background  ||  call for papers  ||  special session  ||  organisers

Background
We are pleased to announce our Eighteenth Manchester Phonology Meeting (18mfm). The mfm is the UK's annual phonology conference, with an international set of organisers. It is held in late May every year in Manchester (central in the UK, and with excellent international transport connections). The meeting has become a key conference for phonologists from all over world, where anyone who declares themselves to be interested in phonology can submit an abstract on anything phonological in any phonological framework. In an informal atmosphere, we discuss a broad range of topics, including the phonological description of languages, issues in phonological theory, aspects of phonological acquisition and implications of phonological change.

As in previous years, the conference venue will be the Hulme Hall lecture suite (part of the University of Manchester), which is located just south of the city centre and is easily accessible by public transport or on foot. We anticipate that the conference fee will be somewhat over GBP100 (covering general conference costs, coffee and biscuits, midday and evening meals, but not accommodation). Various reductions in the fee will be available for those with limited means (students and unwaged participants normally pay around half price) - further details will be available here later, but feel free to get in touch to discuss this. Information about inexpensive local hotels and travel to Manchester will be posted on this site in due course.

Call for papers
There is no obligatory conference theme for the 18mfm - abstracts can be submitted on anything phonological. Following the success of such sessions in previous years, though, a special themed session featuring invited speakers has been organised for the Friday afternoon, entitled 'Sociolinguistics, variation and phonology', and abstracts which attempt to deal overtly with the issues involved with this (from any perspective) will certainly be welcome. 

We are using the Linguist List's EasyAbstracts system for abstract submission again.

• Abstracts for the 18mfm should be uploaded to the 18mfm's page on the EasyAbstracts site by or on 1st February 2010. The precise deadline, as implemented by EasyAbstracts, is as follows: 11.59pm (US Eastern Standard Time) on 1st February, which is 04.59am (GMT/UTC) on 2nd February.

• The website to upload abstracts is here: http://linguistlist.org/confcustom/18mfm.

• You should use one of these formats for your abstract: pdf, Word (.doc but not .docx), or plain text. 

• Abstracts should be no longer than one side of A4 (or 'American letter'), with 2.5cm or one inch margins, single-spaced, with a font size no smaller than 12, and with normal character spacing. All examples and references in the abstract should be included on the one single page (only the first page of any abstract will be considered), but it is enough, when referring to previous work, to cite "Author (Date)" in the body of the abstract - you do not need to give the full reference at the end of the abstract.

• Your abstract should be anonymous. You will be asked to submit a version with your name and affiliation on it if your abstract is selected for presentation. Please make sure that you do not use your name in the filename for your abstract, and please erase any details which might identify you in the file that you submit. Use one word from your abstract's title as the filename.

• If you need to use a phonetic font in your abstract, please either embed it in a pdf file, or use the Doulos SIL font, which can be downloaded for free from this site:  http://scripts.sil.org/DoulosSIL_download.

• When you submit your abstract, you will be asked to indicate whether you would be prepared to present your work either as a talk or a poster paper or whether you would prefer to present it as a poster. These are the only two categories this year. If you specify 'either talk or poster', we will assume that you would rather present it as a talk, and we will award a talk to the abstracts which are judged best in this category, but we may offer you a poster. The poster session has always been a great success at mfms and we give it a high profile. Some work is best presented in this format, so you can specify that you would only like to be considered for a poster if you like. 

• No-one may submit more than one single-authored abstract, as this allows more people to take part in the conference. You may submit one single-authored abstract and one jointly-authored abstract (or two jointly-authored abstracts).

• If you need any technical equipment for a talk, you will need to let the organisers know, if your abstract is selected for presentation. We will do our best to provide it, but this cannot be guaranteed. NB: we have always had unexpected problems with data projection equipment in the past, despite our best preparation, so handouts are best. We can normally provide data projection facilities, but there will be no technical support for this.

All abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by members of the organising committee and advisory board. You can read about the abstract selection process here. If you cannot send your abstract in the way set out above, for whatever reason, please email me (patrick.honeybone@ed.ac.uk) and we'll arrange another way of abstract submission.