Call for Papers

General sessions

We herewith invite abstracts for presentations at the 16th International Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology. This is being organized by the Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage (DDL), CNRS, and will be held at the Lumière University of Lyon, France, on 1-3 July 2026. The preceding day (30 June) will be reserved for a series of teach-ins (see below for the provisional programme).

Abstract submission site opens:

Abstract submission deadline:

Notification of acceptance:

Abstracts on any topic in linguistic typology, including its interfaces with language documentation and signed language research, are invited for oral presentations or posters. Non-members of ALT may submit abstracts but will be expected to join ALT in order to present a paper at the meeting.

Abstracts should be submitted to the ScienceConf managing system via the conference website (https://alt-2026.sciencesconf.org/; “login” at top right of page). If you do not yet have a ScienceConf account, you will need to create one at the time of submission.
Please be aware that this system is not compatible with all email addresses. For example, there may be issues with addresses ending in .ru. If you encounter any problems, you can contact the Organizing Committee at the backup address: alt2026.lyon@gmail.com.
Abstracts may be submitted for the general session, for a poster session, or for one of the scheduled workshops (see below for the list of workshops). Abstracts submitted for a workshop but not accepted there will be automatically considered for inclusion in the general or poster session, depending on the reviewer scores. One individual may be involved in a maximum of two abstracts (of which only one as sole author), regardless of category (oral, poster, workshop talk).
Abstracts will be anonymously reviewed by a pool of external referees and by members of the ALT 2026 Program Committee. Abstracts submitted to a workshop will be jointly reviewed by members of the ALT 2026 Abstract Review Committee and the workshop organizers.

Abstract specifications

• Abstracts must be anonymous: do not put your name or other identifying information on the abstract and please ensure that the file properties do not contain any such information.
• Abstracts should be submitted as pdf files, with a maximum length of one single-spaced page, 12pt font, with another page (at maximum) for references and examples.
• Please put this information at the top of your abstract: abstract title; abstract category (oral, poster, oral/poster); workshop title (if applicable).

Categories of submission

• Oral presentation, for general session or workshop (single or multiple author).
• Poster: One or more dedicated poster sessions will be organized, depending on the number of abstracts received for this category.
• Oral/Poster: This means you prefer an oral presentation but can also present a poster. If there are more good abstracts than we can accommodate, the Programme Committee will schedule some as posters.

List of workshops

We plan to have two workshops per day over the entire duration of the conference. The following one-day workshops have been accepted (descriptions are available here):

WS1: Associated Posture (Antoine GUILLAUME & Albert ÁLVAREZ GONZÁLEZ)

WS2: Diversity in systemic expansion and contraction (Oliver BOND & Dávid GYŐRFI)

WS3: Incorporating the spoken signal into grammatical typology (Laura BECKER & Naomi PECK)

WS4: Parametrization of tonal systems (Valentin VYDRIN, Dmitry GERASIMOV, Kirill MASLINSKY)

WS5: Quantitative typology – New directions in assembling and analyzing cross-linguistic data (Annika TJUKA, Christian BENTZ & Johan Mattis LIST)

WS6: Semantic shifts and the dynamic of lexification patterns (Alexandre FRANÇOIS, Anna ZALIZNIAK & Anna SMIRNITSKAYA)

Teach-ins

Tuesday, 30 June, will be dedicated to full-day teach-ins. These will be held at the Lumière University of Lyon, France and will be free of charge for conference attendees, although registration will be required. The following teach-ins will be offered:

• Describing languages using Neural Speech Processing Models: Recent advances and illustration with two creole languages (William Havard & Emmanuel Schang)
• Mande languages in a typological and areal perspective (Maria Khachaturyan, Denis Creissels, Maria Konoshenko, Valentin Vydrin)
• Phonological typology (Shelece Easterday & potentially others)
• Practical R for quantitative typology (Marc Allassonnière-Tang & potentially others)

We look forward to welcoming you to Lyon next year, which is not only the home of DDL, a research unit with a long history of studying minority languages, writing grammatical descriptions, doing field research, and working on typology, but also the culinary capital of France and a World Heritage Site.