LINGUIST List 14.1380

Wed May 14 2003

Calls: Computational Ling/Functional Ling

Editor for this issue: Karolina Owczarzak <karolinalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Raffaella.Bernardi, Questions and Answers, Netherlands
2. mussataeva, Functional Linguistics, Kazakhstan

Questions and Answers: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives 

Date: 18-Dec-2003 - 18-Dec-2003
Location: Amsterdam,, Netherlands
Contact: Raffaella Bernardi
Contact Email: Raffaella.Bernardiunibz.it 
Meeting URL: http://www-uilots.let.uu.nl/~ctl/workshops/CES03/

Linguistic Sub-field: General Linguistics 
Call Deadline: 09-Jan-2003


Meeting Description:

Co-located event: 14th Amsterdam Colloquium, 19/21 December 2003
(http://www.illc.uva.nl/AC03/)

INVITED SPEAKERS:

Jeroen Groenendijk (ILLC, University of Amsterdam)
Werner Ceusters (Language and Computing) 

BACKGROUND:

The symposium is the second of three devoted to the exploration of the
common ground between the ''Logic and Natural Language Processing''
Area of CoLogNET (Network of Excellence in Computational Logic,
http://www.colognet.org/) and ELSNET (Network of Excellence in Human
Language Technologies, http://www.elsnet.org/).

The topic of this session is 'Questions and Answers'. The symposium
will address both the logical foundations underlying these notions,
and technological implications for question answering systems.

The symposium aims at bringing together researchers interested in a
combination of theoretical and applied perspectives, and invites an
exchange of ideas between computational linguists, computer scientists
and logicians. It will feature invited talks by leading researchers
from academia and industry as well as a number of contributed talks.

SCOPE:

Human language is the only medium we have for storing and transmitting
complex information, especially propositional knowledge. Language is
also the most natural medium for solliciting information. If we want
to know something, we simply ask questions. The adequate formal
treatment of questions has long been recognized as a central challenge
for semantics.

The interpretation of questions by computer programs has been the
major problem for all attempts to make databases accessible by natural
language. Yet before simple question-answering systems could be
realized, researchers had already extended the challenge to systems
that would be able to particpate in coherent and informative
dialogues.

With the explosive growth of freely available digital information on
the WWW the need for reliable question-answering keeps increasing. A
promising new line of research concentrates on open-domain question
answering by exploiting the unstructured textual information on the
web.

Against this background, we invite papers on formalization of querying
systems for integrated structured domains (like databases,
ontologies,..) as well as for open domain sources (like web-based
documents). A (non-exclusive) list of potential areas and issues of
interest is given below.

Areas: Formal Semantics,
	Knowledge Representation,
	Discourse/Dialogue,
	Question Anwering,
	Semantic Web,
	IR -- Search Engines

Issues: 

Questions: linguistic analysis of interrogatives,
theoretical and practical approaches to question semantics,
presuppositions/implicatures in questions,
interpretation of questions in context,
query interpretation and query extension in IR,
questions that do not look like questions,
paraphrasing of questions for answer detection,
asking for cause and reason. 
Answers: comparing (possible) answers, 
evaluating (possible) answers, contextual binding of 
(possible) answers -- i.e., temporal and spatial dependencies,
quantified and conditional questions, 
with quantified and conditional answers, etc.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE:

Paper submissions must be anonymous and are limited to at most 8 pages
including references, figures etc. Only electronic submissions will
be accepted. Please email your submission -- pdf (preferred), or
postscript -- to Raffaella.Bernardiunibz.it; write ''Symposium:
Submission'' in the subject.

Each submission should also specify the author's name, affiliation,
postal address, email address and title in the body of the email
message. For more information, please contact the workshop co-chairs.

IMPORTANT DATES:

 Deadline for Submissions: 01 September 2003
 Notification of Acceptance: 15 October 2003
 Deadline for Proceedings: 15 November 2003 
 CoLogNET-ElsNET symposium: 18 December 2003
 14th Amsterdam Colloquium: 19/21 December 2003

PROGRAM COMMITTEE:

	Raffaella Bernardi (co-chair), Free University of Bolzano
	Michael Moortgat (co-chair), University of Utrecht
	Enrico Franconi, Free University of Bolzano
	Maarten de Rijke, University of Amsterdam
	Hans Uszkoreit, University of Saarland
 Bonnie Weber, University of Edinburgh

ORGANIZATION:

The CoLogNET-ElsNET symposia are organized by the ``Logic and Natural
Language Processing'' area of CoLogNET (Area 6), in collaboration with
ELSNET. CoLogNET is a three year European NoE (2002-2004) in
Computational Logic, whereas ELSNET is dedicated to human language
technologies.

For any further information visit the symposium web site:
http://www-uilots.let.uu.nl/~ctl/workshops/CES03/

or contact:

Raffaella Bernardi
Free University of Bolzano-Bozen
P.zza Domenicani 3
39100 Bolzano-Bozen, Italy
Phone: +39-0471-315 620
Fax: +39-0471-315 649
e-mail: Raffaella.Bernardiunibz.it

Functional Linguistics: Current Issues and Perspectives of Development

Short Title: Functional Linguistics

Date: 21-Oct-2003 - 23-Oct-2003
Location: Almaty, Kazakhstan
Contact: Manat Mussataeva
Contact Email: mussataevayahoo.com 

Linguistic Sub-field: General Linguistics 

Meeting Description:

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to participate in the conference on
functional linguistics - Functional Linguistics: Current Issues and
Perspectives of Development - that will take place in Almaty State
University, Almaty, Kazakhstan, on October 21-23, 2003. 

The conference will be organized around the following general topics:

-Functional and Communicative Grammar: Its Structure and Patterns
-Functional Lexicology 
-Theory of Nomination and Functional Derivation 
-Cognitive Models of the Theory of Nomination 
-Comparative Functional Linguistics 
-Issues in Lexical Semantics and Functional Syntax 
-Functional Linguistics and Related Linguistic Theories
-Cognitive and Psycholinguistic models of Language
Acquisition. Bilingualism and Multilingualism Issues
-Functional Models of Second Language Teaching 

Abstracts may be presented in one of the following languages: Kazakh,
Russian or English. Presentations will last 20 minutes with 15 minutes
for discussion and questions.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is September 10,
2003. Abstracts (no longer than 6 pages) should be written in Times
New Romans (14-point font, 2.5 cm/1 inch margins) and provide the
following information:

-Title of proposed paper
-Name(s) of author(s)
-Author (s) affiliation(s)

We strongly encourage electronic submission in MS-WORD-7.0 or RTF
format. Email abstracts should be sent at mussataevayahoo.com. Hard
versions may be sent to the conference committee at Almaty State
University, Department of Philology, 13 Dostyk, Almaty, 480100,
Republic of Kazakhstan.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us. We
are looking forward to hearing from you! 

Sincerely,


Manat Mussataeva
Professor of Linguistics
Chair of the Department of Philology
Almaty State University
Email:mussataevayahoo.com 
Phone: 7-(3272)-476-037