Call for papers
3rd International Conference “Prominence in Language”
University of Cologne, 2-3 June 2022

Prominence relations establish a ranking between linguistic units, such as prosodic units, arguments of a verb, and discourse referents. Prominence is one of the key notions in language and communication: it accounts, for instance, for prosodic highlighting and for the building of linguistic structure and discourse representations. The SFB 1252 Prominence in Language (University of Cologne) investigates the role of prominence from an interdisciplinary linguistic perspective, involving phonology and phonetics, morpho-syntax, semantics and discourse pragmatics. It also links up with social cognition and narratology. Recently, the perspective has been extended to cover also sign language and multimodality.
The Third International Conference “Prominence in Language” (the first and second issues of the conference took place in Cologne in 2015 and 2018) aims at advancing the understanding of the notion of prominence in language and at promoting the exchange among researchers working on prominence-related phenomena from various perspectives and disciplines. We invite contributions employing quantitative and qualitative research methods, synchronic and diachronic perspectives, cross-linguistic research, modelling, psycho- and neurolinguistic and cognitively oriented approaches as well as applied ones.

A (non-exhaustive) list of topics to be addressed at the workshop may include the following:
1. the encoding and decoding of prominence
2. language-specific and universal prominence scales and structures (e.g., animacy scale, referentiality scale, metrical scale, thematic role hierarchy, etc.)
3. factors determining the ranking of entities in discourse (e.g., agentivity, topicality, activation, etc.)
4. the role of prominence in the tense-aspect system
5. the relation between the prominence status of entities in discourse and their availability as perspective-takers
6. prominence of propositions (e.g., rhetorical relations, argumentative relations, etc.)
7. prominence and multimodality
8. prominence and variation
9. psycho- and neurolinguistic underpinnings of prominence relations
10. dynamic modelling of prominence
11. language comparison and cross-linguistic perspectives
12. prominence in language acquisition, bilingualism and multilingualism

Invited speakers:
Amalia Arvaniti (Radboud University Nijmegen)
Dale Barr (University of Glasgow)
Dejan Matic (University of Münster)

Abstract submission:
We ask for the submission of abstracts on prominence-related phenomena by February 7, 2022. Submissions are limited to a maximum of one individual and one joint abstract per author or two joint abstracts per author. Abstracts should be written in English and not exceed 500 words. Figures, examples and references might be additionally included, but abstracts must not exceed two A4 pages. Please use Times New Roman, 12pt font, single line spacing, and 2.5cm margins. Abstracts should be submitted via EasyChair at the following address: https://easychair.org/cfp/prominence-conference-3

Important dates:
[January 31, 2022 – Deadline for submission]
February 7, 2022 – Extended deadline for submission
March 31, 2022 – Notification of Acceptance
June 2-3, 2022 – Conference

Contact:
prominence-conference-3@uni-koeln.de