mfm - 30th Manchester Phonology Meeting

The 30th
Manchester Phonology Meeting

With a special session entitled:

Is there a prosodic hierarchy, and if so, what does it consist of?

featuring Jelena Krivokapić, Violeta Martínez-Paricio and Heather Newell

Thursday 25th - Saturday 27th May 2023

To be held in-person (with no online participation) in Manchester, England.

Organised through a collaboration of phonologists at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Manchester and elsewhere.

For information about the mfm and its history and background, see the mfm homepage.

There will also be a separately-organised Fringe Workshop on Wednesday 24th May entitled

'Moraic vs. X-Slot Syllabification: the Debate'

organised by Björn Köhnlein and Shanti Ulfsbjorninn
(click on the link in the Workshop's title for more details)
The Fringe Workshop will be held in Manchester University's Samuel Alexander building, room A101.

programme || travel and accommodation || booking || organisers

Programme and information

The timetabled programme for the 30mfm is available here:

30mfm programme

The abstracts booklet for the 30mfm is available here:

30mfm abstracts booklet

We will be using Discord during the conference for presenters to store their slides, posters, or handouts, and to facilitate communication. If you don't have it installed already, do install it if you would like to take part in this. You could check the following notes about Discord (which explain how to install and use it) before the conference starts:

30mfm Discord notes

Everyone who is registered for the conference should be receiving messages every so often from the 30mfm mailing list. We will send out the Discord invitation on the 30mfm mailing list (it will not be posted here).

Registration for the mfm will begin at the conference venue at 12noon on Thursday 25th May and the conference will finish around 5.00pm on Saturday 27th May. There is no need to get to registration at 12 o'clock - the time till the conference starts at 1pm will be just for meeting other participants and chatting (remember: no midday meal is provided on Thursday). Please do arrive before 1pm, though, as we aim to start events then. We will be at the University of Manchester's Core Technology Facility. Details of how to find the CTF are on the travel page.

If you're in Manchester on the 24th May, do come to the Fringe Workshop on 'Moraic vs. X-Slot Syllabification: the Debate'. Note that the two events are happening a different venues. The Fringe Workshop will be held in Manchester University's Samuel Alexander building, room A101.

Guidance for presenters

It is unlikely that speakers will need more than 60 handouts for the parallel sessions. We expect around 120 participants overall.

Notes for oral-paper-presenters: You will have a 30 minute slot for your presentation, and you can choose whether you would rather have 20 minutes to talk and 10 minutes for questions, or 25 minutes to talk and 5 minutes for questions (simply tell the chair of your session which you would like). There will be a data projector in both rooms, with a laptop provided. You may bring your own laptop if you are using the data projector, but do bring any adapters that you may need. There will not be a technician available during the conference to help with computer-assisted presentations, because it would be very expensive to pay for one. So, if you are using a computer for your talk, please make sure that you try out your presentation beforehand, in a meal or coffee break. We encourage you to bring handouts even if you are projecting your presentation.

Notes for poster-presenters: The poster displays will be set up in the tea/coffee break before each poster session. You will be allocated a poster board with these dimensions: 210cm high x 120cm wide. Each person presenting a poster will be provided with the means to affix their posters to the display board. Please feel free to bring handouts with you, so that those viewing your poster also have something to take away. Posters in previous years have taken a wide variety of forms, and there is no one single way to produce a good poster; the important things are that the font size is not too small, that it is easily readable and does not have too much text on it, that it sets out the main points that you want to argue for clearly, and maybe that it's eye-catching, too. Our advice is: don't have too much text, and do include diagrams or other graphics as they can be easier for an audience to take it. Some presenters bring one big poster which takes up all the space (do note the dimensions of the poster board given above if you do this), others bring a series of A3 or A4 sheets of paper which can be fitted together on the poster board. During your poster session, you will be asked to stay by your poster (for at least a fair amount of the session) as other conference participants go around the displays, read your poster and ask you questions about it.

It is not possible to photocopy or print at the CTF itself, but there are a number of options to print posters or photocopy material in Manchester near the CTF. MuPrint (about 15 minutes’ walk from the CTF, towards the city centre) has been recommended. We advise you to check with them in advance if you are planning to use them. It is possible in principle to email or upload a file to MuPrint, so you may be able to arrange to have material ready and waiting for you.

Travel and accommodation

Detailed information on accommodation possibilities and on how to get to the conference are available here. The mfm will be held at the University of Manchester's Core Technology Facility (this is the same place as was used for the 27mfm if you were there).

the travel and directions page is available here [also with links to information on Manchester and its many attractions]
advice on where to stay in Manchester is available here

Booking

Booking closed on 12th May.

Cancellation policy: we will endeavour to refund any fees paid if you cancel by 12th May. Any cancellations after 12th May may not able to be fully refunded as we will have committed to certain payments on your behalf.

Special session

A special themed session has been organised for Friday 26th May by members of the organising committee and the advisory board. This will feature invited speakers and will also allow for open discussion, when contributions from the audience will be very welcome.

Is there a prosodic hierarchy, and if so, what does it consist of?

While the need for some sort of structure at the prosodic level is widely accepted in phonology, the precise nature of that prosodic structure is subject to considerable debate. One strand of thought assumes a fine-grained Prosodic Hierarchy (from subsyllabic units up to the utterance, taking in syllables, feet, prosodic words, intonational phrases and other levels of structure), but even within this approach, there is disagreement on which precise levels exist within the hierarchy. Other contemporary approaches assume less phonology-specific structure, and seek instead to link what appear to be phonological domains to the interface of the phonology with morphology or syntax. This has led to positions where there is no prosodic hierarchy (i.e. no constituents at and above the word level). Within and around all this work on prosodic phonology, there are other highly controversial issues - concerning, for example, the status and role of the prosodic word, the inventory of types of feet, the question of recursion in prosody, and the status of the utterance as a phonological unit. We hope that our invited speakers will address some of these issues (and other related matters) in this special session.

Invited speakers

Jelena Krivokapić (University of Michigan)

Violeta Martínez-Paricio (Universitat de València)

Heather Newell ( Université du Québec à Montréal)

Organisers

Organising Committee
The first named is the convenor and main organiser - if you have any queries about the conference, feel free to get in touch (patrick.honeybone@ed.ac.uk).

Patrick Honeybone (Edinburgh)
Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero (Manchester)
Patrycja Strycharczuk (Manchester)

Treasurer
Michael Ramsammy (Edinburgh)