stating their preferences concerning the mode of presentation of their submissions.

All abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by at least three referees. Papers accepted  to the conference can be submitted to the refereed proceedings, and will be published, subject to acceptance, online by CSLI Publications. (Please note that papers submitted  to the proceedings are no longer automatically accepted for publication in the  proceedings.) See http://web.stanford.edu/group/cslipublications/cslipublications/LFG/  for recent proceedings.

PRE-CONFERENCE EXCURSION

As a pre-conference event, on 16 July 2018, there will be a whole-day boat trip on the Danube from Vienna to Wachau, a picturesque valley west of Vienna. The trip starts at 08:45 from Vienna Nussdorf and ends at 22:30. The cost of the trip is about 50 euros  and there will be an option in the registration form to select this trip. The price includes the boat ride with stops at sights along the way, lunch, dinner and wine tasting.

WORKSHOP ON INFORMATION STRUCTURE: FORM AND INTERPRETATION

This workshop invites contributions on the marking and interpretation of information
structure, including focus, topic, contrast and givenness in the context of non-
transformational grammars. These may include, but need not be limited to, contributions on:

     A.    Information structure marking in lesser studied languages; what categories
           need to be distinguished to account for distributional facts? How are they
           encoded, and what options are there for mapping them onto a universal
           representation of IS functions?
     B.    Different ways of focus marking: Ways to model the influence of syntactic
           position, morphological marking and prosodic marking on the signalling of IS categories, across languages, but also in languages that combine several of these.
     C.    IS ambiguities: Patters in which the same form is compatible with different
           sizes, or even locations, of pragmatic focus/topic etc ('focus projection').
           How to model these, and what patterns are attested?
     D.    Prosodic Structure in LFG, especially those aspects apparently relevant for
           IS-marking, i.e. stress, accent, tones and phrasing.
     E.    IS Semantics: What machinery (multidimensional meanings, underspecified            representations, structured meanings…) is needed to account for the semantics of IS marking, and how to implement them e.g. using glue semantics.
     F.    IS Pragmatics: What are the pragmatic conditions on the use of IS categories,
           i.e. how do pragmatic rules make reference to such labels as 'focus', 'topic',
           etc.

Submission for the workshop should NOT be made on the EasyChair submission system, but should be sent direct to adams.bodomo 'at' univie.ac.at AND daniel.buring 'at' univie.ac.at.


ORGANISERS AND THEIR CONTACT ADDRESSES

If you have queries about abstract submission or have problems using the EasyChair submission system, please contact the Program Committee.

Program Chairs (Email: lfg18 'at' easychair.org)

John Lowe, University of Oxford
Ida Toivonen, Carleton University

Local conference organizers (Email: dewei.che 'at' univie.ac.at)

Adams Bodomo, University of Vienna
Daniel Buring, University of Vienna
Che Dewei, University of Vienna
Hasiyatu Abubakari, University of Vienna
Izabela Jordanoska, University of Vienna
Muriel Assmana, University of Vienna


FURTHER INFORMATION

Further information about LFG as a framework for linguistic analysis is available at the following site:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/external/LFG/http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/external/LFG/