Name: 12th Annual UC Davis Symposium on Language Research
Start: 2026-05-22T13:00:00-07:00
End: 2026-05-23T18:00:00-07:00
Location: Teaching & Learning Complex

Come hear about the research on language being done by UC Davis and other universities across the US!
About this Event

On behalf of the Cluster on Language Research, we are excited to announce the 12th Annual UC Davis Symposium on Language Research, which will take place on Friday, May 22nd and Saturday May 23rd, 2026! This year's theme is "Language at a Crossroads: History, Innovation and Change." Our keynote speaker is Dr. Adele Goldberg, from Princeton University who will present a talk on her innovative work on Language Constructions:

"Human beings come to know a vast amount of specific and general information about the language(s) that they speak. Instead of assuming that we must bring to the task knowledge that is specific to Language in order for us to accomplish this task, our research explores the idea that it may well be possible to learn language by using our general cognitive processes. A key observation facilitates an explanation: our knowledge of language consists of form-function correspondences (constructions)."

It is striking how different human languages can be, given that we all need to express the same basic types of messages. Yet there remain certain cross-linguistic generalizations that require explanation. Another aspect of our research aims to explain these generalizations."

The conference will also feature over 40 talks and posters about languageresearch by graduate students from across the US and the world.There will also be a competitive, five-minute flash talk section, where we invite the audience to vote for their favorite presentation!

Please share this information far and wide!The entire event is free and open to the public, with no official ticket for entry required. However, we are attaching an RSVP form here just so that we can get a headcount and purchase an appropriate amount of food for the conference. Please fill out this RSVP form if you will be attending any portion of our conference later this month!

We will be serving free breakfast and lunch, and you can come to as few or as many events as you would like. We would also like to specifically invite all attendees to a Pizza & Networking event taking place immediately after the first day of the conference on the 22nd.

The full program and proceedings are available on our website here. You will also find the program attached to this email. We look forward to seeing everyone at our conference in a couple weeks time!