We are pleased to announce Statistical Learning: From Form to Meaning, a two-day conference hosted by the Lancaster Language Learning Research Lab at Lancaster University, UK, on Monday 28 and Tuesday 29 June 2027. We invite abstract submissions for talks and posters.

About the conference

Statistical learning research has made substantial progress in explaining how learners detect regularities and acquire structure from experience. A central remaining question is how these learned patterns become connected to meaning, and how meaning, in turn, shapes learning and processing.

The conference will provide an opportunity for the statistical learning community to meet between the biennial International Conference on Statistical Learning meetings in 2026 and 2028. It will be a smaller, focused event, with substantial time for discussion and interaction.

Topics

We welcome submissions on all aspects of statistical learning across language, cognition and development. We especially encourage submissions that address how learners connect patterns in speech, text, signs, and sequences with meaning, including (but not limited to):

• how meaning shapes the detection of structure, and vice versa
• mapping words and constructions to entities, actions, events and relations
• cross-situational learning and the integration of linguistic and non-linguistic information
• the role of communicative intentions, social cues and context in learning
• statistics driving the process of reading and their link to comprehension
• the role of multimodality in statistical learning
• form-meaning learning in first, second and additional languages, across the lifespan
• computational, corpus-based, experimental and neuroscientific approaches to these questions

Invited speakers

• Louisa Bogaerts, keynote
• Gabriella Vigliocco, keynote
• Chen Yu, keynote
• Ram Frost, closing discussant

Programme

The programme will include keynote talks, contributed papers, extended poster sessions, and closing discussions, with substantial time for discussion and interaction.

Submission guidelines

• Abstracts should be submitted via our online form.
• Abstracts must be written in English as plain text, without figures or tables, and must not exceed 2,000 characters including spaces (about 250 words), excluding title and author details.
• All abstracts will be reviewed and ranked. The highest-ranked abstracts will be offered talks, and all other accepted abstracts will be invited to present as posters. Authors who prefer to present a poster can indicate this on the form.
• We are committed to giving early-career researchers a strong presence at SL2027 and warmly welcome submissions from students and postdoctoral researchers.

Important dates

• Call for papers opens: Monday 14 September 2026
• Abstract deadline: Monday 18 January 2027, midnight anywhere in the world
• Notification of acceptance: by Friday 12 February 2027
• Registration opens: Friday 12 February 2027
• Presenter and early bird registration closes: Friday 2 April 2027
• Programme published: by Friday 16 April 2027
• Final registration closes: Friday 11 June 2027 (or earlier if all places are allocated)
• Conference: Monday 28 and Tuesday 29 June 2027

Venue

The conference will take place on the Lancaster University campus. Travel and accommodation information is available on the conference website.

Programme Committee

Susana Correia (NOVA University Lisbon), Yuxin Ge (NOVA University Lisbon), Jill Lany (Lancaster University), Alice Milne (Lancaster University), Padraic Monaghan (Lancaster University), Patrick Rebuschat (Lancaster University), Gabriela Tavares (Lancaster University)

Organisers and contact

SL2027 is organised by Professor Padraic Monaghan and Professor Patrick Rebuschat. For queries, please contact language-learning@lancaster.ac.uk.

We look forward to welcoming you to Lancaster.