LINGUIST List 11.188

Sat Jan 29 2000

Calls: Scandinavian Syntax, Writing Systems

Editor for this issue: Naomi Ogasawara <naomilinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Ute Bohnacker, Scandinavian Syntax:Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, Sweden
2. Richard Sproat, Formal Approaches to Writing Systems, Possible Workshop

		* LAST CALL FOR PAPERS *


 WORKSHOP ON COMPARATIVE SCANDINAVIAN SYNTAX

		 at the
18th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics (SCL)

	Lund University, Lund, Sweden
	 May 18th-20th, 2000


We invite submissions for 30-minute presentations
(with 10 additional minutes for discussion) on any
topic in Scandinavian syntax.
We are particularly interested presentations of new data, and in
contributions of a comparative nature, including dialectal and historical
variation.

Abstracts should not exceed two pages, including examples. Since the
organisers intend to post the abstracts on the conference website we prefer
to receive abstracts electronically.

Deadline for receipt of abstracts:
Monday, February 7th, 2000.

Abstracts should be sent to (email submissions):
gunlog.josefssonnordlund.lu.se

(hard copy submissions):
Gunl�g Josefsson
Lund University
Department of Scandinavian Languages
Helgonabacken 14
S-223 62 Lund, Sweden

FAX c/o Gunl�g Josefsson +46 46 222 4241


For further information on the 18th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics,
plenary speakers and other workshops, visit the conference website at

http://www.ling.lu.se/conference/18scl


Programme committee for the Workshop on Comparative Scandinavian Grammar:
Ute Bohnacker, Lars-Olof Delsing, Cecilia Falk, Gunl�g Josefsson, Christer
Platzack, Henrik Rosenkvist,
Dept. of Scandinavian languages, Lund University.

We are contemplating organizing a workshop on the theme of Formal and
Computational Approaches to the Study of Writing Systems. 

As readers will have noticed, there have been quite a few publications
in the last few years relating to writing systems, including such
landmark works as the Daniels and Bright collection (The World's
Writing Systems, Oxford University Press, 1996). However, the bulk of
this work has been descriptive, and in general there has been a dearth
of formal approaches to orthography and writing systems. 

Such formal approaches would include:

1) Formal or computational theories of the relation between writing
 and the linguistic form it represents.

2) Formal models of the structure of scripts.

3) The relation between such formal models and psycholinguistic
 results on reading and writing.

4) Applications of formal models of writing systems in systems that
 deal with written language (e.g., text-to-speech systems, document
 image analysis, issues related to font encoding, etc.)

A few citations to published work of the kind we have in mind are
listed in the bibliography at the end of this message.

At this stage we are merely aiming to find out if there is sufficient
interest to justify such a workshop. We would therefore like to hear
from anyone who would either (1) attend a workshop on this topic if it
were to take place; (2) submit a paper for presentation at the
workshop. Note that the intended venue for the workshop has yet to be
decided, but it would most likely be in North America, associated with
either the meeting of the North American Association for Computational
Linguistics, or the Linguistic Society of America, probably in 2001.

If you think you might interested, please send a message expressing
your interest to any of the undersigned.

Richard Sproat			AT&T Labs -- Research, Florham Park, NJ, USA
 (rwsresearch.att.com)
Gerald Penn			Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ, USA
 (gpennresearch.bell-labs.com)
George Kiraz			Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ, USA
 (gkirazresearch.bell-labs.com)
Mark-Jan Nederhof		DFKI, Saarbruecken
 (nederhofdfki.de)

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Bibliography


Aronoff, Mark. 1985. Orthography and linguistic theory. Language,
61(1):28--72.

Klima, Edward. 1972. How alphabets might reflect language. In James
Kavanagh and Ignatius Mattingly, editors, Language by Ear and by Eye:
The Relationships between Speech and Reading. MIT Press, Cambridge,
MA, pages 57--80.

Miller, D. Gary. 1994. Ancient Scripts and Phonological Knowledge.
Number 116 in Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. John Benjamins,
Amsterdam.

Nunn, Anneke. 1998. Dutch Orthography: A Systematic Investigation of
the Spelling of Dutch Words. Number 6 in LOT International
Series. Holland Academic Graphics, The Hague.

Sproat, Richard. 2000. A Computational Theory of Writing
Systems. Stanford, CA, Cambridge University Press.

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