LINGUIST List 13.1612

Thu Jun 6 2002

Calls: Ling Encyclopedia, Semantics-Pragmatics

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Siobhan Chapman, Linguistics and Philosophy Encyclopedia
2. Ralf Klabunde, Utterance meanings at the semantics-pragmatics interface

 
The editors of a new single-volume reference work entitled 'Key
Thinkers in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language', to be
published by Edinburgh University Press, are looking for
contributors. There will be 80 entries in total, and the editors are
looking for contributors able to write a few entries by the deadline
of 30th June 2003.

Edinburgh University Press are offering one copy of the book on
publication to contributors who do 2-3 entries, and two copies to
those who do more than 3. They are asking that, as far as possible,
contributors offer entries of differing word lengths (there are three
different categories: 500 words, 1500 words and 3000 words). There are
fairly detailed guidelines about the format of entries which will be
sent out direct from the publishers with the contracts.

The editors for this project are Siobhan Chapman and Christopher
Routledge. We would be grateful if anyone interested in being a
contributor could contact us on the editorial address:
srcroutntlworld.com, or alternatively on Siobhan's university
address: srcliverpool.ac.uk. We will then send you a current list of
those entries which are still unallocated.

Thanks,
Siobhan Chapman

Dr Siobhan Chapman
Lecturer in English Language
Department of English Language and Literature
University of Liverpool
Liverpool L69 7ZR

 Call for Papers

 Workshop


 Utterance meanings at the semantics-pragmatics interface at the
25th annual meeting of the German Linguistics Society (Deutsche
Gesellschaft fuer Sprachwissenschaft) in Munich from 26.2. to
28.2.2003

Organizers:
Markus Egg
Universitaet des Saarlandes/ Universitaet Leipzig
eggcoli.uni-sb.de

Ralf Klabunde
Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum
Department of Linguistics
klabundelinguistics.ruhr-uni-bochum.de


The aim of the workshop is to investigate the way semantics interacts
with pragmatic knowledge in concrete contexts to determine
fully-fledged utterance meanings. This is of interest for theoretical
linguistics and natural language processing (NLP; understanding as
well as generation).

Recent developments in semantics and pragmatics allow a precise
analysis of the way in which the semantic and the pragmatic subsystem
of the language faculty contribute to the constitution of utterance
meaning. E.g., numerous underspecification formalisms have been
proposed for the precise encoding of semantic knowledge (and its
delimitation, especially in the case of ambiguity), and pragmatic
principles have been encoded in terms of Optimality Theory.

NLP applications must go beyond semantics to achieve coherence in
dialogues, especially, for elliptic and fragmentary utterances that
are frequent in spoken language. For NL understanding, the
information that can be gained by a purely linguistic analysis does
not suffice here. The partial or underspecified semantic
representations for these utterances need augmentation by
pragmatically motivated inferences that draw on contextual and world
knowledge. For NL generation, the boundary between semantics and
pragmatics is crucial to obtain naturally sounding utterances. For
example, one must identify that part of the information that can be
left unsaid, since it follows from general pragmatic principles.

Topics of the workshop include, but are not limited to:

- different approaches to the reconstruction and generation of
utterance meanings by combining pragmatic principles with semantic
knowledge

- approaches to pragmatics and semantics that contribute to a deeper
understanding of their interaction in the constitution of meaning -
analysis and production of semantically underdetermined utterances
(e.g., meto-nymical, elliptical, or fragmentary utterances)

A more detailed description of the workshop can be found at
http://www.linguistics.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/dgfs-2003


We invite abstracts for a 30 minute presentation on the aforementioned
topics and every other interesting issue in the domain of the
semantics-pragmatics interface. Abstracts should not exceed one page
(max. of 400 words) and should be sent electronically in one of the
common formats (pdf, PostScript, html etc.).

Please send your abstract to one of the organizers until July 31,
2002. Notification of acceptance is August 31. The program will be
announced on September 15.


Important dates:
deadline: July 31
notification of acceptance: August 31
program announcement: September 15
workshop: 26.-28.2. 2003