Conference  IDP 2011

 The Prosody-Discourse Interface (including research training workshop on prosody and special workshop on expressives and affective prosody)

 University of Salford, Greater Manchester  12 September 2011 –  14 September (incl)

 (just after the LAGB  7 – 10 September 2011, at the University of Manchester) http://www.lagb.org.uk/?page_id=128

Invited speakers:

Nicole Dehe, University of Konstanz

John Local, University of York

Chris Potts, University of Stanford

Marc Schroeder, German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence

This conference is the fourth in a series which provides a forum for those working on the relationship between prosody and discourse.  As the previous conferences have shown, there is a range of phenomena which illustrate how research in prosody feeds into research in discourse and vice versa – for example, the communication of attitudes and emotions, constraints on implicit meaning, focus and information structure, the communication of irony, interaction and interactive meaning, humour in discourse, parentheticals, the interpretation of anaphora, the identification of processing units, and the identification of genre. The relationship between prosody and discourse has been viewed from the perspective of phonology, semantics, syntax, pragmatics, language acquisition, language processing, language pathology, stylistics, language evolution, and speech synthesis. Moreover, research has been carried out in a wide range of theoretical paradigms. We now aim to build on this research, and in this way develop a greater understanding of phenomena at the prosody-discourse interface.

The conference will consist of four parts:

 1.     Research Training Workshop (for research students and academics who wish to develop an understanding of the issues involved in transcribing prosodic structure).

2.     Oral presentations on any area of the prosody-discourse interface

3.     P5oster sessions on any area of the prosody-discourse interface

4.     Special workshop on expressive and affective prosody (speakers: Diane Blakemore, Chris Potts, Marc Schroeder)

 We now invite researchers in prosody and discourse to submit abstract for inclusion in themed sessions on any area of the prosody-discourse interface (including the topic of the special workshop). We expect abstracts to address the following questions from a range of theoretical paradigms:

• What are the different prosodic subsystems; how do they interact; and how do they contribute to the interpretation of discourse?
• How should we describe and analyze prosodic facts?
• What are the relevant units for the analysis of discourse; and what are their prosodic properties?
• How is discourse processed; and how does prosody affect discourse processing?
• How do context and prosody interact in the interpretation of discourse?
• What is ‘tone of voice’ and how does it affect interpretation?
• How do L1 and L2 speakers acquire an understanding of the relationship between prosody and context?
• What are the best methodological tools for the description and transcription of the prosodic properties of discourse?

 Please note

• the conference will be held in English and French. 
• abstracts must be no more than 1 A4 page and written in Times 12 Font (plus an extra page for references and figures)
• two copies of the abstract must be submitted – one anonymous and the other marked with the name of the author(s), affiliation(s) and email address of the main author
• abstracts must be sent to the following address: d.blakemore@salford.ac.uk
• abstracts will be evaluated anonymously by the scientific committee for the conference.
• abstracts should indicate if they are for an oral presentation, a poster, or both. Please note that we will not be able to accommodate everybody in the oral sessions.

 Deadlines

Submission of abstracts: 15 April 2011

Notification of acceptance: 6 June 2011

Conference: 12 – 14 September 2011

 Enquiries: 

Diane Blakemore  (local organizer) d.blakemore@salford.ac.uk

Debbie Hughes (conference support) d.hughes1@salford.ac.uk