LINGUIST List 1.6

Sunday, 23 Dec 1990

Confs: language origins, Lexical semantics

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2. "NANCY M. IDE, Call for Papers: ACL-91 Workshop on Lexical Semantics and KR

To Linguist Editors:

Could you please put the following call for papers into the
Linguist Network? I'm a bit new to this, so I don't know if
everything is in order. Would you please let me know if it
has been distributed satisfactorily? Thank You.

Edward Callary
English Department
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb Il 60115
TB0EXC1NIU.BITNET
(zero not o)

CALL FOR PAPERS

LANGUAGE ORIGINS SOCIETY
7th Annual Meeting

July 18-20 1991

Northern Illinois University
DeKalb Il 60115 USA

The Language Origins Society invites abstracts for papers
on aspects of language origins and evolution.

Language Origins is construed very broadly and includes
investigations into the philosophical, neurological,
biological or social bases of the phylogeny and/or
ontogeny of language in any of its forms (speech,
writing, sign) or the social and/or linguistic bases of
language evolution and change.
Possible topics include (but are not limited to) the origins and
development of:
 phonetic systems
 grammatical systems
 semantic systems
 writing systems
 speech and language
 biological, neurological and medical aspects
 non-human communication systems
 particular language families and subfamilies
 pidgin and creole languages

Send abstracts of 500 words or less and requests for
further information to:

 Edward Callary
 Coordinator, LOS
 English Department
 Northern Illinois University
 DeKalb Il 60115 USA

 e-mail: TB0EXC1NIU.BITNET
 (TB ZERO, not the letter O)

 FAX:815-753-1824

Deadline for receipt of abstracts is 5 March, 1991

Promising abstracts from advanced students are especially
welcome.

 CALL FOR PAPERS

 Lexical Semantics and Knowledge Representation

 17 June 1991
 University of California
 Berkeley, California, USA

 A workshop sponsored by the
 Special Interest Group on the Lexicon (SIGLEX)
 of the
 Association for Computational Linguistics


TOPICS OF INTEREST: The recent resurgence of interest in lexical
semantics (LS) has brought many linguistic formalisms closer to the
knowledge representation (KR) languages utilized in AI. In fact, some
formalisms from computational linguistics are emerging which may be
more expressive and formally better understood than many KR languages.
Furthermore, the interests of computational linguists now extend to
include areas previously thought beyond the scope of grammar and
linguistics, such as commonsense knowledge, inheritance, default
reasoning, collocational relations, and even domain knowledge.

With such an extension of the purview of "linguistic" knowledge, the
question emerges as to whether there is any logical justification for
distinguishing between lexical semantics and world knowledge. The
purpose of this workshop is to explore this question in detail, with
papers addressing the following points:

a. Possible methods for determining what is lexical knowledge
 and what is outside the scope of such knowledge.
b. Potential demonstrations that the inferences necessary for language
 understanding are no different from supposed non-linguistic
 inferences.
c. Arguments from language acquisition and general concept development.
d. Cross-linguistic evidence for the specificity of lexical semantic
 representations.
e. Philosophical arguments for the (impossibility of the) autonomy of
 lexical knowledge.
f. Theoretical approaches and implemented systems that combine lexical
 and non-lexical knowledge.

FORMAT OF SUBMISSION: Authors should submit four copies of a
position paper describing the work they have done in this area and
specifying why they would like to participate in the workshop.
Papers should be a minimum of four pages and a maximum of ten
single-spaced pages (exclusive of references). The title page
should include the title, full names of all authors and their
complete addresses including electronic addresses where applicable,
and a short (5 line) summary. Submissions that do not conform to
this format will not be reviewed. Send submissions to:

 James Pustejovsky
 Computer Science Department
 Ford Hall
 Brandeis University
 Waltham, MA 02254-9110 USA
 (+1-617) 736-2709
 jamespchaos.cs.brandeis.edu

SCHEDULE: Papers must be received by 1 March 1991. Authors will
be notified of acceptance by 5 April 1991.

WORKSHOP INFORMATION: Attendance will be limited to 35-40 participants.
The workshop is held in connection with the 29th Meeting of the
ACL (18-21 June). Local arrangements are being handled by Peter
Norvig (Division of Computer Science, University of California,
573 Evans Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA, (+1-415) 642-9533,
norvigteak.berkeley.edu).

TENTATIVE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Branimir Boguraev
 Ulrich Heid
 Peter Norvig
 James Pustejovsky
 Robert Wilensky