LINGUIST List 10.188

Mon Feb 8 1999

Calls: Languages in Contact, Artificial Intelligence

Editor for this issue: Jody Huellmantel <jodylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. D.G. Gilbers, Languages in Contact
2. Gaetano Aurelio Lanzarone, THAI-ETIS

Conference on Languages in Contact

Groningen University
November 25-26, 1999

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

A conference on languages in contact will be held on November 
25-26, 1999, at the University of Groningen. This conference will 
include sessions devoted to descriptive and theoretical aspects of 
language contact. 

The aim of this conference is to discuss language contact. Issues for
discussion involve pidgins and creoles, minorities and their
languages, Diaspora situations, 'Sprachbund' phenomena,
extralinguistic correlates of variety in contact situations, problems
of endangered languages and the typology of these languages.

We particularly welcome reports on contact phenomena between 
languages in Russia, their survival and the influence of Russian. 
This includes Yiddish and Mennonite dialects of Low-German. There 
will be a special session devoted to this topic: languages in contact 
with Russian.

The conference will be held on the occasion of the degree of honorary 
doctor in St Petersburg of Dr Tjeerd de Graaf.

We welcome contributions for 30-minute presentations (including 10 
minutes of discussion). 


Keynote speakers, in alphabetical order:

Liya Bondarko (University of St Petersburg)
Bernard Comrie (Max Planck Institute Leipzig)
Evgenij Golovko (Russian Academy of Sciences)
Pieter Muysken (University of Leiden)
Sally Thomason (University of Pittsburg)

Abstracts should be restricted to two pages, including examples and 
references. Two copies of abstracts should be submitted, one 
anonymous, and one mentioning the author's name, affiliation, postal 
address and e-mail address. The deadline for submission of abstracts: 
April 1, 1999.

Abstracts should be sent to:


The organizing committee 
John Nerbonne, Jos Schaeken, Dicky Gilbers
Department of Linguistics
University of Groningen
Oude Kijk in `t Jatstraat 26
9712 EK Groningen
The Netherlands

Information:

e-mail: nerbonnelet.rug.nl, schaekenlet.rug.nl, gilberslet.rug.nl
fax: +31-50-3636855


======================================================================
Dicky Gilbers
http://www.let.rug.nl/~gilbers/
e-mail: gilberslet.rug.nl

Faculty of Arts
Department of Linguistics
P.O. Box 716
9700 AS Groningen
The Netherlands

tel.: +31 50 363 59 83
fax: +31 50 363 49 00
======================================================================

Call for papers

THAI-ETIS

European Symposium on Telematics, Hypermedia and Artificial Intelligence
in education and training for the new professions in the Information
Society

Varese, Italy, June 21-22 1999

This two-day Symposium is organised jointly by the Universita' degli
Studi dell'Insubria at Varese and the European Consortium of the
THAIland project (Telematics, Hypermedia and Artificial Intelligence).
Members of the Consortium are the Universities appearing as affiliations
of the program committee members listed below. The THAIland project is
concerned with preparing a Master-level curriculum that focuses on the
artist-engineer of the future, from either a technical/information
systems or media background, developing specialists who will make a
valid contribution to the growing telematics "content" sector.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of the Symposium is to bring together experts from different
areas of computer science, artificial intelligence and other
disciplines, both from the academic environment and from public/private
enterprise, who have a common interest in exploring the new employment
opportunities that arise from the recent trends in ICT: the
interdisciplinary professions combining creative and technological
capabilities in producing content material for the Information Society
and the type of education and training needed to qualify for these
innovative positions.

CONTRIBUTIONS REQUIRED

The contributions requested describe proposals, projects and experience
underway, within educational institutions and research centres as well
as in public and private enterprise, in defining, implementing and
experimenting content and education for the new multimedial professions
of the Information Society.

Contributions are expected that emphasise one or more of the following
aspects:

- the innovative aspects of the pedagogical, methodological and content
provision approach;
- the interdisciplinary character of the combination of technological
and creative aspects;
- the technological aspects that support the educational proposal;
- the context (regional, national or transnational) of the educational
proposal;
- the relationship between the educational institution and the
productive environment;
- the advantages and the business opportunities provided to enterprises
by the new professional profiles;
- the relationship between residential education and open and distance
learning;
- the use by enterprises of the new educational means in the process of
continuously updating their employees' professional capacities;
- the contributions made by these innovative educational means to
keeping the individual citizens in pace with the evolution of society
through a lifelong learning process.

The requested contributions concern the opportunities for cultural,
professional and occupational development, and the competitive
advantage, offered by information and communication technologies, with
respect to the preparation of content. A non-exhaustive and open list of
main sectors of activity follows.

MAIN SECTORS

- creation and diffusion of electronic publishing (multimedia CD's,
on-line newspapers and magazines, ...), digital and virtual libraries;
- development of Internet information services (municipal networks,
telematic squares, virtual cities, value added services like brokering
and information collection/interpretation through intelligent agents,
multimedia information retrieval, electronic commerce, );
- virtual education (no longer distance learning but learning "without
distances"!); virtual classrooms and virtual campuses;
- arts and entertainment (design and maintenance of virtual worlds,
electronic art, virtual performances, ).

PROGRAM COMMITTEE:

Chris Hutchison, Kingston University (U.K.) (Co-Chairman)
Gaetano Aurelio Lanzarone, University of Insubria at Varese (Italy)
(Co-Chairman)

Phillip Burrel, Southbank University (U.K.)
Ulises Cortes, Technical University of Catalonia (Spain)
Matti Hamalainen, Espoo-Vantaa Institute of Technology (Finland)
Daniele Herin, University of Montpellier II (France)
Veli-Pekka Liflander, Espoo-Vantaa Institute of Technology (Finland)
Daniele Marini, University of Milan (Italy)
Wolf Paprotte', Munster University (Germany)
Ramon Sanguesa, Technical University of Catalonia (Spain)
Christian Wolf, University of Leipzig (Germany)

SUBMISSION OF PAPERS

Send either a full paper (of max. 16 double spaced pages) or a short
paper (of max. 8 double spaced pages) to one of the Program Committee
co-chairs. Electronic mail submission in self contained Postscript
format is encouraged. Alternatively one hard copy may be submitted by
post (contact one co-chair first). The paper must be must be written in
English, must be original and not submitted or accepted by any
conference or journal.. The submitted papers will be reviewed by at
least two members of the program committee. The acceptance will be based
on originality of work, on the relevance of the topic for the Symposium
and on the overall quality.

DEADLINES

- by 20 February: submit the paper;
- by 20 March: acceptance response;
- by 20 April: send the final camera-ready paper.

PROCEEDINGS

The accepted (both full and short) papers will be included in the
pre-prints, distributed at the Symposium. The papers actually presented
at the Symposium will be published, possibly in a version revised after
the Symposium, in a collective book by an international publisher.

SYMPOSIUM VENUE

The Symposium will be held in the city of Varese in northern Italy,
which can be reached in 30 minutes from the new Milan airport, Malpensa
2000. A historic city founded by the Gauls, Varese is known as the
"Garden City" because of the many villas and parks distributed
throughout its territory, spread out along the foothills of the Alps and
in the midst of many lakes. Important also from the artistic-cultural
point of view, the area offers the typical Lombard architecture, castles
with frescoes, Renaissance villas and many 18th century palaces with
splendid gardens in the Italian style of the period. Consult the
Internet for the site of the Varese province to navigate in four
languages through this interesting area: http://www.provincia.va.it even
before coming to the Symposium.

Related events and preliminary arrangements

During the two days of the symposium, time will be allocated for
discussion. Two invited speakers are planned. A related exhibition will
take place in the same site on projects, products and demonstrations on
all the topics covered by the symposium. Authors wishing to show a
demonstration are requested to submit (in the same way as for the paper)
a 200 word abstract describing the application.

Contact addresses:

Gaetano Aurelio Lanzarone:
lanzaronmercurio.sm.dsi.unimi.it

Chris Hutchison:
Hutchisonfnmail.com