Luke Adamson, Rutgers University
Dorothy Ahn, Rutgers University
Eva Zimmerman, University of Leipzig
Registration / Program / Conference Logistics / Local Information / Pop-Up Mentoring / Proceedings / Code of Conduct / Contact Us
The 41st West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 41) will take place on May 5-7, 2023 at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
At this time, all talks in both main and special sessions are planned for in-person presentation. There is one in-person poster session on Saturday, May 6, and one virtual poster session on Friday, May 5.
All conference attendees must register online, including virtual poster presenters:
Registration for in-person attendance includes the conference dinner on Saturday evening, as well as lunch on Saturday and breakfast on Sunday, since dining options on the UC Santa Cruz campus are limited on weekends.
Early registration is available through April 21, with the following fees:
Late registration after April 21 and on-site registration is also available, with the following fees:
We ask that all presenters register by April 21, and we encourage other attendees to register by this date as well.
Talks are 20 minutes with 10 minutes of questions. All talks will take place in classrooms and lecture halls around Stevenson College. Presenters using printed handouts should bring their own. Copier services for the public are limited on campus, and presenters are recommended to make adequate preparations before coming to campus. We are estimating about 130 conference attendees across two parallel sessions, so 75 attendees per in-person talk on average.
For presenters using slides, every conference venue has a projector and speakers, using an HDMI cable. Presenters should bring their own laptop and HDMI adaptor (if necessary), as one will not be provided.
The in-person poster session will take place in Stevenson Classroom 175. Posters will be pinned on stands with a total usable surface area that is 45 in (114 cm) wide and 48 in (122 cm) tall.
The virtual poster session will take place by Zoom, with each poster presented in a separate breakout room. Presenters will be able to present their virtual poster by sharing their screen with attendees. Due to the modality, "virtual posters" can be a standard poster (e.g., 36 in by 48 in), a short slide presentation (around 5 slides), or a brief handout (1-2 pages). Presenters should also upload a PDF of their virtual poster by Monday, May 1 using this form, so that it can be linked separately from the program for attendees to view.
Alongside the conference, we are planning a couple informal social events:
WCCFL 41 will take place in and around Stevenson College, which houses the Department of Linguistics, nestled in the redwoods on the UC Santa Cruz campus: see a map of the conference venues.
Travel around the area is easiest by car. Rideshares (both Lyft and Uber) are available to and from campus. Parking on campus, in Lots 109 and 110 immediately below Stevenson College, will be available for conference participants. On Friday morning (May 5, 8:30-10:30 am), parking attendants will be on-site to sell day permits ($10) and will accept cash or credit cards (everything except American Express). On Saturday and Sunday (May 6 and 7), self-parking using the ParkMobile app will be available at any time.
Travel to campus and around Santa Cruz is also possible by campus and municipal bus.
We strongly encourage conference participants to find their own way to campus. However, for those who are unable to, conference shuttles with limited seating will circulate, at fixed times at the beginning and end of each day, between the three conference hotels and the conference venues on campus:
Driving directions from nearby airports and cities to Santa Cruz and to the UC Santa Cruz campus can be found on the Campus Maps and Directions website.
Once you pass though the main UCSC entrance on Bay Street and High Street, continue on Bay Street which becomes Glenn Coolidge Drive. Continue straight on Glenn Coolidge Drive. You’ll pass two stoplights; then, Glenn Coolidge Drive will curve to the left and become McLaughlin Drive. Stay on McLaughlin Drive, and after the bend, make the first left turn, into the entrance for Stevenson College. Those walking or arriving by Metro bus or campus shuttle should disembark at the Crown/Merrill bus stop (campus shuttle and Metro bus lines 10, 12, 16, 20).
The closest airports are San Jose International Airport (SJC) and San Francisco International Airport (SFO). You can find information on how to travel to and from these airports on the campus' transportation website:
Negotiated rates are available at three hotels on the Westside in Santa Cruz. Conference participants are strongly encouraged to make a hotel reservation as soon as possible, as rooms book up quickly during the high season.
Unfortunately, no crash space for students is available, due to Covid safety concerns.
WCCFL 41 is proud to host a Pop-Up Mentoring Program (PUMP) event. PUMP (sponsored by the LSA Committee on Gender Equity) provides on-site, one-off mentoring meetings at linguistics conferences around the world. PUMP matches one or more mentees with mentors who can provide quick but personalized career advice to linguists at any stage, in any location, and in any career: anyone can be a mentee or mentor, the more the merrier.
You can register as a mentee, and as a mentor. We almost always have a lot of mentee interest so we encourage linguists at all stages and in all career paths to apply as mentors if they think they can. The deadline for registering as a mentee or a mentor for this event is April 28, 2023. After you register, you will receive an email matching you with your mentor or mentee, with details about how to meet.
Please email Jessica Rett (rett@ucla.edu) with any questions about the PUMP event.
The proceedings for WCCFL 41 will be published by Cascadilla Press. Invited speakers and presenters for both talks and posters (in-person and virtual) will be invited to submit to the proceedings. Details will be provided soon.
Abstracts are invited for 20-minute talks and posters on any theoretical or formal aspect of natural language, including but not limited to phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and their interfaces.
Abstracts are invited for 20-minute talks and posters on deixis and anaphora, across nominal and verbal domains. What are the ways in which natural language can make reference to and depend on the physical and linguistic context? How are these functions expressed across grammatical categories like determiners, pronouns, adjectives, and tense? Is the representation of deixis and anaphora formally distinguished by the grammar? Of special interest are projects which provide insight to the domain of deixis holistically, with reference to one or more of these phenomena.
Abstracts are invited for 20-minute talks and posters on phi-features and featural representations, more generally. What semantic domains are represented featurally in human language (including, but not limited to, person, number, and gender)? How are these features represented in the syntax and morphology? How do syntactic and morphological operations make reference to these features? How are these features interpreted, semantically or pragmatically? Projects which investigate these questions in new domains (such as animacy or definiteness) are of particular interest.
Abstract submission deadline
11:59pm PST on Monday, January 2, 2023
Abstract notification time (estimated)
Late February, 2023
Instructions for abstract submission:
Note
WCCFL 41 will give preference to new work. For this reason, during the abstract submission process, authors will be asked to inform the Organizing Committee whether their work is under review for publication or has been submitted or accepted for presentation at a major conference. Authors should also notify the Organizing Committee promptly of any change in status of their submissions. (Note that this information will not be shared with reviewers.)
WCCFL 41 is dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, religion, or nationality. We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form. Conference participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the conference, at the discretion of the conference organizers.
Harassment includes, but is not limited to:
These behaviors are unacceptable both during in-person interactions and in virtual venues, as well as any event-related chat and discussion groups or on social media.
Participants who are asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately. If a participant engages in harassing behavior, event organizers retain the right to take any actions to keep WCCFL a welcoming environment for all participants. This includes warning the offender, expulsion from the conference, barring from participation in future conferences or their organization, reporting the incident to the offender’s local institution or funding agencies, or reporting the incident to local law enforcement.
Organizers may take action to redress anything with the intent or clear impact of disrupting the event or making the environment hostile for any participants.
We expect participants to follow these rules at all event venues and any event-related social activities. We think people should follow these rules outside event activities too!
If someone makes you or anyone else feel unsafe or unwelcome, please report it to conference staff as soon as possible. Harassment and other code of conduct violations reduce the value of our event for everyone. People like you make our scientific community a better place, and we want you to be happy here. Should you wish to report an incident, you may contact the following event organizers:
This Code was adapted from the HSP 2022 Code of Conduct.
WCCFL 41 is supported by:
and the Department of Linguistics
The WCCFL Whale — originally used for WCCFL 31 and revived for the 2023 conference — was created by Pranav Anand.
The land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taken to missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast, is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historical trauma.The land acknowledgment used at UC Santa Cruz was developed in partnership with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band Chairman and the Amah Mutsun Relearning Program at the UCSC Arboretum.
Last modified: 2023-03-14