The 40th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS40) will take place Friday through Sunday, February 7-9, 2014, on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. Registration, opening remarks, one plenary talk, and an informal reception will take place on Friday evening, with all other sessions beginning on Saturday.

Plenary speakers
Parasession: Language, Inequality, and Globalization
Kira Hall, Associate Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Program: http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/bls/program.html

General Session
The general session welcomes papers from the following subdisciplines: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, historical-comparative linguistics, cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics. Note that the semantics and sociolinguistics general sessions will this year be replaced by parasessions on related themes (see below). Abstracts submitted to the special session may be considered for either the phonology or syntax general sessions.

Special Session: Approaches to the Syntax-Phonology Interface
The special session will examine issues at the syntax-phonology interface. We welcome papers focusing on both descriptive and theoretical approaches to such issues, especially those that make use of underrepresented data.

Gorka Elordieta, Associate Professor of Linguistics and Basque Studies, University of the Basque Country
Vera Gribanova, Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Stanford University
Jason Kandybowicz, Assistant Professor of Linguistics, University of Kansas
Wendy Sandler, Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Sign Language Research Laboratory, University of Haifa
Parasession 1: Semantic Theory in Underdescribed Languages
The first parasession will examine semantic theory as it relates to underdescribed languages. We welcome papers dealing with both the lexical and formal semantic systems of such languages, as well as with methodological issues in semantic fieldwork.

Martina Faller, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, University of Manchester Lisa Matthewson, Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of British Columbia

Parasession 2: Language, Inequality, and Globalization
The second parasession will examine issues related to language and social inequality in the context of today’s increasingly globalized and socioculturally diversified communities, which are host to continually shifting interpersonal relationships and identities. We welcome papers based in, but not limited to: discourse analysis; linguistic anthropology; applied linguistics (particularly bilingualism and/or multilingualism); issues in linguistic fieldwork, language revitalization, and language rights; and general sociolinguistics.

Conference website: http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/bls/