CLS 61 May 9-May 11, 2025 at the University of Chicago!

CALL FOR PAPERS

61st Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society

May 9 – May 11, 2025, at THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

DEADLINE EXTENDED: January 26, 2025 at 23:59 US Central Standard Time (GMT-6)

Call Deadline: January 19, 2025 at 23:59 US Central Standard Time (GMT-6)

Notification: March 10, 2025

Meeting Description:

The Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) is the oldest student-run linguistics organization in the United States. This academic year, CLS will host its 61st Annual Meeting, which will be held from Friday, May 9 to Sunday, May 11, 2025. All presentations will be conducted in-person at the University of Chicago.

Call for Papers:

The Chicago Linguistic Society invites abstracts from any area of linguistic research, including but not limited to syntax, morphology, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, phonology, phonetics, and all relevant interfaces and related fields across the cognitive and social sciences. We particularly encourage submissions relevant to this year’s proposed special topics, detailed below. Presenters will be given 20 minutes for their presentation followed by a 10-minute question period. This year’s conference features a poster session, and those presenting a poster may be chosen as alternates for talks. All talks and poster presentations will be given the option of publication as full papers within CLS’s annual proceedings.

Special Topics:

We particularly encourage submissions relevant to this year’s proposed special topics:

Sound Change and Adaptation We welcome submissions exploring the underlying mechanisms, causes, and outcomes of phonological change and phonetic adaptation across languages. This topic seeks to address key questions surrounding the processes by which sound changes occur, focusing on the linguistic, cognitive, and social factors that drive these changes. We particularly encourage abstracts addressing, but not limited to, the following areas: phonetic drivers of sound change, lexical diffusion and gradual sound change, contact-induced sound change, cognitive and neurolinguistic perspectives on sound change.

Interfacial Topics in Sociolinguistics We invite submissions exploring how insights and frameworks from semantics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, and syntax are used to investigate the relationship between language, identities, and ideologies. We particularly invite abstracts addressing, but not limited to, situational variation and personae construction, the effects of language ideologies on language processing, variation at the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic levels, and the application of variationist research to socio-political questions.

Time, Space, and Deixis We welcome work examining questions of personal, spatial, and temporal reference as they relate to the verbal complex, to the demonstrative system, and to the grammar as a whole. This topic is dedicated to exploring the linguistic encoding of motion and spatial orientation in relation to deixis, and we invite diverse, interdisciplinary approaches and insights from any and all subfields within linguistics and from related fields. We particularly encourage submissions exploring deictic questions of time, motion, and reference from the position of syntax and its various interfaces, diachronic syntax and semantics, as well as corpus and computational methods.

Manual Modality and Signed Languages We invite abstracts exploring foundational and emerging questions surrounding the structure, perception, and evolution of sign languages and other manual modality systems. This topic will examine critical areas of linguistic, cognitive, and social research into how manual languages are produced, perceived, and developed over time. By bringing together contemporary research in this area, the topic will highlight both theoretical and empirical perspectives, while addressing the unique attributes of sign languages as well as the processes through which manual modality languages emerge and adapt. We encourage submissions addressing, but not limited to, the following areas: production and perception in manual modality, phonology in sign and gesture, gesture in the context of sign language, sociolinguistics and language rights in manual modality, emergent languages and language change, and language development in manual modality.

Black Languages We particularly welcome research examining the aforementioned topics as they relate to African and diasporic languages and language users. We seek to showcase the breadth of work investigating Black languages from all linguistic subfields and adjacent fields.

Abstract Guidelines:

Submissions that fail to comply with any of the following guidelines will be automatically rejected:

  1. Submit abstracts as a .PDF file named as *PaperTitle.pdf*.
  2. Include the paper title and keywords (e.g. special topic name if applicable, linguistic subfield(s), language(s)/language family) within the abstract.
  3. Limit abstracts to two US letter-sized pages in length, including data and references (select references acceptable), with one-inch margins and font size no smaller than 11 point.
  4. Incorporate data into the main text of the abstract, not on a separate page.
  5. **Anonymize submissions** by not including author or institution name(s) in the abstract or filename.
  6. Submit abstracts via the Oxford Abstracts platform (click here for abstract submission) for the submission of abstracts.
  7. Restrict submissions to one individual abstract and one joint abstract per author, or two joint abstracts per author.

Invited Speakers:

Important Dates:

Extended Submission deadline: January 26, 2025 at 23:59 US Central Standard Time (GMT-6)
Notification: March 10, 2025
Conference dates: May 9 - May 11, 2025

Organizers:

  • Jeffery Davis (jgdavis[at]uchicago[dot]edu)
  • Taela Dudley (dudleytd[at]uchicago[dot]edu)
  • Peter Gado (pgado[at]uchicago[dot]edu)
  • Gabriel H. Gilbert (ghgilbert[at]uchicago[dot]edu)
  • Chunan Li (chunanli[at]uchicago[dot]edu)
  • Yiin Wang (yiin[at]uchicago[dot]edu)

Land Acknowledgement:

The Chicago Linguistic Society is headquartered at the University of Chicago, which was built on the occupied and unceded lands ancestrally stewarded by many Native peoples. These include the people of the Council of Three Fires (the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa nations) as well as the Menominee, Kickapoo, Miami, Sac and Fox, and Ho-Chunk nations. Today, Cook County is home to more than 39,000 Native people representing over 100 tribal nations and Indigenous communities.

Questions?

Please email us at 2025cls61@gmail.com for any questions or issues that may arise.


CLS 61 Organizers

  • Jeffery Davis
  • Taela Dudley
  • Peter Gado
  • Gabriel H. Gilbert
  • Chunan Li
  • Yiin Wang