Abstract submissions for papers and posters to be presented at its 2024 Annual Meeting, which will take place in person in New York City from January 4-7, 2024, are now closed. 

Categories of Presentations

This call for abstracts covers two categories of presentations at the 2024 Annual Meeting: poster presentations and 20-minute talk presentations. During submission, abstract submitters must specify their choice of format: poster only, paper only, or either. These choices are not accessible during the review process, to ensure that all abstracts are evaluated strictly according to content and not according to type of presentation. There will be a separate call for submissions for the Five-minute Linguist, a special LSA plenary event, though they will be submitted through the same Oxford Abstracts form. 

Poster Sessions

Depending on subject and/or content, it may be more appropriate to submit an abstract to the poster sessions for visual presentation, rather than to a 20-minute paper session. In general, the sort of research which is most effectively presented as a poster draws its major conclusions from the thoughtful examination of charts and graphs, rather than a sustained chain of verbal argumentation. Therefore, authors will want to make points in narrative form as brief as possible. The poster should be able to "stand alone", that is, be understandable even if the author is not present, and should not require audiovisual support.

The posters accepted for presentation at the Annual Meeting are assigned to one of three Poster Sessions, to be scheduled on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Authors are expected to be present during the official poster session times to discuss their research and answer any questions. The posters may be left on display throughout the day during the day they are presented. The Plenary Poster Sessions are designed to showcase the increasingly common research modalities which are optimally adapted for presentation as a poster.

Guidelines for presenting an LSA poster

20-Minute Papers

The papers accepted for presentation at the Annual Meeting will be scheduled in themed sessions on Thursday evening, Friday and Saturday morning and afternoon, and on Sunday morning. Each paper presentation lasts 20 minutes, and is followed by 10 minutes of discussion.

Guidelines for giving an LSA paper

The Five-minute Linguist

Please find the separate call for submissions for the Five-minute Linguist here, a continuing special plenary event at the LSA Annual Meeting, now in its sixth year. Abstracts for the Five-minute Linguist will be submitted through the same Oxford Abstracts form as posters and 20-minute talks. 

Abstract submission

We encourage those considering a submission to view our model sample abstracts, revisit our recent webinars on "How to Submit an Abstract for the LSA Annual Meeting" and "Abstract Writing: How to Convince in a Page," and read more about the 2024 Annual Meeting.

The Program Committee requires that the subject matter be linguistic and that the abstract be coherent and in accord with published specifications. Each abstract will be reviewed by members of the Program Committee and by expert external reviewers. The members of the Program Committee accept and reject abstracts based on the ratings assigned by the reviewers. The Program Committee Co-chairs then meet to assemble the final program and arrange each paper and poster session. As in the past, there is no upper limit on the number of papers in any subarea.

General Requirements

  1. Abstracts for 20-minute papers and for posters must be submitted electronically on Oxford Abstracts by the deadline stated above. Since 2019 the deadline to submit abstracts has been at an earlier date than in previous years. Click here if you're wondering why.
  2. The submitting author must be a member of the Linguistic Society. Nonmembers may join here.
  3. Any member may submit one single-author abstract. There is no limit on the number of co-authored abstracts. An organized session paper or poster counts as a multi-author abstract submission.
  4. Presentations must be delivered by one or more of the individuals listed as an author on the originally submitted abstract.
  5. After an abstract has been submitted, no changes of author, affiliation, title, or wording of the abstract, other than those due to typographical errors, are permitted.
  6. Papers and posters must be delivered as projected in the abstract or represent bona fide developments of the same research.
  7. Authors should not submit abstracts for research that has already been presented at other major conferences or which has been published in a journal, as a book chapter, or in conference proceedings.
  8. Presenters must pre-register for the meeting.
  9. Authors may not submit identical abstracts for presentation at the LSA meeting and a meeting of one of the co-locating Sister Societies. Authors who do so will have both abstracts removed from consideration. Authors may submit substantially different abstracts for presentation at the LSA meeting and a co-locating Sister Society meeting.

Abstract Format Guidelines

  1. Abstracts must be submitted in PDF format.
  2. The main text for each abstract must be no more than 500 words and fit on one 8.5x11 page. An optional second page may be used for the presentation of linguistic examples, plots, figures, tables, other diagrams, and references, or these can be included in the 1-page abstract. Margins may be no smaller than 1/2 inch and font no smaller than 10 points.
  3. Your name should only appear on the abstract submission form.
    1. If you identify yourself in any way on the abstract itself (e.g. "In Smith (1992)...I"), the abstract will be rejected without being evaluated.
    2. Be sure to anonymize your .pdf document by clicking on "File," then "Properties," removing your name if it appears in the "Author" line, and resaving before uploading it. Contact the LSA if you have difficulty anonymizing your .pdf as described above.
    3. Be aware that abstract file names may not be automatically anonymized. Please do not use your name (e.g. Smith LSA Abstract 2024) when saving your abstract in .pdf format, but rather use non-author-identifying information (e.g., Title of Abstract LSA 2024).
  4. On the abstract submission form, you will also be asked for a short version of your abstract (max 100 words) as you would like it listed in the meeting materials. 
  5. Abstracts that do not conform to the format guidelines will not be considered.

Abstract Contents

Many abstracts are rejected because they omit crucial information rather than because of errors in what they include. Authors may wish to consult the abstract models prepared by the Program Committee.

Authors are encouraged to consult the LSA Guidelines for Inclusive Language when drafting their abstract and identifying linguistic examples to illustrate the phenomenon under investigation.

A suggested outline for abstracts is as follows:

  1. Choose a title that clearly indicates the topic of the research and is not more than one 7-inch typed line. Note that your choice of title has considerable influence on how your paper or poster is grouped with others to form thematically coherent sessions. A clear relationship between the title and content of your abstract will help ensure it is assigned to an appropriate session, should it be selected for presentation.
  2. State the problem or research question raised by prior work, with specific reference to relevant prior research.
  3. State the main point or argument of the proposed presentation.
  4. Regardless of the subfield, cite sufficient data, and explain why and how they support the main point or argument. When examples are in languages other than English, provide word-by-word glosses and underline the portions of the examples which are critical to the argument. Explain abbreviations at their first occurrence.
  5. If your research presents the results of experiments, but the collection of results is not yet complete, then report what results you've already obtained in sufficient detail so that your abstract may be evaluated. Also, indicate explicitly the nature of the experimental design and the specific hypothesis tested.
  6. State the relevance of your ideas to past work or to the future development of the field. Describe analyses in as much detail as possible. Avoid saying, in effect, "a solution to this problem will be presented." If you are taking a stand on a controversial issue, summarize the arguments that led you to your position.
  7. State the contribution to linguistic research made by the analysis.
  8. Citation in the text of the relevant literature is essential. A separate list of references may be included after the abstract.
  9. When you submit your abstract to the website, please identify as accurately as possible a primary field on the basis of the abstract's general topic area, and use the secondary field to indicate methodology or a secondary topic. For example, a paper or poster about the production of relative clauses could have "syntax" as its primary field, and "psycholinguistics" as the secondary field. This will make it easier to assign your abstract to appropriate reviewers.

Contact details

Questions about the content of the abstracts may be directed to the Program Committee Chairs: Sarah Murray (sarah.murray@cornell.edu) and Kristine Yu (krisyu@linguist.umass.edu).

If you have any difficulty submitting an abstract, please contact the Oxford Abstracts platform for technical support or Vy Le, the LSA Membership Director, via membership@lsadc.org.

Important dates

Approximate timetable for abstracts and further requirements:

  • June 30: deadline for receipt of final proposals  
  • September: notification of acceptance/non-acceptance of proposals