Call for Papers | Konferenzen | Workshops

07.09.2026 -
08.09.2026 Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS), Berlin

Workshop „Register effects in sentence and discourse processing“ (RESD 2026)

 

Organizers Natalia Gagarina & Kateryna Iefremenko (ZAS),
Pia Knoeferle, Mingya Liu, Katja Maquate, Valentina Nicole Pescuma & Stephanie Rotter (HU)
Date September 7-8, 2026
Venue Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS)
Meierottostraße 8, 10719 Berlin, Germany — Conference Room, Ground floor
Program tba

 

The Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS) are pleased to announce the workshop “Register Effects in Sentence and Discourse Processing (RESD 2026)”, which will take place in Berlin, Germany on September 7-8, 2026, shortly after AMLaP 2026 in Saarbrücken (September 2-4). The workshop is an event of the Collaborative Research Centre 1412 ‘Register’ (https://sfb1412.hu-berlin.de/de/).

A growing body of linguistic research has focused on understanding register, i.e., those aspects of intraindividual variation in linguistic behavior that are influenced by situational and functional settings (Lüdeling et al., 2022, 2024). How language users produce, process and acquire register variants across situations is one of the core questions in register research (e.g., Kempe et al., 2024; Kirk et al. 2021; Pescuma et al., 2025). Previous literature (Pescuma et al., 2024) lays the groundwork for addressing how situational-functional parameters influence which choices (phonetic, morphosyntactic, lexical, pragmatic), and how such effects can be investigated in the current theory of formal grammar, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. 

It is generally assumed that dimensions of world knowledge, discourse context as well as local sentential context affect language processing, comprehension and production. Comprehenders adjust their expectations about probable sentence, discourse, and dialogue continuations based on language-external and -internal cues (Levy, 2008; Xiang & Kuperberg, 2015), and different choices give rise to differences in social meanings (Beltrama, Solt & Burnett; 2022, Hall-Lew, 2021). However, few approaches and models address register effects in language processing or their relationship with general cognitive aspects such as prediction, memory, and priming (Pescuma et al., 2024, 2025; Venhuizen et al., 2018; Bentum et al. 2019, 2022). 

The objective of the present workshop is to bring together researchers from different disciplines to discuss common interests around the topic of register effects in language processing. Combining both register and processing, we are interested in the questions of which situational-functional parameters (and their values) of broad discourse context and which register-related properties of narrow linguistic context influence language processing, how the effects (reading times, EEG, eye movement, etc.) differ in quality, whether and how they interact with one another in any principled manner, how social meanings differ in the case of expected vs. unexpected utterances, and which individual differences are relevant for register variation (Maquate et al., 2024).


Invited speakers: 

In addition, we invite abstract submissions for talks and poster presentations on the topic from conceptual or methodological perspectives, including (but not limited to) corpus, experimental, or computational work. Early-stage work and research in progress is welcome; in addition, an event for early career researchers (ECR) will be organized as well as a best ECR presentation award (talk or poster, ECR as first author). 


Key dates:

    • Abstract submissions open: February 28, 2026
    • Abstract submissions due: May 8, 2026
    • Notification of acceptance: May 31, 2026
    • Workshop: September 7-8, 2026


Submission guidelines:

Abstracts should be a maximum of one (1) A4 page in length (11 pt Arial font, 1-inch margins, single line spacing), with examples, data, figures and/or references (in APA format) on a second optional page, in two versions (one anonymized, the other with names, affiliations, the email addresses of corresponding authors, each as one PDF). Please send your submission to the workshop e-mail address: resd26-sfb1412@lists.hu-berlin.de.


Publication plan:

We intend to publish a proceedings volume in the journal “Register Aspects of Language in Situation (REALIS)” consisting of short papers (up to 10 pages) based on the contributions presented at the workshop. (https://realis.linguistik.hu-berlin.de/index.php/REALIS).


Attendance and registration:

The attendance is free of charge. Information on the registration will be provided closer to the workshop dates.


Contact:

For any inquiries, please contact the workshop organiseres at resd26-sfb1412@lists.hu-berlin.de