Call for papers: 12^th PAC conference

(Phonologie de l’Anglais Contemporain / Phonology of Contemporary English)

PAC 2016: English Melodies

Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Aix-en-Provence, France

Sept 29-Oct 1 2016

We are pleased to announce the 2016 edition of the annual PAC conference, ‘English Melodies’, due to take place from Thursday September 29 to Saturday October 1 2016,  hosted by the Laboratoire Parole et Langage and Aix-Marseille University in Aix-en-Provence. We shall welcome as invited guest speaker Professor Francis Nolan, from the University of Cambridge.

The PAC Project, ‘La Phonologie de l’Anglais Contemporain: usages, variétés et structure; The Phonology of Contemporary English: usage, varieties and structure’ is a project coordinated by Anne Prezwozny, Philip Carr, Jacques Durand and Sophie Herment. Among other things it aims at:

ü     giving a better picture of spoken English in its unity and diversity (geographical, social and stylistic);

ü     testing phonological and phonetic models from a synchronic and diachronic point of view, making room for the systematic study of variation,

ü     favouring communication between specialists in speech and in phonological theory,

ü     providing data and analyses which will help improve the teaching of English as a foreign language.

Several sessions will be organised, following the development of a variety of thematic research groups with dedicated interests within the PAC program:

• PAC-Research with a workshop on tools and annotation: Brigitte Bigi and Daniel Hirst will present the latest functions of SPPAS, a tool producing automatic phonetic annotations from a recorded speech sound and its transcription, including Momel and Intsint which are now implemented.
• PAC-Prosody
• ICE-PAC (interphonologies of contemporary English)
• LVTI (Langue Ville Travail Identité), the study of English in urban contexts and its link with the concept of identity.

Papers from a wide range of theoretical perspectives addressing the above issues and related topics are welcome. Other things being equal, we will give priority to papers focusing on the relationship between corpus studies and the phonological/phonetic modelling of spoken English. A special emphasis will be given this year to English melodies, in the broadest sense, from intonation to segmental primes. We will welcome proposals on the use of automatic tools for the study of very large data sets as well, in connection with the workshop.

The deadline for sending a title with a one-page abstract (excluding references) is February 29, 2016. Please send your proposal in 2 pdf files, one with name and affiliation, the other anonymous to:

gabor.turcsan@univ-amu.fr  & sophie.herment@univ-amu.fr

Notification of acceptance will be sent by the end of March.

Organising committee:

Gabor Turcsan, AMU, LPL

Sophie Herment, AMU, LPL

Anne Tortel, AMU, LPL

Stéphanie Desous, CNRS-AMU, LPL

Joëlle Lavaud, CNRS-AMU, LPL

Catherine Perrot, CNRS-AMU, LPL

Claudia Pichon-Starke, CNRS-AMU, LPL