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

[Stefanie Dipper]

** 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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