COVID 19

Unfortunately, I have to inform you today that we will have to cancel the TAI conference in Sonderborg, DK for this year (as well as its satellite event, 13th Nordic Prosody). This announcement makes me and the whole organization team very sad, especially because the planning process was already very advanced, including safety preparations such as masks for conference participants, and the first contributions have already been submitted.
 
However, the Danish government has decided that no major events may take place in Denmark until at least August 31, 2020, and as a public institution, we must abide by this rule. Additionally, although more and more countries seem to be managing the crisis well, making reliable travel bookings for August will most likely still remain a problem for many months. Moreover, we know from the United States and other countries that many of our colleagues won't be allowed to travel to international conferences before the end of August. Of course, we don't want to exclude anyone from the conference and/or expose anyone to unnecessary health risks.
 
A multilateral, personal exchange of ideas and feedback is essential for a conference and for fostering research in general. It is for this reason that we prefer not to carry out the TAI conference online. Instead, we -- as well as many colleagues with whom we have discussed informally -- would prefer to postpone TAI to next year.

The new preliminary date for TAI is 15-18 June (Wed-Fri), 2021, i.e. right before PaPE 2021 in Barcelona, Spain. The host of TAI remains the University of Southern Denmark, in Sonderborg, DK. We will work hard to confirm the new date for TAI as soon as possible. Please check our website for updates.
 
Regarding the submission procedure, we have closed the Easychair submission page for now. When the new date for the TAI has been fixed, we will open the submission page again in good time before the conference dates. We expect the new submission deadline to be at the beginning of 2021. In this way, everyone will still have enough time to carry out his/her studies  planned for TAI (even if they are currently interrupted due to Corona) without time pressure. Of course, all authors who have already submitted abstracts for TAI are welcome to submit their contributions elsewhere.
 
We will keep you up to date and hope for your understanding and your active participation in the TAI in 2021.We, the organizing team and I wish you all a productive and successful post-Easter period. Stay healthy and positive!

Warm and sunny regards from Southern Denmark,
Oliver Niebuhr, Jan Michalsky, Meg Zellers, Jana Neitsch, Stephanie Berger and Jonas Sikorskis.                      

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CALL FOR PAPERS
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1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI)

'Tone and Intonation in a globalized, digital world'

Sonderborg, Denmark

16-20 August 2020

The 1st edition of the Tone-and-Intonation (TAI) conference series is proudly hosted by the Centre of Industrial Electronics (CIE) at the University of Southern Denmark. Being a merger of the two former conference series TAL (Tonal Aspects of Languages) and TIE (Tone and Intonation in Europe), TAI 2020 welcomes contributions on phonetic and phonological analyses of prosody including (but not limited to) topics related to the production and perception of prosody and rhythm, the semantics and pragmatics of prosody, the acquisition and teaching of prosody in L1 and L2, and cross-linguistic comparisons of prosody.  In addition, in TAI 2020 a number of sessions will be dedicated to the conference theme of globalization and digitization. In this context, we also encourage researchers of neighboring disciplines to submit papers related to tone and intonation to the conference.

Globalization poses increasing challenges to both societies and individuals in terms of language contact and language acquisition. Digitization opens up new ways of human-human and human-machine interaction. In both contexts, tone and intonation are special linguistic, technical and didactic hurdles. Their better understanding not only has the potential for deeper insights into the nature of speech communication but can also decisively shape the communication of tomorrow.

VENUE

Centre of Industrial Electronics (CIE) at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) on science campus Alsion, Sonderborg, Denmark (https://www.sdu.dk/en/om_sdu/institutter_centre/centre+for+industrial+elektronics). The SDU is both the third-largest and the third-oldest Danish university. Since the introduction of the ranking systems in 2012, the University of Southern Denmark has consistently been ranked as one of the top 50 young universities in the world by both the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and the QS World University Rankings. The SDU is also among the top 20 universities in Scandinavia.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

- Mariapaola D'Imperio (Rutgers University, USA)

- Peggy Mok (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China)

- Stefan Baumann (University of Cologne, Germany)

- Hans Basböll (University of Southern Denmark, Denmark)

IMPORTANT DATES:

01 March 2020 Online abstract submission opens
19 April 2020 Abstract submission deadline
31 May 2020 Notification of acceptance
21 June 2020 Early bird registration deadline
16-20 August 2020 1st Tone-and-Intonation Conference, Sonderborg, Denmark

01 November 2020 Deadline for the submission of a revised abstract and an optional 5-page full paper (4 pages of text plus 1 page for references only)

Registrations are made through the conference website. Abstract and paper submission will be handled via the EasyChair platform. More detailed information about the submission procedure and about the abstract/paper formatting requirements will be available on the conference website soon.

TAI 2020 is co-sponsored by ISCA (International Speech Communication Association) and the IPA (International Phonetic Association). We are pleased to offer 5 IPA Student Awards that will cover the early bird student registration fee. Further ISCA-sponsored grants (max. 3) might be added soon. Please check the website tai2020.org for further information on how to apply.

Oliver Niebuhr

Associate Professor of Communication & Innovation

SDU Electrical Engineering

CIE - Centre for Industrial Electronics