Here is a
list of what we believe are the top linguistics conferences in the
world. This is by no means a formal ranking, but is one prepared with a
North American bias by linguistics graduate students at
linguistics departments in North America, and aims to serve as a guide
for linguistics
graduate students planning to submit to conferences in the area. You
can discuss your opinions on the Linguistics Forum here,
and make suggestions
there. The list is, by no means, final, and will be revised as
selectivity of conferences change in time. Also, see this
list for
an alternative list prepared by UPenn graduate students.
I. GENERAL
LINGUISTICS
The top two
linguistics conferences on linguistics are:
1.
NELS
2.
WCCFL
For NELS and
WCCFL, your abstract will often need to be ranked in top 10%-14% to get
in. In NELS 40 (NELS 2009), for
example, less than 10% of all abstracts got accepted as talks, and NELS
41 had an acceptance rate of 10%, whereas in the most recent
WCCFL (WCCFL 28), acceptance rate was 12.5%. You will often need at
least one NELS or
WCCFL presentation in order for your CV to be impressive enough in job
applications, especially if you are applying to work in a generative
linguistics department.
After NELS
and WCCFL, at the next level, there is CLS. CLS' acceptance rate
changes from 20% to 30% depending on the year:
3. CLS
After NELS,
WCCFL and
CLS, there is GLOW (which is held in Europe).
GLOW also often accepts around 20 to 30% of all abstracts, but they
have special
selection criteria, and thus, their selection process is not completely
dependent on external reviews. So whereas an abstract that is
objectively ranked among top 15 of all abstracts submitted might get
rejected, another abstract that has been ranked #90 by reviews might
get in:
4.
GLOW
We would
say BLS and PLC are also quite good, and are relatively selective
(about 30 to 40%, though there is high variability here depending on
the year, and depending on the theme of extra workshops held):
4.
BLS
5.
PLC
In the same tier, we could list some language family-specific
conferences, such as LSRL (on Romance), WAFL (on Altaic), AFLA
(Austronesian), and FASL (Slavic). These could sometimes be quite
selective, though, again, deoending on the year and location:
4.
WAFL
5.
AFLA
6.
LSRL
7.
FASL
II. SUB-AREAS OF
LINGUISTICS
1. Syntax:
The most
prestigious conferences on syntax are still NELS and WCCFL. These
are the two conferences that will best enable you
to be
noticed in the field and are regularly followed by the top
syntacticians (and phonologists, see below) in the world.
1.
NELS
2.
WCCFL
NELS and
WCCFL are followed by CLS and GLOW in the next tier:
3.
CLS
4. GLOW
5. PLC
5. BLS
2.
Phonology:
For
phonology, the top two are NELS and WCCFL; that is pretty
straighforward. As with syntax, these are the two conferences for
phonology that are truly selective, with a very low acceptance rate,
and are followed by the top
phonologists over the world.
1.
NELS
2.
WCCFL
In the next tier, we
could definitely
list Manchester Phonology Conference (MFM) as #3, and perhaps the Old
World Conference on Phonology (OCP) as #4, both held in Europe,
followed by CLS and GLOW:
3. MFM
4. OCP
4. CLS
4. GLOW
There is
also the new North American Conference on Phonology; we will see, in
the future, how selective that conference will turn out to be and
whether it will be frequented by the leading phonologists of the world.
3.
Semantics:
We would say
SALT is the most prestigious semantics conference, especially if you
are in North America. SALT is followed by the
Amsterdam Colloquium, NELS and WCCFL. As with NELS and WCCFL, SALT is
also a very selective conference, often accepting less than 15% of the
abstracts submitted, though, they are selected, this time,
from among semanticists
only, rather than among all linguists unlike NELS and WCCFL.
Nevertheless, since SALT is composed only of semanticists and still
achieves to be a very selective conference, you have great chances of
meeting leading semanticists and shaing your ideas with the semantics
community. Same goes for the Amsterdam Colloquium:
1.
SALT
2.
Amsterdam Colloquium
3.
NELS
4.
WCCFL
5.
PLC
6.
CSSParis
4. Language
Acquisition:
NELS and
WCCFL are prestigious here, too, but very few language
acquisition papers are published in NELS and WCCFL, if ever, and when
some are published, that is usually either because the paper has a
theoretical/formal proposal that is also relevant for acquisition, or
because there is a special session on language acquisition (or a
certain aspect of it). Others, such as GLOW, CLS, PLC and BLS also
accept acquisition papers, but the quality is not as high as NELS and
WCCFL, and
acceptance rates could be quite high.
Therefore, we are only listing primarily acquisition conferences here:
In the first tier, for general acquisition (both first and second
language acquisition), there is GALA and GALANA. These are both quite
selective for acquisition, accepting about 30% of all submissions. If
you can get in as an 'oral presentation' that is even better, for
acceptance rates for oral presentations are sometimes about 15%. It is
much easier to get in as a poster though:
1.
GALA
2.
GALANA
GALA and GALANA are
followed by GASLA,
which, again, accepts about 30% of all submitted abstracts (about 15%
for orals), and is
focused only on Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Among conferences
that are primarily focused on SLA, though, GASLA can be considered as
top:
3.
GASLA
In
the next tier,
we can list BUCLD and
Eurosla, the first on first and second language acquisition, the second
on second language acquisition only. BUCLD comes first, becuase of a
tradition of high quality papers in 80s and 90s, but nowadays, most of
the papers presented there are
not linguistics oriented; you will see mostly psychologists and
education people presenting here, rather than linguists. The same could
be stated, to some extent, about Eurosla: There are few linguists
presenting here; most presenters are from education
faculties, though there is a fair number of linguists presenting, too:
4.
BUCLD
5.
Eurosla
At the next
level, SLRF and AAAL, both focused on second language acquisition, both
educationish, though the former is a little more linguistics-oriented
and is slightly more selective:
6. SLRF
7. AAAL
Finally, once again, we
suggest visiting this
list, too, for an
alternative list of top linguistics conferences.
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