FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS --
REVISED DEADLINE: DECEMBER 10TH!! <br>
------------------------------<div lang="x-western">--------------------------------------------------------------
<br>
<br>
IWCS 2013 Workshop: Towards a formal distributional semantics
<br>
<br>
March 19, 2013, Potsdam, Germany
<br>
<br>
<a href="http://clic.cimec.unitn.it/roberto/IWCS-TFDS2013" target="_blank">http://clic.cimec.unitn.it/roberto/IWCS-TFDS2013</a>
<br>
<br>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<br>
<br>
Over the last 50 years, model-theoretic semantics has made great
progress in formalising various phenomena of human language,
especially those related to the compositionality of meaning. It
has also left some aspects largely unexamined: in particular,
those concerned with the meaning of content words, which have been
the concern of lexical semantics. Distributional or vector-space
models of meaning, in turn, successfully model many lexical
semantic phenomena, but, despite recent efforts, still do not
account for compositionality or the role of function words.
<br>
<br>
This workshop aims to foster the integration of formal and
distributional semantics, building on their complementary
strengths to produce better models of meaning in natural language.
Its focus is on giving formal semantics a better handle on lexical
semantics, while still preserving the aspects that have made it
useful: for instance, the tight syntax-semantics interface for
phenomena such as quantification, scope, modification and semantic
roles, the notions of truth and extension, and the modeling of
inference, at the level of both lexical items and propositions.
Beyond the goal of better embedding lexical information in formal
semantic representations, we encourage the investigation of the
probabilistic aspects of distributional models in order to handle
cases where truth theory falters (e.g., truth of generic
statements). More generally, the workshop is open to new ideas
about aspects of meaning beyond the level of truth values, and on
how distributional semantics may contribute to the notion of
intension.
<br>
<br>
<br>
TOPICS OF INTEREST
<br>
<br>
Contributions can take the form of theoretical proposals,
descriptions of a particular phenomenon, or experimental
investigations. We specifically welcome collaborations between
researchers in formal semantics and computational linguistics. We
look for contributions on the following topics (list not
exhaustive), always from the perspective of integrating formal and
distributional semantics:
<br>
<br>
* Inferential properties of language both at the propositional and
lexical level (e.g., how to account for entailment as licensed by
different types of adjectives?).
<br>
<br>
* Truth theory, reference, and extension (e.g., to what extent is
there a relation between distributional representations built from
corpora and models, which exhaustively enumerate individuals in a
particular set? How could this be used to tie distributional
representations of words with specific objects in real or virtual
scenarios?).
<br>
<br>
* Intension (e.g., can distributional models provide an
alternative or complementary account to the definition of
intension in terms of possible world semantics?).
<br>
<br>
* Syntax-semantics interface (e.g., composition with different
types of verbal arguments).
<br>
<br>
* Morphology-semantics interface (e.g., exploring the possibility
to build distributional models of derivational and inflectional
morphology, for instance to capture the semantic difference
between singular and plural forms of nouns).
<br>
<br>
* Representation and mechanics of logical operators (e.g., how to
account for negation, not only in propositions but also with
regard to its effects on the lexicon; how to deal with
coordination at the various levels at which it applies; how to
deal with nominal and VP quantifiers?).
<br>
<br>
* Semantic representation at the lexical and constituent /
sentential level (e.g., what kind of representations do we need to
retain lexical information at the level of the sentence?).
<br>
<br>
<br>
INVITED SPEAKER
<br>
<br>
Katrin Erk (The University of Texas at Austin)
<br>
<br>
<br>
PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
<br>
<br>
Nicholas Asher (Université Paul Sabatier / The University of Texas
at Austin)
<br>
Marco Baroni (University of Trento)
<br>
David Beaver (The University of Texas at Austin)
<br>
Raffaella Bernardi (University of Trento)
<br>
Stephen Clark (University of Cambridge)
<br>
Ann Copestake (University of Cambridge)
<br>
Katrin Erk (The University of Texas at Austin)
<br>
Mohan Ganesalingam (University of Cambridge)
<br>
Ed Grefenstette (University of Oxford)
<br>
Louise McNally (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
<br>
Diarmuid Ó Séaghdha (University of Cambridge)
<br>
Sebastian Pado (Universitaet Heidelberg)
<br>
Manfred Pinkal (Saarland University)
<br>
Stephen Pulman (University of Oxford)
<br>
Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh (University of Oxford)
<br>
Mark Steedman (University of Edinburgh)
<br>
Stefan Thater (Saarland University)
<br>
Jason Utt (University of Stuttgart)
<br>
Eva Maria Vecchi (University of Trento)
<br>
<br>
<br>
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
<br>
<br>
Aurelie Herbelot, Universitaet Potsdam
<br>
Roberto Zamparelli, University of Trento
<br>
Gemma Boleda, University of Texas at Austin
<br>
<br>
<br>
SUBMISSIONS
<br>
<br>
Papers should describe original research and must not exceed 10
pages. Authors are requested to follow the style guidelines of the
IWCS main conference (available at <a href="http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/iwcs2013/author_information.html" target="_blank">http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/iwcs2013/author_information.html</a>).
<br>
<br>
Papers should be electronically submitted in PDF format via the
START system at <a href="https://www.softconf.com/iwcs2013/TFDS2012/" target="_blank">https://www.softconf.com/iwcs2013/TFDS2012/</a>.
Please contact the organizers if you have problems using START.
<br>
<br>
Submissions may be accepted either as a full oral presentation or
as poster. All accepted papers will be published in the workshop
proceedings.
<br>
<br>
<br>
IMPORTANT DATES
<br>
<br>
December 10th 2012: (Revised) submission deadline.<br>
January 8th 2013: notification of acceptance.<br>
January 25th 2013: final papers due.<br>
<br>
<br>
CONTACT
<br>
<br>
For any questions, please write to <a href="mailto:tfds2013@gmail.com" target="_blank">tfds2013@gmail.com</a>.
<br>
Workshop URL: <a href="http://clic.cimec.unitn.it/roberto/IWCS-TFDS2013/" target="_blank">http://clic.cimec.unitn.it/roberto/IWCS-TFDS2013/</a>
<br><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
</font></span></div><br>-- <br>Gemma Boleda<br>The University of Texas at Austin<br><a href="http://gboleda.utcompling.com" target="_blank">http://gboleda.utcompling.com</a><br><br><br><br>