LINGUIST List 10.132

Fri Jan 29 1999

Calls: ESSLLI'99, PLM 99

Editor for this issue: Brett Churchill <brettlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Rodger Kibble, ESSLLI'99 Workshop on Generation of Nominals
2. Poznan Lingustics Meeting, PLM 99 Constraints vs Preferences

 Second Call For Papers
 	 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


 ESSLLI-99 workshop on

 The Generation of Nominal Expressions

 University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
 9-13 August 1999


Context: 

The workshop will take place in association with the 11th 
European Summer School "Logic Linguistics and Information" 
(ESSLLI), to be held in Utrecht, The Netherlands, from 9-20 
August 1999. The format of the workshop is 5 x 90 minutes on 
the 5 consecutive days of 9 to 13 August 1999.

The ESSLLI Summer School is organized under the auspices of the 
European Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI).
Previous ESSLLI Summer Schools have been highly successful,
attracting around 500 students from Europe and elsewhere. The 
school has developed into an important meeting place and forum 
for discussion for students and researchers interested in the 
interdisciplinary study of Logic, Language and Information.
For more information see <http://esslli.let.uu.nl>;. 


Workshop Description:

 If someone attempted to assess the `state of the art' of 
 linguistic research on nominal expressions by looking at 
 how present-day programs generate nominals, he or she would 
 no doubt underestimate the level of sophistication 
 of theoretical work on nominals. It can be argued that this is 
 because existing work on the computational generation of nominals 
 has limited itself to relatively simple nominals, often focussing 
 on simple (singular) definite descriptions and pronouns.
 Alternatively, it might be contended that much of the theoretical 
 work in this area is not mature enough to be appicable in 
 generation. Be this as it may, work on the generation of nominals 
 has not profited much from theoretical research in formal semantics 
 and psycholinguistics on the meaning, interpretation and production 
 of nominal expressions. 

 This workshop will try to bridge the gap between theory and 
 practice in this area by focusing on the generation of nominal 
 expressions of different linguistic types including, for example, 
 indefinite and quantificational NPs (of different monotonicity 
 types). 

 The theme of the workshop is closely related to that of a number 
 of ongoing research projects, including the GNOME (`Generation of 
 NOMinal Expressions') project, in which the ITRI (Brighton) and 
 HCRC (Edinburgh/Durham) collaborate, and which is funded by the 
 EPSRC in the United Kingdom. 


 Topics for which submissions are invited include:

 (1) The influence of discourse context on the appropriateness
 and interpretation of a nominal expression
 (2) Descriptive issues concerning the treatment of plurality, 
 bridging, aggregation, eventualities, discourse deixis, 
 cross-modal reference, etc.
 (3) Representational issues (i.e., what kind of meaning
 representations should form the input to the generation 
 algorithm?)
 (4) Reversibility of grammars
 (5) Differences in textual style or `genre'
 (6) Psycholinguistic research relevant to computational 
 Natural Language Generation (NLG)
 (7) Corpus-based work leading to insights relevant for 
 computational NLG
 (8) Issues of system/algorithm evaluation.


Practical issues:

We welcome short (i.e., roughly 1000-1500 words) electronic 
submissions (send email to Rodger.Kibbleitri.brighton.ac.uk) 
on the theme of the workshop. Submissions should be in Postscript 
or plain ascii. Please include "ESSLLI99" in the Subject line of 
your message to make things easy for us. The deadline for 
receipt of abstracts is March 1st; submissions may also be sent by post
to the address below, but they must reach ITRI by this date.

In accordance with the description of the Workshop Description,
we encourage submissions about theoretical (e.g., formal semantic
or psycholinguistic), applied, or corpus-based work, as long as 
the work is clearly relevant for NLG programs. No matter what 
they consider the main focus of their work, we ask authors to 
*stress relevance for NLG* in their submission (and, later, in 
their presentation). This will ensure that all contributions will 
contain a common `core', notwithstanding their differences in 
perspective.

It is ESSLLI's practice to make sure that workshops go ahead only
if there turns out to be a sufficient level of interest, based on 
quantity and quality of submissions.

Workshop speakers are required to register for the Summer School; 
however, workshop speakers will be able to register at a reduced 
rate to be determined by the Organizing Committee. Limited funds 
are available to contribute to speakers' expenses in exceptional
circumstances.


Important dates:

- First call for papers: 22 October 1998
- Second call for papers: 28 January 1999
- Deadline for submissions of abstracts: 1 March 1999
- Notification of acceptance: 1 May 1999
- Workshop to be held: August 9-13


For any questions, please contact the organizers or
consult our web page at
<http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/projects/gnome/esslli99.html>; 
which will shortly be available.


Rodger Kibble & Kees van Deemter
Information Technology Research Institute (ITRI) 
University of Brighton
Lewes Road, Watts Building 
Brighton BN2 4GJ
United Kingdom

Email: Rodger.Kibbleitri.brighton.ac.uk
 Kees.van.Deemteritri.brighton.ac.uk
Fax: +44 1273 642908

Dear Colleagues,

Here comes a newer version of the workshop's call for papers.

- -------------


CALL FOR PAPERS for a workshop on Constraints and/vs. preferences 
1 May 1999 during

PLM'99
32nd Poznan Linguistic Meeting
Recent developments in linguistic theory
30 April - 2 May


ISSUES & SPECIAL TOPICS:
* the nature of both constraints and preferences and their
epistemological compatibility
* scalar nature of preferences vs. absolute nature of constraints
(scalar constraints ?)
* hierarchy vs. rule order (principles of ranking)
* constraints vs. rules/processes
* predictive and explanatory power of constraints and preferences
* constraints/preferences and online processing
* learnability problem
* pro/contra parallelisms between diachronic change and
synchronic rules/processes
* phonological and phonetic constraints
* illustrations and empirical evidence for any claims concerning the
above issues

SPEAKERS who confirmed their participation so far:
Luc V. Baronian (Montreal)
Wolfgang U. Dressler (Vienna)
Jonathan Kaye (London)
Martin Prinzhorn (Vienna)
Nikolaus Ritt (Vienna)
Rajendra Singh (Montreal)

ABSTRACTS:
Please send one-page abstracts to dkasiaifa.amu.edu.pl by the
end of February 1999.

REGISTRATION:
Please register for the Poznan Linguistic Meeting if you intend to
participate (as a speaker or otherwise) in the workshop. You will
find the reply form and address in the first circular of the PLM'99
http://elex.amu.edu.pl/ifa/plm/index.html

Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk
dkasiaifa.amu.edu.pl