Call for Papers
61st Linguistics Colloquium
LingColl 2026
Università di Pavia, Italy, September 9 to 12, 2026
https://lingcoll26.unipv.it
Scope: all fields of Linguistics
Conference languages: English and German
Deadline for abstract submission: May 3, 2026
Special theme:
Rethinking Language Comparison: Contrastive Linguistics between Corpora
and AI
The 61st Linguistics Colloquium (www.lingcoll.de) will take place at
the University of Pavia, Italy, from September 9 to 12, 2026.
Founded in Hamburg in 1966, the Linguistics Colloquium (has since been
hosted in almost 20 countries. It provides a platform for the study of
language and languages in all areas of linguistics and warmly welcomes
researchers from diverse theoretical backgrounds. The colloquium is
distinguished by its cooperative and open culture of discussion:
innovative ideas meet critical reflection, and the exchange of research
results is actively promoted. Its aim is to create an inspiring space
where new approaches, methods, and perspectives can be jointly discussed
and developed.
In addition, contrastive linguistics will be a focal point at this
year’s colloquium. Since its beginnings, contrastive linguistics has
undergone significant development, expanding both its methodological and
conceptual scope. Today, language comparison is no longer limited to
language pairs but can involve multiple languages. It integrates
geographical and sociolinguistic dimensions, extends its focus to
semantic, pragmatic, textual, and discourse-linguistic levels, and also
takes into account historical stages and diachronic comparisons within a
single language.
Moreover, contrastive linguistics has increasingly established itself as
a theoretically reflective discipline: analysing a language in the light
of another allows for the identification of linguistic phenomena that
might otherwise remain unnoticed or inadequately explained. Recent
advances have been particularly driven by the use of large corpora and
digital methods. AI-supported analytical methods are expected to provide
further developments in the near future.
The planned conference will focus on current theoretical,
methodological, and applied approaches in contrastive linguistics, with
a particular emphasis on German in comparison with other languages. Its
aim is to bring together research that empirically investigates
systematic differences and similarities across languages and highlights
their relevance for applied contexts.
Thematic Focus (including, but not limited to):
Contrastive Analyses in the Areas of:
- Phonetics and phonology
- Morphology and syntax
- Semantics and lexicon
- Phraseology and pragmatics
- Text and discourse
Corpus-Based, Corpus-Driven, and AI-Supported Approaches:
- Contrastive corpus linguistics
- Comparative corpus annotation
- Corpus-based analyses of phraseological patterns, collocations, and
constructions
- Quantitative and qualitative methods
- Use of AI, NLP, and LLMs in contrastive Research
Methodological and Theoretical Issues:
- Comparability of data and corpora
- Modelling linguistic differences at the word, phrase, and discourse levels
- Interfaces between linguistics, corpus linguistics, computational
linguistics, and AI
Applied Perspectives, Including:
- German as a foreign and second language (DaF/DaZ)
- Specialized and professional language
- Phraseodidactics and discourse-oriented language teaching
- Lexicography, phraseography, and terminology work
- Translation studies, interpreting, and contrastive discourse analysis-
- Language teaching and language comparison in the Classroom
We welcome contributions that are theoretically informed as well as
empirically oriented, including work that bridges basic research and
application. Submissions presenting innovative methods or new resources
are particularly encouraged.
In addition, in keeping with the tradition of the Linguistics
Colloquium, presentations from all other areas of linguistics may be
proposed.
Submission
Abstracts (approx. 300 words) can be submitted until May 3, 2026.
[email protected]
Notification of acceptance will be sent by May 15, 2026.
Conference Languages
The conference languages are German and English.
Registration
Registration deadline: 30 June 2026 [email protected]
Registration fee
Participants with a regular income: €200.00
Participants without a regular income (PhD candidates, scholarship
holders): €100.00
