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upc.es>Dear colleagues, We are happy to inform you of the forthcoming 6th International Conference on Languages for Specific Purposes, organized by the English Division of Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC). The conference will be held at UPC-Vilanova i la Geltri (Barcelona, Spain) from 30th January to 1st February 2003. The theme of the conference is "The Role of Information Technology in LSP Research and Pedagogy". Our aim is to gather as many specialists and researchers in LSP as possible in order to discuss current views, make contributions to the field, and open new debates about the role of information technology in LSP research and teaching. Participants are encouraged to present empirical or theoretical studies, as well as practical applications directly related to the theme of the conference. Plenary speakers include: Deborah Healey (Oregon State University), Mike Scott (University of Liverpool), T.F. Johns (University of Birmingham), and John Swales (University of Michigan). Paper proposals consisting of a title, a 200-word abstract, and a 500-word summary should be submitted by 15th July 2002. Speakers will be allowed 25 minutes for their oral presentations and 10 minutes for discussion. Although the official language of the conference is English, papers can be submitted in another language (Spanish, Catalan, and French). All proposals will be reviewed by a scientific committee who will send a reasoned report on the relevance and quality of the proposal. After the conference, selected papers will be published. For more information about the conference and submissions, please contact Antonia Soler at the following address: solerMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
cis.uni-muenchen.de>Call for Papers WORKSHOP "ONTOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND LINGUISTIC CODING" Munich, February 26-28, 2003 at the 25th annual meeting of the German Linguistics Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Sprachwissenschaft) The relation between nonlinguistic knowledge and linguistic competence is still a most controversially discussed issue. This workshop will focus on a less often addressed aspect of this domain: Given that every notion or concept of the human cognitive system that is amenable to linguistic coding can be assigned a position in the ontological hierarchies we have analytical knowledge of, what is the relation between this systematic position and the structure of the linguistic signs that encode it? Whereas phonetic realisations are largely arbitrary, this does obviously not hold for semiotic complexity. Cutting up the sign inventory of a language according to an `expense' or `weight' hierarchy (roughly grammatical morpheme < lexical root < derived stem < composed stem < phrase), it seems that the encoded concepts tend to build a corresponding hierarchy of basicness or elementarity: Grammatical morphemes preferably encode very elementary categories, whereas concepts which require at least a phrase to be encoded are in general highly derived. The factual conditions are, of course, highly complex, one reason being the combinatorial possibilities of the encoding means. Accordingly, the governing principles are as yet known only in rough outline. Existing findings need to be worked out, cf. Giv�n's (1990) `Less predictable information will be given more coding material', the preference for root-encoding of basic-level categories (Rosch 1978), or what could be called Talmy's (2000) law, which states that roots of motion verbs tend to co-encode, alongside with the superconcept of motion itself, exactly one additional factor such as path, manner, figure etc. Universal preferences are equally interesting as typological differences and among the corresponding cross-linguistic investigations, cross-modal studies comparing sound and sign languages are especially revealing and welcome. A focal point will be on eventity ontologies, in particular those for motion eventities and communicative acts. As these complex themes suggest an interdisciplinary approach, not only linguists are hereby addressed, but also computer scientists, psychologists and philosophers. REFERENCES: Giv�n, Talmy (1990): Syntax. vol II. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins. Talmy, Leonard (2000): Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Vol.1: Concept Structuring Systems. Cambridge, MA, London: MIT Press. Chapter 1: Lexicalization Patterns, 21-146. Rosch, Eleanor (1978): Principles of Categorization. In: Rosch, Eleanor/ Barbara B. Lloyd (eds.) Cognition and Categorization, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 27-48. A more detailed description of the workshop can be found at http://www.cis.uni-muenchen.de/~andrea/DGfS2003/ Invited speakers: - --------- Leonard Talmy N.N. We invite abstracts for a 30 minute presentation (including discussion). Abstracts should not exceed one page (including references) and should be sent electronically in one of the common formats (preferably ASCII) to andreaMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue