QUALICO 2014 (Quantitative Linguistics Association Conference 2014) – 20th Anniversary of IQLA and Journal of Quantitative Linguistics (JQL): Conference Report

Abstract

QUALICO 2014 was held from May 29 until June 1, 2014 at the Palacký University Olomouc (Czech Republic), and was organized by IQLA (International Quantitative Linguistics Association) in cooperation with the Department of General Linguistics, the Faculty of Arts, Palacký University, Olomouc. QUALICOs have been held regularly since 1991 (Trier, followed by Moscow 1994, Helsinki 1997, Prague 2000, Athens, USA, 2003, Trier 2007, Graz 2009 and Belgrade 2012). This time QUALICO was devoted to the 20 th anniversary of IQLA and the Journal of Quantitative Linguistics (cf. Chen/Liu 2014 with a detailed review on the past twenty years of the most important journal within quantitative linguistics). Since the conference was held in the Czech Republic, local organizers dedicated the conference to two pioneers of general and “Czechoslovakian” quantitative linguistics, namely to Gabriel Altmann and Luděk Hřebíček, both of them celebrating their birthdays within a few days of the conference (cf. the Festschrift for Luděk Hřebíček on the occasion of his 80 th birthday in Altmann/Čech/Uhlířová 2014). For QUALICO 2014 over 50 presentations and six posters were chosen after a doubleblind review process (initially over 80 abstracts had been submitted to the organizing team), which employed eleven anonymous reviewers. Finally, 70 presenters were invited to QUALICO 2014, coming from eighteen different countries (Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States of America). Due to the high number of participants and limited time capacities the presentations had to be held partly in parallel sessions, which was a first for this kind of quantitative linguistics conference, and without any doubt it is a sign of the strong and increasing interest in applications of quantitative methods in linguistics and text analysis. The conference itself took place in the Art Centre of Palacký University, a well-equipped and recently renovated Baroque building of the former Jesuit College and one of the oldest parts of the university in Olomouc. The detailed programme 1 and the abstracts of the presentations and posters can be found in the booklet of abstracts, edited by M. Benešová, E. Kelih and J. Mačutek (cf. Benešová/Kelih/Mačutek 2014) 2 . The scientific programme of the conference started with a