This month a new article entitled “Pragmatics: Theory and Experiment Growing Together” by Uli Sauerland and Petra Schumacher on the current state-of-the-art in Experimental Pragmatics was published in Linguistische Berichte.

Abstract:
Pragmatics is already an established subfield of linguistics and the Gricean distinction between literal and speaker’s meaning is one of the foundations of modern linguistic theory. But progress in pragmatics has been slow compared to other subfields of linguistics over the last four decades. We argue that one recent trend, namely Experimental Pragmatics, promises to overcome the stagnant state of pragmatic theory. We present both the three main developments that come together in Experimental Pragmatics (Gricean pragmatics, precise models, and formal experiments). We then present recent results that exemplify the promise of Experimental Pragmatics in two core domains: scalar implicatures and metonymy.

XPrag.de coordinator Uli Sauerland and Kazuko Yatsushiro from project “SSI” at ZAS Berlin have received a grant from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange service) and the JSPS (Society for the Promotion of Science on Scientific Cooperation) in Japan that is meant to support collaboration projects on Experimental Pragmatics between German and Japanese early career researchers.

Call for application:

We invite 12 early stage researchers based in Japan or Germany to join a research project on crosslinguistic experimental pragmatics. The travel to carry out the research is funded by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and the JSPS (Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science). We understand early stage researchers (ERSs) as being currently studying towards a Ph.D. or having completed the Ph.D. in 2008 or later and not holding a permanent position. ESRs with a biography not in line with this understanding should contact us by email before applying and explain their reasons for being considered as ESRs.

The project involves seven senior scientists (Yoichi Miyamoto (PI) of Osaka U, Masa Koizumi of Tohoku U, Hajime Ono of Tsuda Coll., and Hiromu Sakai of Waseda U in Japan, Uli Sauerland (PI) of ZAS Berlin, Sigrid Beck of Tuebingen U and Kazuko Yatsushiro of ZAS Berlin in Germany). In addition, there’ll be 12 early stage researchers (ESRs) funded (6 from each country). The 19 researchers will work in subgroups on about 8 different topics in cross-linguistic experimental pragmatics with a focus on German-Japanese comparison. The exact topics and teams will be narrowed down at the first meeting. The goal for each subgroup is to complete research in crosslinguistic experimental pragmatics, resulting in a publication each. We consider both applications from German-Japanese teams who have already identified a topic they want to work on, as well as individual researchers who want to collaborate with researchers from the other country including the senior scientists involved.

The funding from DAAD/JSPS covers only travel, and is restricted to ESRs based in Japan or Germany. The participating senior scientists provide facilities for different research methods: Online methods (ERP, Mouse-tracking, Eye-tracking), and Offline methods, especially experimental methods used in the language acquisition research.

Meetings generally consist of three days of joint discussion and the remaining days, used for discussion within the subgroups. The approximate dates of the meetings are as follows:

Starting January 2016: selection of the ESRs
May 2-6, 2016: kick-off meeting in Berlin, Germany
November 2016: six-day meeting in Japan
April/May 2017: eight-day meeting in Germany
November 2017: six-day meeting in Japan

Applications should be sent in PDF format to xpragdojo@gmail.com. Please include the following:

– a short curriculum vitae (up to two pages) including a list of relevant publications
– a statement of interest (up to two pages)

DEADLINE: 29.02.2016

The deadline for submissions to the workshop on “The role of pragmatic factors in child language processing” was extended to January, 24th 2016. Abstracts can be submitted here!