GWIS 2
Methodological Issues in the Study of Information Structure
(Graz Workshop on Information Structure 2)

Graz, Austria, May, 24 – 25, 2013

• Meeting Description

• Call for Papers

• Registration

• Conference Venue

• Travel and Accommodation

• Contact

• Programme

• General Information

Meeting Description

This workshop is the second one of a series of workshops on information structure at the University of Graz. The first workshop was held on June 17-18, 2011 (Programme GWIS 1)

In recent years an important body of research has been done in the field of information structure (IS), both within formal and functional frameworks. The study of IS covers a wide range of subfields and categories (focus-background, topic-comment, information status, etc.) and is characterized by a variety of different research methods. The main aim of the workshop will be to discuss the virtues and drawbacks of the different methodological approaches to the study of IS.

There is reason to believe that the adequacy of a research method strongly depends on the IS phenomenon investigated. On the one hand, it is notoriously difficult to control for certain aspects of IS in spontaneous language data, specifically topic and focus related phenomena, which is why the majority of studies in that area have resorted to experimental data or introspection. On the other hand, it is relatively easy to annotate information status in corpora of spoken and written language. One goal of the workshop will be to discuss the different methods in relation to the category of information structure investigated.

A second focus will be the problems and virtues of the research methods themselves. It is, for example, a well known fact, that word order phenomena in many languages are not only influenced by informational criteria, but also by other potentially relevant factors, such as the lexical and the phonological weight of the constituents. A clear advantage of experimental methods is the possibility of controlling for all of these factors. At the same time, experiments always bear the risk of producing unnatural language, and actually occurring linguistic structures may easily be overlooked.

A third topic is related to the fact that IS interacts with different linguistic levels, viz. (morpho-)syntax, prosody and semantics. It can be hypothesized that methodological considerations are also related to the type of linguistic phenomenon investigated. Thus, the investigation of syntactic correlates of IS, for instance, may require a different method than the study of its prosodic correlates.

Call for Papers

Deadline for abstract submission: November 15, 2012
Notification of acceptance: December 15, 2012

We invite submissions for 30 min talks (plus 10 min for discussion) on methodological issues of information structure research. We are especially interested in questions of corpus compilation and experiment design, the annotation of written and spoken corpus data, quantitative methods, measurement techniques and investigation tools. Linguists working on the interaction of information structure with any linguistic level (syntax, prosody, semantics, morphology) are welcome.

Abstracts must be anonymous and at most 2 pages in length including references and data in A4 or US letter format (12 pt Times New Roman, single-spaced). Abstracts should be submitted to https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=gwis2 [in the field "Abstract" as a plain text file AND in the field "Upload paper" as a PDF file (.pdf)].

Registration

The workshop is now open for registration. All participants who do not present are requested to register via email (gwis@uni-graz.at). There is no registration fee.

Conference Venue

Universitätszentrum Wall

Institut für Romanistik, Room 03.088

Merangasse 70, 8010 Graz

Austria

(http://goo.gl/maps/ke3rB)

Phone: +43 316 380 2415
Fax: +43 316 380 9780

Travel and Accommodation

How to get to the workshop venue

From the airport to the city centre:

See the public transportation link of Graz airport:

http://www.flughafen-graz.at/en/terminal/anreise-parken/bus-bahn.html

From the city centre to the workshop venue:

Bus 63 (direction Petersbergenstraße): get off at "Nibelungengasse"

Tramway 3 (direction Krenngasse): get off at "Herz Jesu Kirche"

For further information, see the website of Graz public transport:

http://www.holding-graz.at/linien/busbahnbim-auskunft.html

Accommodation

The University of Graz website provides an accommodation information page, listing those hotels in Graz that the University has arranged special conditions with.

If you would like to book a room in one of these hotels, please mention that you are attending the GWIS workshop at the University of Graz and ask for the special rate. If the hotel requires confirmation please do not hesitate to contact the organizers.

We can recommend the following reasonably priced hotels and hostels, some of which will make a special offer for participants of GWIS 2:

• Hotel Johannes

• Pension Rückert

• Hotel Feichtinger

• Hotel Weitzer (booking code: GWIS 2)

The first two are in walking distance from the workshop venue.

You may find further accommodations on the Graz tourism website.

Contact

Dina El Zarka, Dept. of Linguistics
Steffen Heidinger, Dept. of Romance Language Studies
Email: gwis@uni-graz.at

Programme

The programme is now online.

General Information

Social Programme

There will be a workshop dinner on Friday evening.

The end of the workshop is now scheduled for Saturday, 13:45. After the workshop we are planning a little trip to the outskirts of Graz where we will stop at a Buschenschank (a traditional Styrian wine tavern).

You are most welcome to join us! Just let us know beforehand, if possible.