Conference: PLC 43

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The 43rd annual Penn Linguistics Conference will take place on March 22-24, 2019 at the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia. The PLC is run by graduate students in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Conference website: https://www.ling.upenn.edu/Events/PLC/plc43/index.html

Keynote speaker:

Ruth Kramer (Georgetown University)

Special panel:

Interplay between Linguistics and Biology

From Lyell and Darwin’s speculative analogies between languages and species all the way through to population models of language change and phylogenetic trees of language families, evolutionary biology and historical linguistics have shared a set of conceptual and mathematical tools with great success in both fields. For this year’s PLC, we are inviting speakers from fields bridging the sciences and humanities to discuss the exchange of ideas between linguistics and biology.

The panel speakers are:

This panel will take place in the afternoon on Friday, March 22, 2019.

Call for papers

Undergraduate session: PLC 43 will feature a special session devoted to the presentation of undergraduate research. Undergraduate students are warmly encouraged to submit an abstract showcasing their research in any subfield of linguistics and related disciplines.

Student abstract prizes: We will be awarding prizes of $250 each for the best three abstracts submitted by graduate students from outside the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, the best abstract submitted by an undergraduate student will receive a prize of $250.

Submission Guidelines: Papers on any topic in linguistics and associated fields are welcome. Session topics in recent years have included phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics. We encourage abstracts on both spoken and signed languages. Speakers will have twenty minutes for each presentation, followed by five minutes for discussion and questions. The conference will also include a poster session with catered lunch. Abstracts should indicate whether they are being submitted for consideration as a talk, poster, or both. (See instructions for authors below.)

Deadline: Abstracts are due by November 27, 2018. Notification of acceptance will be given by the end of January 2019.

Length: Please limit abstracts to two single-spaced pages in 12pt font, including examples, figures, and references. Examples and figures may be interspersed with text. Abstracts should be anonymized: please do not include your name or affiliation within the abstract.

Format: To facilitate the review process, please submit your abstract as a .pdf file.

Instructions for authors: To submit an abstract, you must follow these steps:

  • To begin, login at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=plc43
  • If you do not have an existing EasyChair account, click on “sign up for an account.” You will be asked to fill out a simple form to create an account.
  • Click “New Submission” at the top of the page.
  • Enter author information in the provided fields. Tick the “Corresponding Author” box for all authors who wish to receive e-mail correspondences or notifications.
  • If you are a graduate or undergraduate student, please indicate this in the relevant field. (If you do not see a dedicated field for this purpose, please write ‘graduate student’ or ‘undergraduate student’ in the “Abstract” field.)
  • Enter your title in the “Title” field.
  • In the “Abstract” field, please enter a one sentence summary, or any comments you have, in order to assist the committee in assigning reviewers. Please also indicate here whether you would like your submission to be considered for a talk, poster, or both. By default, submissions will be considered for both modes of presentation. Please Do not paste your full abstract into this field.
  • Enter at least three keywords.
  • Upload your abstract .pdf file in the “Paper” field. Only .pdf files will be accepted. Do not include your name or affiliation in the abstract/file name!
  • Click “Submit.” You will be taken to a summary page of your submission – this is your confirmation that it has been saved. Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously.
  • You may make any necessary updates up to the abstract submission deadline by logging in to EasyChair and navigating to your abstract.

Proceedings: Conference proceedings will be published as a volume of the Penn Working Papers in Linguistics. Details regarding the proceedings of PLC 43 will be updated on the website.

For more information

Email: plc@ling.upenn.edu 
Conference website: https://www.ling.upenn.edu/Events/PLC