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chibcha.demon.co.uk>Endangered Languages and Education ---------------------------------------- Maynooth, Ireland - 17-19 September 1999 CALL FOR PAPERS The workshop will provide a forum for researchers and activists working for the maintenance of indigenous languages that face an uncertain future. (It is the third in a series of annual workshops and conferences hosted by the Foundation for Endangered Languages.) CONFERENCE SCOPE AND AIMS When a language is endangered, it is because the community who use it may cease to do so the foreseeable future. This is often because new generations of the community are not acquiring the language, or if they do, are not using it so much as speakers in the past. Education, seen as any formal process whereby knowledge is passed on to new people, usually plays an important part in such changes. But it may act to promote, resist or even reverse the loss of a language: the knowledge or values passed on may be difficult to combine with a communitys traditions as expressed in its ancestral language; the transition from oral to literate culture, or from paper-based to electronic media, may threaten a breakdown in transmission; the very procedure of formal education may disrupt the traditional transmission of the language; there may be controversy on what language should be used in formal education; there may be doubt whether there is scope in later life to apply what is taught; there may be perplexity on what methods may best be used in modern circumstances to transmit knowledge from older days; members of the community may have difficulty in fitting into the education system of the state as a whole, and hence find it hard to achieve their rightful political influence; public ignorance in democracies may be a threat to benign national policy towards their smaller languages. All these issues, and more, are relevant to our conference this year. One fundamental tension is that while organized education may be a threat to traditional culture and language (bringing foreign elements to the explicit attention of pupils), people once educated are more likely to resist unwanted intrusions from outsiders, and build confidence in their own traditions. So how can education programmes be formulated with clear reference to, and respect for, local culture? Who will be the teachers in such programmes, and how can they be trained? In setting up such programmes, is there a useful role for international organizations (as FEL) to help in negotations with local administrations or national governments, and indeed international programmes? In some communities, particularly in Europe, there is no such conflict between prevailing models of education and the traditions of the language community. Nevertheless, there may be controversy on the role of a local or regional language in formal education. Ethically and empirically, what is the right balance between option and compulsion in the curriculum? How does the role for minority languages bear on the balance between mother-tongue and foreign-language instruction? It will be a particular feature of our conference to bring the concerns of "ethno-education", where education mediates between cultures that have been separate, into contrast with those of "bi-lingual education", where there has been traditional co-existence, but the smaller language may be losing out. The Foundation for Endangered Languages is a registered charity in England Wales. FEL conferences, besides being opportunities to discuss the issues from a global viewpoint, are working meetings of the Foundation, defining our overall policy for future years. Participants at the conference therefore need to be members of the Foundation. There are full facilities to join on arrival, but all proposers are strongly urged to join as soon as possible, and so take full part in the Foundations activities in the lead-up to the conference. The dates will be 17-19 September 1999, and the venue St Patrick's College, Maynooth, near Dublin, in Ireland. There will be a preliminary volume of proceedings distributed at the Conference. Presentations will last twenty minutes each, with a further ten minutes for discussion. All presentations should be accessible largely in English, but use of the languages of interest, for quotation or exemplification, may well be appropriate. Organizers: Nicholas Ostler Foundation for Endangered Languages, Bath, England Christopher Moseley BBC Monitoring Service Kim McCone et al. St Patrick's College, Maynooth Programme Committee: Mahendra Verma, Anthony Woodbury, Tasaku Tsunoda, Janig Stephens, Jane Simpson, Mari Rhydwen, Jon Reyhner, Nicholas Ostler, Donncha O Croinin, David Nash, Christopher Moseley, Kenneth Mackinnon, Tony McEnery, Kim McCone, Karen Johnson Weiner, Nigel Birch. ABSTRACT SUBMISSION Abstracts should not exceed 500 words. They can be submitted in one of two ways: hard copy or electronic submission. They should be in English. A) Hard copies (or faxes): One copy should be sent to: Nicholas Ostler Foundation for Endangered Languages Batheaston Villa, 172 Bailbrook Lane Bath BA1 7AA England This should have a clear short title, but should not bear anything to identify the author(s). On a separate sheet, please include the following information: NAME : Names of the author(s) TITLE: Title of the paper EMAIL: Email address of the first author, if any ADDR: Postal address of the first author TEL: Telephone number of the first author, if any FAX: Fax number of the first author, if any The name of the first author will be used in all correspondence. If possible, please also send an e-mail to Nicholas Ostler at <nostlerMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
irit.fr>************************************************************************* CALL for PAPERS WORKSHOP on "THEORETICAL BASES FOR SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS IN NLP : The expression of time, space and movement in lexicon, discourse and dialogue" in conjunction with the TALN'99 conference on Natural Language Processing Institut d'Etudes Scientifiques de Cargese (Corsica) 12-16 July 1999 ************************************************************************* (french version below) TOPICS This workshop aims at presenting and discussing current theoretic approaches to semantics and pragmatics stemming from the formal semantics tradition. In order to prompt in-depth discussions between participants, the debate will focus on the analysis of time, space and motion in language. Besides their general importance, it is expected that these topics reveal how tightly grammatical semantics, lexical semantics, discourse semantics and discourse and dialogue pragmatics are intertwined. Papers discussing the role of semantics and pragmatics in NLP and the significance of the formal approaches presented as theoretical bases for NLP in the future are especially welcome. The workshop will deal, amongst others, with the following topics: - semantics and pragmatics of discourse and dialogue - anaphora (cross sentential and cross speakers) - beliefs and intentions - discourse and dialogue structure (especially spatiotemporal structure) - lexicon of space and time - world knowledge and bridging - ontology of time and space for lexicon and world knowledge THE WORKSHOP The workshop will be held during the TALN'99 conference at Cargese in Corsica. It will consist of four 1h30 sessions over four days (July 12th, 13th, 15th and 16th). There will be 2 invited lectures and about 10 talks of 30 minutes (including discussion) selected by the program committee. Proceedings will be available at the workshop. ORGANIZERS & CONTACT PERSONS Myriam BRAS (IRIT-Universit Paul Sabatier, Toulouse) Laure VIEU (IRIT-CNRS, Toulouse) email : brasMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue