[EDLING:2283] CFP: Concept Types and Frames in Language, Cognition, and Science

[Francis M. Hult]

http://phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/FFF/index.php?id=217&L=2

Concept Types and Frames in Language, Cognition, and Science

International Conference
Düsseldorf (GER),  August 20-22, 2007

Organization: Research Unit "Functional Concepts and Frames" 

The topic of the conference is the investigation of concept types (sortal, 
relational, individual and functional concepts) and their respective 
relationships to frames (recursive attribute-value structures). The 
interdisciplinary conference combines approaches from linguistics, 
computational linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, philosophy of science and 
the history of science.

Invited speakers: Lawrence W. Barsalou, Friedemann Pulvermueller, Peter 
Gaerdenfors, Barbara Partee, Xiang Chen, Nicola Guarino, William McGregor, Jeff 
Pelletier, Charles Fillmore, Peter Simons, Vladimir Borschev, Norbert Paul.

Deadline for submission of abstracts (max. 500 words): March 31st 2007. 

The conference will be held in English.

Linguistic perspectives 

Nouns in natural language can be related to different basic types of concepts. 
The basic types are sortal nouns (cow); individual nouns (e.g. proper names) 
and functional nouns (size) are marked as inherently unique; relational nouns 
(part) and functional nouns are marked by involving one or more additional 
arguments. The focus of the conference is on functional nouns.
Linguistically, functional nouns are linked to grammatical phenomena such as 
possessive constructions and definiteness. Cognitively, functional concepts 
enable the unique identification of referents, for example as unique parts of 
wholes, or as unique values of attributes. Therefore, functional nouns and 
concepts are of special importance in the advanced evolution of human language 
and scientific terminology. In fact, most lexicalised functional concepts are 
the products of complex linguistic developments.


Philosophical and cognitive perspectives 

Frames, in Barsalou's sense, are recursive attribute-value structures. While 
frames can be used to implement individual and sortal concepts, their 
attributes can themselves be analysed as recursively interrelated functional 
concepts. Given that frames are the basic format of concept formation in 
cognition, attributes and frames might have neural correlates in our brain.
Frames are a natural linguistic and conceptual format for the representation of 
complex ontologies that embody substance-accidence and part-whole relations. Of 
particular interest is the relation of frames to complex representational 
formats such as conceptual spaces  and mental models.
Functional concepts and frames play a crucial role in the human evolution of a 
stable cognitive framework for communication and cooperation, in everyday life 
as well as in science. Insofar as the objects of a scientific disciplines are 
defined in terms of underlying frames, Kuhnian paradigm shifts are related to 
changes in the frames employed science.

 
The conference invites contributions to the following topics:

Semantics and logics of concept types, in particular of functional, relational 
and individual nouns.

Typological characteristics of functional, relational and individual nouns, 
including the typology of possession and definiteness.

Historical development of functional and relational nouns and their grammatical 
integration.

Semantics, typology and evolution of stative dimensional verbs such as cost, 
weigh, mean.

Automatic classification of noun types in natural language corpora.
Frames as meaning representations in compositional and decompositional 
semantics.

The evolution of meaning and the role of functional concepts and frames therein.
The structure of scientific ontologies, especially in medicine and biology, and 
their relation to functional concepts and frames.

The development of central functional concepts such as "substance" in the 
history of metaphysics.

Functional concepts and frames in scientific theory and practice, from a 
historical perspective, in particular in the history of medical science.

The relation of changes of scientific frames to paradigm shifts.

Potential neural correlates and neural net models of functional concepts and 
frames.

Formalization and computational modeling of functional concepts and frames.