LINGUIST List 15.478

Thu Feb 5 2004

Calls: Semantics/UK; Computational Ling/Portugal

Editor for this issue: Andrea Berez <andrealinguistlist.org>

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  • gt3, Strategies of Quantification
  • Alessandro Oltramari, OntoLex2004 - Deadline extension

    Message 1: Strategies of Quantification

     Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 13:28:41 -0500 (EST)
    From: gt3 <gt3york.ac.uk>
    Subject: Strategies of Quantification


    Strategies of Quantification

    Date: 15-Jul-2004 - 17-Jul-2004 Location: York, United Kingdom Contact: George Tsoulas Contact Email: lang29york.ac.uk Meeting URL: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang29/events/conf/soq.html

    Linguistic Sub-field: Semantics ,Syntax

    Call Deadline: 15-Mar-2004

    Meeting Description:

    This conference aims to bring together researchers in the syntax and semantics of quantification and related fields with a special focus on the issues arising from the crosslinguistic study of quantifiers and quantification and their repercussions on the formal analysis of quantification. The conference is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board, as part of the project ''Strategies of Quantification'' CORRECTION TO PREVIOUS ANNOUNCEMENT

    Invited Speakers

    K. A. Jayaseelan (CIEFL, Hyderabad) Edward L. Keenan (UCLA) Angelika Kratzer (UMass, Amherst) Lisa Matthewson (University of British Columbia) Mark Steedman (University of Edinburgh) Akira Watanabe (University of Tokyo)

    Call for Papers

    Natural languages employ various strategies for the expression of quantificational notions. Ever since the publication of Bach et al. (eds)(1997) the crosslinguistic study of quantification has become a central topic of investigation. The extent to which the different strategies employed by various natural languages represent distinct possibilities or, rather, they are special cases of a general strategy, is a matter of controversy. For instance, determiner quantifiers heading their own projections, forming elements which can be analysed as generalised quantifiers, are used in manyIndo-European languages. On the other hand, languages such as Japanese, Korean, Malayalam, use wh-words (indeterminate pronouns) with suffixes denoting a.o. disjunction or conjunction. This latter strategy extends to A-quantifiers and covers quantifier, or quantifier-like meanings like polarity, free choice, arbitrariness and so on, though the finer distinctions within this domain are not so clear.

    >From a different perspective, the standard assumption that natural language quantifiers are invariably or primarily of type <<e,t>,t> has also recently been challenged. The questions to be addressed in this conference include, but are not limited to the following:

    - The semantics of indeterminates and the quantifiers based on them - The fine structure of polarity, free choice and arbitrariness - Types of quantificational force and how they are related - Quantification and the syntax-semantics interface - Comparative approaches to quantification - Formal issues in the theory of quantifiers (and how they relate to the crosslinguistic study of quantification)

    Submission procedure

    We invite papers from all theoretical perspectives. Abstracts for 45mn talks (including discussion) should not exceed 2 pages, using a font no smaller than 11pt and with at least 1in margins on all sides. Electronic submission is very highly encouraged. Send your abstract as an attachment to an email message to:

    lang29york.ac.uk

    The attachment must be in one of the following file formats: postscript (ps), pdf, dvi, ascii, doc (if you really can't avoid it). In the body of the message include your Name, Affiliation, and Title of the paper. If electronic submission is impossible, send 7 anonymous copies of your abstract to:

    Strategies of Quantification Department of Language and Linguistic Science University of York Heslington - York YO10 5DD England - UK

    Website: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang29/events/conf/soq.html

    Important Dates

    Submission Deadline: March 15 2004 Acceptance Notification: April 5 2004

    Message 2: OntoLex2004 - Deadline extension

     Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 18:04:20 +0100
    From: Alessandro Oltramari <oltramariloa-cnr.it>
    Subject: OntoLex2004 - Deadline extension


    ANSWERING VARIOUS REQUESTS, WE DECIDED TO POSTPONE THE WORKSHOP DEADLINE.

    THE NEW DEADLINE FOR ONTOLEX 2004 IS FEBRUARY 9, 2004.

    SECOND AND FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS

    Workshop: OntoLex 2004: Ontologies and Lexical Resources in Distributed Environments

    1996,1996,FFFC, 1998,1998,FFFE http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontolex2004.html

    Centro Cultural de Belem LISBON, Portugal 29-May-2004

    In Association with 4th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE RESOURCES AND EVALUATION LREC2004 http://www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2004/index.php

    Main conference 26-27-28 May 2004

    Motivations and aim

    The use of ontological knowledge in language technology applications goes a long way back. Recently, however, the project of turning the World Wide Web into a machine understandable resource to access digital information (the so-called Semantic Web) has stimulated a renewed interest in ontologies. In several recent workshops and conferences, researchers have investigated their nature and application potential for knowledge management, information retrieval and extraction, information exchange in agent-based systems as well as dialogue systems. Attention is being drawn to new aspects of ontology research such as ontology coordination and mapping - aspects that are particularly relevant for distributed environments such as Knowledge Grid and Semantic web. In fact the annotation of web resources in agreement with concepts and relations as defined in ontologies, is useful for establishing a conceptual support for knowledge communication.

    >From this perspective, lexicographers, lexical semanticists and ontologists are joining forces to build innovative systems for integrating ontological knowledge with lexical and semantic resources. Important examples of this interaction are the recent works on the conceptual analysis of WordNet (one of the first lexical knowledge bases), and the wide use of upper ontologies in innovative international projects like EuroWordNet, SIMPLE, Balkanet, DWDSnet. WordNet was designed and built entirely by psychologists, linguists, and lexicographers. Nevertheless, there are obvious parallels with ontologies, especially in the kinds of structuring relations used (taxonomical links, meronymy or part-of, etc.), and indeed WordNet has for years attracted the attention of philosophers and ontologists. In this context, the distinction between conceptual (possibly axiomatic) ontologies and lexical ontologies (which contain both linguistic and ontological information) has become more and more central in the field.

    In this workshop we want to discuss ontologies as resources per se, as well as for what concerns the relation between ontological knowledge and language. This relation can be investigated from a number of different angles, for example what differences and similarities there are between ontologies and more traditional lexical resources such as dictionaries and wordnets; how ontologies can be extracted from language corpora; what role language plays in the definition and mapping of ontologies; and finally, how ontologies can be used to treat language in language technology applications - in particular applications for distributed environments.

    Topics to be addressed in the workshop include, but are not limited to:

    *Design principles and methodologies for upper-level ontologies and semantic lexical resources *Evaluation, comparison, mapping and integration of ontologies and lexical resources *Applications of ontologies and semantic lexical resources in LT applications (e.g. QA, Information Retrieval, Information Extraction, Machine Translation) *Role of semantic lexical resources in ontology learning *Methods to derive ontological knowledge from text *Methods to annotate text with reference to an ontology *Ontology-based query expansion techniques *Ontologies and multi-lingual lexical resources *Ontologies and ontology mapping in multi-lingual applications *Ontologies and lexical resources for meaning negotiation

    Two discussions will be organised around the following topics:

    *Filling the gap between axiomatic and linguistic ontologies *The role of lexical resources in the Semantic Web and the Knowledge Grid

    Reasons of interest

    A new scientific community is growing around this largely interdisciplinary area: following the spirit of the previous two OntoLex workshops, this workshop aims at being an important meeting point for researchers involved in the fields of lexical resources and ontologies, favouring the exchange of scientific experiences and proposing new directions of inquiry. This year, the workshop particularly welcomes contributions from researchers that are investigating the application of ontologies and lexical resources in distributed environments such as Knowledge Grid and Semantic Web.

    Important dates

    *4th December 2003: Call for papers and demonstrations *9 February 2004: Deadline for paper submission *5 March 2004: Acceptance notifications and preliminary program *29 March 2004: Deadline final version of accepted papers *29 May 2004: Workshop

    Submissions

    Participants are invited to submit an extended abstract of max 3000 words related to one or more of the topics of interest. Papers can describe research results as well as work in progress. Each accepted paper will receive a slot of 30 minutes for presentation (20 minutes talk and 10 minutes for discussion). Demonstrations of ontology applications are encouraged as well (a demonstration outline of 2 pages can be submitted). Each submission should show: title; author(s); affiliation(s); and contact author's e-mail address, postal address, telephone and fax numbers. Submissions must be sent electronically in PDF to Alessandro Oltramari oltramariloa-cnr.it

    As soon as possible, authors are encouraged to send a brief email indicating their intention to participate, including their contact information and the topic they intend to address in their submissions. Proceedings of the workshop will be printed by the LREC Local Organising Committee.

    Time schedule and registration fee

    The workshop will consist of a morning session and an afternoon session, and include scientific paper presentations from workshop participants as well as general discussions.

    For this full-day workshop, the registration fee is 100 EURO for LREC conference participants and 170 EURO for other participants. These fees will include a coffee break and the Proceedings of the Workshop.