51st Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE 2018)
29 August – 1st September 2018
University of Tallinn, Estonia
http://www.societaslinguistica.eu/ 

Call for papers:

The Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE) and the Tallinn University are pleased to announce the “51st Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE 2018)”, to be held in Tallinn, 29th August – 1st September 2018, and would like to invite you to submit workshop papers, general session papers, and posters for the conference.

SLE meetings provide a forum for high-quality linguistic research from all (sub)domains of linguistics. The upcoming edition of the SLE meeting will also host a round table of experts to discuss topics of special linguistic interest. The SLE 2018 round table bears the title “Vitality of medium sized languages in the 21st centuries”.

The deadline for all abstracts is 15 January 2018. Notification of acceptance/rejection will be by 31 March 2018.

Plenary speakers:

• Nikolaus Ritt (Universität Wien), Presidential address
• Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (University of Stockholm)
• Francesca Di Garbo (Stockholm University) and Annemarie Verkerk (MPI for the Science of Human History), winners of the Best Postdoc paper at SLE 2017 Zurich.

Roundtable: “Vitality of medium sized languages in the 21st century”, moderator Martin Ehala (University of Helsinki, University of Tartu):

• Josep Soler Carbonell (University of Stockholm)
• Marie Maegaard (University of Copenhagen)
• Tamah Sherman (Charles University, Prague)

Submission guidelines

The deadline for all abstracts is 15 January 2018. Notification of acceptance will be given by 31 March 2018.

Abstracts are submitted via Easychair. Some guidelines about how to submit your paper can be found here. To submit your abstract, please click on this link: Easychair submission link.

Abstracts should clearly state research questions, approach, method, data and (expected) results. They should not contain the names of the presenters, nor their affiliations or addresses, or any other information that may reveal their authorship. They should not exceed 500 words (excluding references). Abstracts should have the same title as the entry submitted via Easychair.

Whereas general session papers can deal with any topic in linguistics, workshop papers should take into account the topic of the workshop proposal, and are usually pre-selected by the workshop convenors. If the abstract is by a keynote speaker at a workshop, please insert “keynote paper” in your abstract so that the paper can be reviewed as an introductory paper to a workshop. The list of workshops can be found on the conference website.

SUBMITTING MULTIPLE PAPERS. In order to guarantee diversity, one person may be the first author of only one submission of any kind (workshop paper, general session paper, poster, or workshop proposal); nobody is allowed to present or co-present more than two papers at an SLE conference (including workshop). You can co-author more than two papers but you cannot figure among the co-presenters at the conference (i.e. if you co-author more than two papers, you will have to play a background role).

Presentations will last 20 minutes allowing 5 min. for discussion and 5 min. for speaker and changes.

PRESENTING A POSTER

The SLE 2018 meeting will have one poster session for both senior and junior researchers. In order to foster interaction, all other sessions will be suspended during the poster session and will be displayed in a gathering area. Posters may remain available during the rest of the conference. The maximum size of the poster is portrait format 1.5 m (vertical) x 1 m (horizontal). For more information about how to make a good poster, click here.

REVIEWING PROCEDURE

Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by three referees. Workshop abstracts receive two evaluations by Scientific Committee members and one by the workshop convenors. Abstracts submitted to the general session and to the poster session will be evaluated by three members of the Scientific Committee. The threshold for acceptance is the same for general session papers, poster and workshop abstracts.

PRIZE FOR THE BEST PRESENTATION AND THE BEST POSTER

At SLE conferences there are prizes for the following categories (see SLE 2017 awards):

1. best oral presentation by a PhD student,
2. best oral presentation by a postdoc, and
3. best poster.

PhD students should not have completed their PhD before the conference. Postdocs should have completed their PhD not earlier than three years before the year of the conference (for example 2015 for the SLE 2017 conference). All posters may be eligible for the best porter prize.

Of all the candidate papers, the papers with a highest score will be shortlisted in each of the three categories. A shortlisted paper may be co-authored. Co-authored papers in categories i) and ii) above, should be presented at the conference by the nominee author, who would also have to be the first author of the paper.

The first the prize in each of the three category is 500 Euros. The first prizes in the PhD and Postdoc categories are also awarded a 20+10 mins. plenary talk in SLE 2019. The 2nd and 3rd prizes, a three-year SLE membership.

Applicants should mark the option for each of the prize categories upon abstract submission.

Important dates

• 15 November 2017: workshop proposals submission deadline
• 15 December 2017: notification of workshop acceptance
• 15 January 2018: deadline for submission of all abstracts
• 31 March 2018: notification of paper acceptance
• 1 April 2018: early bird registration starts
• 1 May 2018: full fee registration starts
• 31 May 2018: closing registration date for participants with a paper
• 1 August 2018: closing registration date for participants without a paper, and for co-authors of papers were at least one author has already registered.

Please note that papers where none of the authors have registered by 31st May will not be scheduled. The schedule will be published online in June after the registration deadline.

Orgainzers

Chair of the local organising committee: Anna Verschik (Tallinn), annave@tlu.ee

SLE Conference Manager: Olga Spevak (Toulouse) sle@univ-tlse2.fr

SLE Treasurer: Lachlan Mackenzie (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) treasurerSLE@gmail.com