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research.bell-labs.com>Call for Tutorial Proposals The ACL'99 (Association for Computational Linguistics, 1999) Program Committee invites proposals for the Tutorial Program for ACL '99, to be held at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA, June 20--26, 1999. The tutorials for ACL '99 will be held on June 20th. Each tutorial should be well-focused so that its core content can be covered in a three hour tutorial slot (including a 30 minute break). In exceptional cases, 6-hour tutorial slots are possible as well. There will be space and time for at most four three-hour tutorials. Submission Details Proposals for tutorials should contain: * A title and brief (< 500 word) content description of the tutorial topic. * The names, postal addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of the tutorial speakers, with one-paragraph statement of the speaker's(s') research interests and areas of expertise. * Any special requirements for technical needs (computer infrastructure, etc.) Proposals should be submitted by electronic mail, in plain ASCII (iso8859-1) text as soon as possible, but no later than December 18th, 1998. The subject line should be: "ACL 99 TUTORIAL PROPOSAL". Please Note: Proposals will not be accepted by regular mail or fax. Please submit your proposals and any inquiries to: Richard Sproat, ACL '99 Tutorials Chair Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies 600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, NJ 07974 USA rwsMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
kub.nl>**CALL FOR PAPERS** WORKSHOP ON SEMI-LEXICAL HEADS Tilburg University, Thursday 20 May and Friday 21 May 1999 Invited Speakers: Joseph Emonds (University of Durham) Hubert Haider (University of Salzburg) Elisabeth Loebel (University of Cologne) SEMI-LEXICAL HEADS The distinction between lexical/major categories, on the one hand, and functional/minor/grammatical categories, on the other, is at the heart of present-day grammatical theory, but plays an equally central role in theories on language acquisition, code switching, aphasia, etcetera. In the course of time, various diagnostic criteria have been proposed which distinguish the one class from the other: e.g. productivity, distribution, lack versus presence of semantic content. Although for certain clear-cut cases (e.g. the distinction between Noun and Determiner), this distinction is quite straightforward, there are many lexical items for which it is less easy to decide whether they side with the lexical categories or with the functional ones. The category P is a well-known case of uncertainty. Although it seems less functional in a sense than a determiner, it is more "grammatical" than N, V and A. Some people have argued that a distinction should be made within the class of prepositions between the lexical ones and the grammatical or functional ones (cf. Van Riemsdijk 1990; Zwarts 1992) This gradualness on the lexical-functional "scale" is characteristic of other categories as well and is reminiscent of Ross's (1972; 1973) notion of squish, which refers to degrees of nouniness (or verbiness) of syntactic categories. Emonds (1985) speaks bout grammatical nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions, and also refers to them as disguised lexical categories. Another appropriate term would be SEMI-LEXICAL heads, i.e. heads which are hybrid in the sense that they display both lexical and functional/grammatical characteristics. What kinds of lexical items might possibly be considered semi-lexical? For the nominal domain, Emonds (1985) refers to such items as the pro-form "one" in "the good ones", reflexive "self" (cf. "selves"), and "thing" as it occurs in "something good". Classifiers and quantity-designating nominals in pseudopartitive constructions like "three grains of sand" might be considered semi-lexical as well. Within the verbal domain, semi-lexical candidates might arguably be: auxiliary verbs (see Emonds 85 for this claim), certain verbs featuring in verb clusters in Germanic Verb Raising constructions, verbs in serialization constructions, etcetera. Within the adjectival domain, one might take such quantifiers as "many", "few", "much" as instances of semi-lexical adjectives. The above is just a brief sketch of potential semi-lexical heads. Presumably, there are many more. Here are some of the more concrete questions that might arise in the study of semi-lexical heads: v What types of semi-lexical nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions can be distinguished? What distinguishes them from truly lexical categories and in what sense are they different from truly grammatical functors? Is this distinction expressed in terms of their lexical feature-composition, and if so, what features are involved? What is their assembling property; i.e. how do they combine in syntactic structure and how do they project syntactically? Are they involved in idiosyncratic displacement phenomenona, and if so, what feature of the semi-lexical head triggers this? What is the licensing function of semi-lexical heads? What makes them interpretable at the interface levels? Also from a diachronic point of view, the question arises how lexical heads develop gradually into semi-lexical ones. Is there cross-linguistic variation in the range of semi-lexical heads and if so, what does this variation reside in? Besides the question of how semi-lexical heads behave in the syntactic component, questions arise about their behavior in other components: Are there morphological processes characteristic of semi-lexical heads? As concerns the lexicon, the question arises how they are stored in the lexicon and what distinguishes their lexical entry from that of truly lexical categories. ABSTRACTS: Abstracts are invited for 30 minutes talks (with an additional ten minutes for discussion). Abstracts should be anonymous, and should be no longer than two pages, including references and examples, with margins of at least 1-inch, font size 11/12. Submissions are limited to a maximum of one individual and one joint abstract per author. Please provide 5 anonymous abstracts and one camera-ready original containing title,author's name and affiliation. Submissions by e-mail or fax can be accepted, provided a camera-ready original is received within one week after the deadline. A separate card should contain the title of the paper, author's name, affiliation, address, telephone number and e-mail address. We have the intention to publish (a selection of) the papers. We expect to be able to partially reimburse you for travel and/or vhotel expenses, but precise figures are not available as yet. *********** Deadline for receipt of abstracts: Monday 1 February, 1999. Abstracts should be sent to the following address: Norbert Corver Grammar Models Group Department of Linguistics Tilburg University P.O.Box 90153 5000 LE Tilburg The Netherlands Phone: +31 13 4662773 E-mail: secretariaat.gm.fdlMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue