We are proud to host the 43rd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 43), which will take place April 25-27, 2025. The program is now available and registration is open!
The West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, or WCCFL (pronounced /ˈwɪkfəl/), is an annual linguistics conference held at a university in western North America. Research presented at WCCFL can focus on any theoretical or formal aspect of natural language analysis, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, and their interfaces.
Invited speakers:
- Kathryn Davidson is a Professor of Linguistics at Harvard University. Her research areas include experimental semantics, formal semantic and pragmatic theory, and connections between semantics and cognitive science. At Harvard Linguistics she is the current Director of Undergraduate Studies and directs the Meaning and Modality lab, which focuses on collecting data from a wide variety of spoken and signed languages to address research questions in semantics and its related fields.
- Henry Davis is a Professor of Linguistics at UBC. For the last thirty or so years, his research has focused on the languages of the Pacific Northwest of North America, including those of the Salish, Tsimshianic and Wakashan families. He has worked on a multitude of topics in syntax and its interfaces, including syntactic categories, configurationality, argument structure, agreement, clitics, binding, quantification, aspect, and modality. He has also been heavily involved in language documentation and education initiatives, particularly for the Interior Salish language St’át’imcets (Lillooet): this work includes dictionary compilation, the transcription and translation of texts, and the development of grammatical material accessible to language learners and teachers as well as linguists.
- Meghan Sumner is an Associate Professor of Linguistics and the Director of the Stanford Phonetics Lab at Stanford University. Meghan’s research sits at the intersection of acoustic phonetics, language use and variation, social meaning, and cognitive psychology. She investigates attention, perception, recognition, memory, and comprehension within and across individuals, groups, and languages, aiming to understand how different components of spoken language understanding work together. She is currently a Stanford Impact Labs Design Fellow, working with public institutions and advocacy groups to apply language-based social science methods to increase protections for children living with domestic violence.
We are grateful to the following organizations for their support of WCCFL 43:
- The Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
- University of Washington Divisional Dean of Humanities
- University of Washington Department of Linguistics
- University of Washington Asian Languages and Literature Department
WCCFL 43 Organizing Committee:
Barbara Citko, Andrew Hedding, Toshiyuki Ogihara and Shane Steinert-Threlkeld.