LINGUIST List 14.746

Thu Mar 13 2003

Calls: Intercultural Communication/Discourse Particles

Editor for this issue: Marie Klopfenstein <marielinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. biljana, 10th Conference of the Nordic Network for Intercultural Communication
2. henk.zeevat, The Meaning and Implementation of Discourse Particles

10th Conference of the Nordic Network for Intercultural Communication 

Short Title: 10th NIC Conference
Date: 20-Nov-2003 - 22-Nov-2003
Location: Goteborg, Sweden
Contact: Nataliya Berbyuk
Contact Email: natashaling.gu.se 

Meeting URL: http://www.ling.gu.se/projekt/nic/konf2003/

Linguistic Sub-field: General Linguistics

Meeting Description:

The NIC Conference aims to develop knowledge, research and
understanding for intercultural communication. The purpose of NIC is
to promote cooperation in the Nordic countries (including the Baltic
countries) between researchers and practitioners interested in
intercultural communication. The main activity supported by NIC are
the annual conferences on intercultural communication. The conferences
are open to scholars and practitioners in the whole world. NIC also
supports contacts between members of the Network via the NIC
homepages.

Call for Papers

The Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, G�teborg University
and V�rdegrunden is organizing the annual NIC Intercultural
Communication Conference at the university of Gothenburg (G�teborg)
from 20 to 22 November 2003. We welcome submissions of abstracts and
papers.

Conference themes 

The theme of this year's Conference is ''Intercultural Communication
at Work''. This theme is to be taken in the two senses, the first
being the sense of studying the actual practice of intercultural
communication and the second being the sense of studying ICC in
different professions and arenas of work. It aims to encourage
scholars and researchers from different theoretical and practical
backgrounds to discuss the current issues and prospects of
intercultural communication (ICC). Emphasis will be placed on views
that will allow for an exchange of ideas and interaction between
various practitioners and researchers of intercultural communication.

Besides the main theme ''ICC in different professions and arenas of
work'', the organizing and scientific committees invite papers that
address any of the following themes:

*	Values in multicultural society 
*	ICC and the Internet 
*	Political Rhetoric 
*	Intercultural Conflict Handling 
*	Spoken language and ICC 
*	Intercultural Business Communication 
*	Educational Aspects of ICC 
*	ICC and Nonverbal Communication 
*	ICC and Sign-Language 
*	Immigration and ICC 
*	Managing Cultural diversity 

Papers should be 20 minutes long and will be followed by 10 minutes of
discussion. The language of the Conference is English.

1st Call for Papers: Deadline: 30th of May, 2003 

Guidelines for Submission of Abstracts 

Length: one A4 page of not more than 250 words, double spacing, 3cm
(1.25 inch) margins all round, 12pt. An additional page for
data/references may be included, if needed.

Abstracts should be submitted electronically to the NIC 2003
Organizing Committee: nic2003ling.gu.se

If you do not have electronic access, you may send your abstract to: 

NIC 2003 Organizing Committee c/o Nataliya Berbyuk
G�teborg University
Department of Linguistics
Box 200
SE 405 30 G�teborg
SWEDEN
Fax: +46 (0)31 773 4853

The abstract should either be pasted into the email or should be an
attachment as an ASCII text file, Word, PS or PDF file. Please use the
subject header ''NIC 2003 Abstract: Your last name and first name
initial''. Include all author information, the title of paper, area,
the name(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s) and the address, phone
number and e-mail address of the primary author in the body of the
e-mail.

The organizing committee will consider all proposed papers and
organize the final program after all abstracts have been received.

Publication of Papers 

Papers presented at the symposium will be selected for publication in
Journal of Intercultural Communication (Jens Allwood, Editor in
Chief), after the Conference. Possibly a hardcopy volume will also be
produced. All speakers are encouraged to send 2 copies of their
presentations in hardcopy to:

Beatriz Dorriots
Department of Linguistics, G�teborg University 
Box 200, 405 30 G�teborg, Sweden 

or by e-mail to beatriceling.gu.se 

Please use the subject header ''NIC 2003 Paper: Your last name and
first name initial'' in the e-mail. Authors should follow the
Guidelines for Authors.

The Meaning and Implementation of Discourse Particles 

Short Title: Particles
Date: 18-AUG-03 - 22-AUG-03
Location: Vienna, Austria
Contact: Henk Zeevat
Contact Email: henk.zeevathum.uva.nl 

Meeting URL: http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/~stede/essllicfp.html

Linguistic Sub-field: Discourse Analysis 
Call Deadline: 04-Apr-2003

This is a session of the following conference: 15th European Summer
School in Logic, Language and Information

Meeting Description:

Discourse particles (or 'discourse markers') are an important device
for conveying structure in both spoken and written discourse - even
though there are significant differences of particle usage in the two
modes.

The workshop aims at collecting contributions to the theory and
implementation of discourse particles and similar devices (intonation,
tag questions, modal auxiliaries, etc.) with the aim of building a
common understanding of the current possibilities and of contributing
to better natural language processing and a deeper understanding of
the nature of discourse particles and their function in indicating
speech acts and discourse structure. 

Second CALL FOR PAPERS

''The Meaning and Implementation of Discourse Particles''

Workshop held as part of the
''Fifteenth European Summer School in Logic, Language and
Information''
ESSLLI-03
Vienna, Austria
August 18-22

Workshop webpage: http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/~stede/essllicfp.html

Discourse particles (or 'discourse markers') are an important device
for conveying structure in both spoken and written discourse - even
though there are significant differences of particle usage in the two
modes. From the perspective of computational linguistics, discourse
particles are both a promise and a challenge.

 * A promise because they seem to be functioning in communication
between humans as devices that indicate discourse relations and other
coherence relations in text and dialogue and so it would seem that
their treatment would help natural dialogue systems to get a better
grasp on the intentions of the user, while at the same time it would
help them to achieve more natural and comprehensible output to the
user.
 * A challenge, because their analysis is notoriously difficult
and seems to involve concepts that are beyond current levels of
sophistication in either natural language processing or in natural
language semantics.

The workshop aims at collecting contributions to the theory and
implementation of discourse particles and similar devices (intonation,
tag questions, modal auxiliaries, etc.) with the aim of building a
common understanding of the current possibilities and of contributing
to better natural language processing and a deeper understanding of
the nature of discourse particles and their function in indicating
speech acts and discourse structure. A central goal is to connect the
informal understanding of particle use with the tasks of understanding
and generating natural natural language, e.g. for use in dialogue
systems. This requires formalisation of the informal understanding,
and where formal approaches are available, the study of their
usability in practical systems.

Invited speaker: Jerry R. Hobbs (ISI, Univ. of Southern California)

During the workshop there will be paper presentations and ample time for 
discussion. We invite contributions to the following topics:

 * Semantics and pragmatics of discourse particles
 * Mechanisms by which particles help to define (specialisations
of) speech acts
 * Correspondences between particles and discourse structure,
including information structure
 * Universality: are the functions of discourse particles
language-specific or is some realisation found in each language?
 * The driving force behind the grammaticalisation processes that
create particles: universal function or perceived benefits
 * Place of knowledge about particles in language processing: does
it belong to the lexicon or to the grammar?
 * Differences in particle usage between spoken and written
language
 * (Automatic) language understanding: how do we disambiguate
particles?
 * (Automatic) language production: why do we when use which
particle -- the applicability conditions of particles
 * Spoken language processing: particular dialog phenomena
(particles signalling turn-taking, topic shifts etc)

We invite submissions of extended abstracts. They should be in
electronic form (Postscript of PDF) and not exceed 5 pages. Send your
submission prior to the deadline to either Manfred Stede or Henk
Zeevat (addresses below). Submitted abstracts will be reviewed by
members of the program committee. When accepted, authors are asked to
submit final versions of their abstracts, which will be distributed
during the workshop, as well as on this web page. The question of a
follow-up publication will be discussed at the end of the workshop.

Notice: Workshop participants must register for ESSLLI 2003. Early
registration fees apply to authors of accepted papers.

Organizers:
Manfred Stede <stedeling.uni-potsdam.de> (Computational Linguistics, 
Potsdam University)
Henk Zeevat <henkillc.uva.nl> (ILLC, University of Amsterdam)

Program Committee:
Kerstin Fischer, Univ. of Bremen
Isabel Gomes-Txurruka, ILCLI/Donostia-San Sebastian
Alex Lascarides, Univ. of Edinburgh
Daniel Marcu, ISI/Univ. of Southern California
Manfred Stede, Univ. of Potsdam
Henk Zeevat, Univ. of Amsterdam

Important Dates:
Submission due: April 4
Notification of acceptance: May 2
Final version camera-ready: May 23