DYMOS: Dynamical models of speech

A conference exploring new frontiers in dynamical models of speech. The event loosely follows on from our 2024 satellite workshop on Variance and invariance at LabPhon 19.

Location and date

The event is co-located at the 2025 LSA Linguistics Institute and coincides with the class Dynamics of speech production, taught by Jason A. Shaw and Michael C. Stern.

Registration and further information

You can now register for the conference here! The registration deadline is 27 June 2025.

There is helpful information about travel, accommodation, etc. at this link (thanks to the organizers of Usage-Based Approaches to Phonology for compiling this - please check out their conference too!).

The conference will be hosted using the same facilities as the LSA Institute. You can find more information at the LSA Institute website.

Please contact Sam Kirkham if you have any questions.

Workshop speakers

Program coming soon!

Organisers:

Description

A fundamental topic of linguistic inquiry concerns the nature of phonological cognition. Dynamical models of speech – most prominently Articulatory Phonology (Browman & Goldstein 1992) / Task Dynamics (Kelso, Saltzman & Tuller 1986) – have proven great successes in modelling the dynamics of coarticulation (Fowler 1980), prosody (Byrd 2003; Iskarous et al. 2024), long-range processes (Gafos & Benus 2006; Tilsen 2019), and neural dynamics of speech planning (Roon & Gafos 2006; Tilsen 2022; Stern & Shaw 2023). At the same time, there remain a range of unresolved issues and critiques, including the nature of timing control, the relations between symbolics and dynamics, the emergence of phonological structure, and what counts as a necessary condition of a dynamical theory. The conference aims to assess the state-of-the-art and future research directions in dynamical models of speech, with a focus on the following topics:

  1. Emergence and change in dynamical phonological categories
  2. Dynamics, variation, and linguistic universals
  3. The status of spatial and temporal variation in task dynamic models
  4. Autonomous and non-autonomous gestural models
  5. Neural dynamical models of speech planning
  6. Dynamical models of production-perception
  7. The relationship between task dynamic and biomechanical models
  8. Feedback controls
  9. Systems-level dynamics
  10. Philosophical foundations

This two-day conference will bring together researchers in dynamical models of speech, featuring plenary talks from invited speakers, contributed talks, and space for discussion.