[Corpora-List] Special Issue on Annotating Pragmatic and Discourse Phenomena --- Final Call for Papers

[Stefanie Dipper]

** Final Call for papers **

Special issue of "Dialogue and Discourse" on: "Beyond semantics: the challenges 
of annotating pragmatic and discourse phenomena" (please find the full call at 
http://www.linguistics.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/~dipper/specialIssue.html).

** Guest Editors **

- Stefanie Dipper, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
- Heike Zinsmeister, Konstanz University, Germany
- Bonnie Webber, Edinburgh University, UK

** Important Dates **

- Sep 7 2011:   Open call
- Nov 15 2011:  Expression of interest, three-page abstract
- Feb 1 2012:   Submission deadline, full papers
- April 5 2012: Notification of acceptance
- May 15 2012:  Final versions due
- June 15 2012: Publication (tentative date)

** Topics of Interest **

The topic of the special issue is "Beyond semantics: the challenges of 
annotating pragmatic and discourse phenomena". The focus is on the problems and 
challenges that are specific to annotating phenomena that are "beyond 
semantics",  i.e., pragmatic and discourse-related phenomena (e.g. anaphoric 
reference, information structure, discourse relations, discourse function, 
presupposition, subjectivity.

We see it as an important desideratum to promote the application of linguistic 
theories to naturally-occurring texts. This would enhance the search for 
operationalization of theoretical concepts, which probably then can be 
annotated with higher reliability. It would open up corpus-based development 
and validation of theoretical hypotheses. At the same time, operationalized 
theoretical concepts and reliable annotations would facilitate the use of 
pragmatic and discourse-related knowledge in computational linguistics.

The overall guiding question of the special issue is: How do we annotate 
abstract pragmatic and discourse information? Such information is frequently 
not marked explicitly or unambiguously in natural language. It is usually 
dependent on context information, and annotators often have to reconstruct 
complex relations and situations from the context. Intuitions about pragmatic 
or discourse analysis tend to be less stable and more subjective than 
intuitions about syntactic or semantic phenomena.

Example questions that we would like to see addressed in the special issue are:

- In annotating texts, which methods are applied? For instance, to what extent 
are linguistic concepts replaced by surface proxies?

- To what extent does the format of annotation (different layers vs. one layer 
only) influence the annotation task?

- What kind of instructions are given to the annotators: Do they have to 
generalize from a set of given examples? Are they given a formal definition, 
whose applicability they are assumed to always test before choosing a 
particular label? Are there linguistic tests to guide the annotation?

The idea is to gather research that reports on the generation (and 
exploitation) of corpora that are annotated with pragmatic or discourse-related 
information grounded in linguistic theory.

** Submission **

Potential contributors are invited to send an expression of interest (EOI) to 
the guest editors by November 15, 2011. The EOIs should consist of a title and 
a three-page abstract. EOIs should be directed to the guest editors via 
beyondsem [AT] linguistics.rub.de.

Full manuscripts need to be formatted according to "Dialogue and Discourse" 
author guidelines, and submitted using the journal's online manuscript 
submission system (see http://www.dialogue-and-discourse.org/). As a guideline, 
full articles should be around 30 pages, but if justified, significantly 
shorter or longer papers will be considered as well.

Please do not hesitate to contact us (beyondsem [AT] linguistics.rub.de) if you 
have any practical questions or are unsure about whether a possible topic you 
would like to write about would fall under this call.

** Reviewing **

The special issue aims at significant interaction between the two target 
audiences, theoretical linguists with an emphasis on detailed analysis of 
specific phenomena and computational linguists specializing in annotation. 
Therefore, each paper will have at least one referee from each "camp", to 
ensure both that the theoretical papers are technically strong and that the 
computational papers have sufficient empirical content.

The following people have already agreed to serve on the reviewing committee.

- Maria Averintseva-Klisch (Tuebingen University, Germany)
- Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen (Oslo University, Norway)
- Klaus von Heusinger (Stuttgart University, Germany)
- Ralf Klabunde (Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany)
- Valia Kordoni (DFKI GmbH and Saarland University, Germany)
- Rebecca Passonneau (Columbia University, USA)
- Massimo Poesio (University of Essex, UK, and Trento, Italy)
- Kiril Simov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria)
- Caroline Sporleder (Saarland University, Germany)
- Angelika Storrer (TU Dortmund, Germany)
- Michael Strube (HITS Heidelberg, Germany)

** The Journal **

Dialogue and Discourse (D&D, http://www.dialogue-and-discourse.org/) is the 
first peer-reviewed open access journal dedicated exclusively to work that 
deals with language "beyond the single sentence". The journal adopts an 
interdisciplinary perspective, accepting work from Linguistics, Computer 
Science, Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, and other associated fields with an 
interest in formally, technically, empirically or experimentally rigorous 
approaches. The journal is committed to ensuring the highest editorial 
standards and rigorous peer-review of all submissions, while granting open 
access to all interested readers.


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