chicago phonetics and phonology ( chiphon ) 98 call chiphon - - the phonetics and phonology group at the university of chicago - - provides a forum for discussing fundamental questions in spoken language research . last year , over 100 people joined us for a day-long panel on whether speech is special . this year , as part of the 34th annual meeting of the chicago linguistic society , we examine how language acquisition data should be incorporated into phonological and phonetic theory . chiphon ' 98 saturday , april 18 , chicago , illinois the acquisition of spoken language " the ideal relationship between central and developmental portions of a field would be one in which the investigators in each . . . would construct model children who were capable of developing into adults and , conversely , model adults who could have developed from children " ( menn , 1980 ) . * which provides a better measure of a speaker 's successful acquisition of speech - - perceiving contrasts or producing them ? how are perception & production related to linguistic competence ? * how should acquisition data be used when formulating and evaluating phononological theories of tone and stress ? what are the prosodic primitives , and are they innate or can they be bootstrapped from the signal ? * what speech processing mechanisms are responsible for second-language development ? are they the same as those for adults processing l1 or for infants acquiring it ? what does disordered phonology tell us about these mechanisms ? we invite abstracts that treat the acquisition of spoken language as integral to the development of linguistic theory . invited speakers : james flege ( university of alabama at birmingham ) peter jusczyk ( johns hopkins university ) robert port ( indiana university ) conference info like last year , this year 's symposium will provide ample opportunities for discussion with talks throughout the day , a box lunch , and an hour-long discussion at the end . other events that weekend include a panel on language acquisition and the lexicon on april 19 . * sophisticated connectionist models of language and acquisition provide an ideal framework for constructing linguistic theories that incorporate the complex interactions between sounds , symbols and meanings . * the ways in which we conceptualize the organization of morphology have different implications for first and for second language acquisition . * ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny and for mature organisms we look at lexical access convinced cognition then recapitulates ontogeny . invited speakers : joan bybee ( university of new mexico ) david pisoni ( indiana university ) terry regier ( university of chicago ) the cls conference will also host a panel on the status of constraints in linguistic theory on april 17 , with john mccarthy and jerrold sadock . papers on phonology , morphology , and syntax , among others , will be presented during the main sessions on april 17-19 , with diana archangeli and david dowty . send your 500-word abstract via email to rmhemphi @ midway . uchicago . edu by january 31 , 1998 . for further information , http : / / humanities . uchicago . edu / humanities / cls or http : / / gsbdrl . uchicago . edu / cls