LINGUIST List 5.145

Tue 08 Feb 1994

Calls: SEALS IV, Part-Whole Relations

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1. martha ratliff, SEALS IV Call for Papers
2. Laure Vieu, Conceptual Part-Whole Relations

The Fourth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society will
be held May 23-27 1994 at Ramkhamhaeng University, Bangkok (May 23-25) and at
Payap University, Chiangmai (May 26-27).

Abstracts are solicited on any topic relating to the linguistic analysis of
Southeast Asian languages. Abstracts should be received by February 15, 1994
and should be typed and camera ready. Each should contain a heading with the
full name of the author(s), complete address, title, and one page summary of
topic, approach, and major conclusions.

Please send 3 copies of your abstract to:

Dr. Udom Warotamasikkhadit
Department of English and Linguistics
Faculty of Humanities
Ramkhamhaeng University
Hua Mak, Bangkok 10240
Thailand
Tel (662) 318-0054-5
Fax (662) 318-0904

Since this posting to Linguist is very close to the abstract deadline, it
is advisable to Fax one copy of your abstract to Dr. Udom before the 15th.

Manuscripts should be completed by March 20, 1994 if you would like your
paper to be reproduced. The format should follow the LSA style sheet. Manu-
scripts should also be sent to the address above.

Registration is $60 US. Accommodations are being arranged at the Bangkok
Royal Rose Hotel (Bangkok) and the Providence Hotel (Chiangmai) for approxi-
mately $24/night either single or double room. A deposit of $50 US is required
to reserve rooms at these special rates in the two hotels. Reasonably priced
bus, train, or air service between the two cities can be arranged upon request.

Payment must be by international money order or bank draft to Dr. Udom
Warotamasikkhadit, Chairman of SEALS IV.

Please address all questions concerning the meeting directly to Dr. Udom
rather than to the Linguist subscriber issuing this Call for Papers.

 CALL FOR WORKSHOP PARTICIPATION

 PARTS AND WHOLES:
 CONCEPTUAL PART-WHOLE RELATIONS AND FORMAL MEREOLOGY

 Monday, August 8, 1994
 Amsterdam, The Netherlands

 Held in conjunction with
 ECAI-94
 (11th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence)

 Currently, there are two main approaches to the study of "parts" and
their relations. The conceptual (cognitive) approach looks at the variety
of part-whole relations and their role in language processing, perception,
and action planning; the philosophical/logical approach, on the other hand,
looks at formal theories of parts, wholes and related concepts in the
framework of formal ontology.

 There are important differences between the two views. Philosophical
systems tend to focus on a single "part-*of*" relation used for modeling
ontological domains like time, space, or pluralities; conceptual approaches
tend to assume a whole family of different "part-*whole*" relations for a
variety of entities and tasks. Classical logical theories such as Lesniewski's
or Goodman's privileged extensional aspects of the part-wholerelation, while
for conceptual approaches and intensional formal mereology the old proverb
holds that a whole is more than its parts.

 While disciplines such as linguistics, philosophy and psychology have
contributed significantly to the research in this field, their impact on
artificial intelligence is extremely limited, although AI could represent
the ideal workbench for a unification of approaches dominant in different
fields. Knowledge about parts is of great importance for a wide variety of AI
domains, like vision, qualitative and naive physics, robotics, and natural
language processing. For example, the structure of an object can be used
for visual recognition, for reasoning about the functionality of the whole,
or for planning its assembly.

 The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers from these
various disciplines in order to explore

 (i) the benefits and limits of formal mereology in modeling commonsense
 part-whole relations;
 (ii) the import for knowledge representation formalisms of the two
 current approaches to the study of "parts" and their relations;
 (iii) the possibility of a unified theory of parts and wholes.

 The workshop topics will include the following:

 - Classical extensional mereology: uses, extensions and adaptations;
 comparison with alternatives to mereology: set theory and lattices.
 - Intensional mereology: essence, dependence, and integrity; individual
 properties as parts.
 - Conceptual distinctions among wholes: masses, collections, complexes;
 natural entities and artifacts; sums and scattered individuals.
 - Parts and structure: physical connection, spatial, temporal, functional
 and other constraints among parts; Gestalt theories and perceptual parts;
 granularity issues.
 - Parts, space and time: relationships between mereology, topology,
 geometry; boundaries and surfaces; relationships between parts of physical
 objects (continuants) and parts of events (occurrents).
 - Parts and natural language: parts, part-names and possessive constructions;
 plurals and mass terms.
 - Reasoning about parts: transitivity, upper and downward inheritance of
 properties.
 - Dealing with parts within existing KR formalisms: distinguishing parts
 from other attributes, computational issues of reasoning about parts.

Two possible kinds of contributions are solicited from interested participants:

 (a) regular papers of 10 pages max, presenting on-going research;
 (b) position papers of 3 pages max, motivating the interest in the field
 and explaining particular points of view.

A limited number of regular papers will be chosen for an oral presentation
at the workshop, while suitable space will be devoted to discussions based
on contributions from participants (rejected regular papers are
automatically treated as position papers). Participation will be limited to
around 35 people.

Preference will be given in the workshop schedule to contributions
underlining the impact of mereological issues on AI practice, especially
on: knowledge representation, natural language processing, qualitative and
naive physics, spatial and temporal reasoning, vision, and robotics.

Submission of papers, regular and position, to any member of the workshop
organizing committee is due by April 15 1994. Hard copy (4 copies) and
electronic submissions (either PostScript, LaTex or MacWord converted in BinHex
format) are equally acceptable, with a strong preference for the latter.
All submissions should include an exact address and an e-mail address.

TIMETABLE:
Paper submission deadline: April 15, 1994
Notification: May 20, 1994
Final version due: June 6, 1994
Workshop: August 8, 1994

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Participants will be requested to register for the main
ECAI conference.

 Organizing committee:

Nicola Guarino
 LADSEB-CNR
 Corso Stati Uniti 4, I-35020 Padova
 tel: +39 49 8295751, fax: +39 49 8295778
 email: guarinoladseb.pd.cnr.it

Simone Pribbenow
 University of Hamburg, Computer Science Department,
 Bodenstedtstr. 16, D-22765 Hamburg
 tel: +49 40 4123-6111, fax: +49 40 4123-6159
 email: pribbenoinformatik.uni-hamburg.de

Laure Vieu
 Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse, UPS,
 118 route de Narbonne, F-31326 Toulouse
 tel: +33 61556091, fax: +33 61558325
 email: vieuirit.fr