First CFP: ESSLLI Workshop Challenges & Alternatives to Strict Compositionality

[Manfred Sailer]

Apologies for multiple postings

First Call for Papers
CALL FOR PAPERS

Workshop on
Emprical Challenges and Analytic Alternatives
to Strict Compositionality

URL: http://www.sfs.uni-tuebingen.de/~fr/esslli/05/

August 8-12, 2005

organized as part of
European Summer School on Logic, Language and Information
ESSLLI 2005 http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/esslli05/
8-19 August, 2005 in Edinburgh


Workshop Purpose:

Compositionality has been a key methodological theme in natural language
semantics. Recently, a number of innovative systems for combinatorial
semantics have been proposed which seem not to obey compositionality at first
sight. Such systems are based on unification, underspecification, linear logic
or categorial grammar, to name the most prominent research areas. The
motivation behind these systems is often computational, but the mechanisms
they employ also provide new insights and analytical alternatives for
outstanding problems in the combinatorial semantics of natural languages.
These include scope ambiguities, multiple exponents of semantic operators,
cohesion, ellipsis, coordination, and modifier attachment ambiguities.

The workshop aims to provide a forum for advanced PhD students and researchers
whose interests lie in empirical issues or logic. It will give them the
opportunity to present and discuss their work with colleagues and researchers
who work in the broad subject areas represented at ESSLLI. We wish to invite
papers discussing linguistic data which pose a challenge to compositionality
as well as papers presenting new mechanisms for defining a compositional
semantics which can address well-known challenges in innovative ways.

Workshop Topics:

Topics for submission may include but are not limited to:

    * presentations of certain empirical phenomena which seem to challenge
strict compositionality. Empirical papers should point out precisely why the
discussed phenomenon poses analytical problems.
    * presentations of semantic formalisms. This type of presentation should
stress the potential usefulness of the proposal for the analysis of empirical
challenges.
    * papers which combine the empirical and formal aspects directly.

Submission Details:

Authors are invited to submit an extended abstract for a 30-minute
presentation (followed by 15 minutes of discussion).

Submissions should

    * not exceed 8 (eight) pages, including all figures and references.
    * be in pdf (preferred), ps or ASCII.
    * be sent electronically to manfred.sailer at phil.uni-goettingen.de by March
9, 2005 (see the deadlines listed below).
    * be anonymous and, therefore, accompanied by a separate information sheet
containing: author name(s), affiliation(s), e-mail and postal address(es), and
the title of the paper.

The submissions will be reviewed anonymously by the workshop's programme
committee and additional reviewers. The accepted papers will appear in the
workshop proceedings published by ESSLLI. The final versions will be 15 pages,
in pdf format. Details will be specified on the workshop homepage
(http://www.sfs.uni-tuebingen.de/~fr/esslli/05/).

Workshop Format:

The workshop is part of ESSLLI and is open to all ESSLLI participants. It will
consist of five 90-minute sessions held over five sonsecutive days in the
first week of ESSLLI. There will be 2 slots for paper presentation and
discussion per session. On the first day the workshop organizers will give an
introduction to the topic.

Invited Speakers:

N.N.

Workshop Programme Committee:

    * Sigrid Beck (Potsdam)
    * Gosse Bouma (Groningen)
    * Markus Egg (Saarbruecken)
    * Howard Gregory (Goettingen)
    * Fritz Hamm (Tuebingen)
    * James Higginbotham (Los Angeles)
    * Wilfrid Hodges (London)
    * Pauline Jacobson (Providence)
    * Graham Katz (Osnabrueck)
    * Albert Ortmann (Duesseldorf)
    * Gerald Penn (Toronto)
    * Adam Przepiorkowski (Warsaw)
    * Frank Richter (Tuebingen, co-chair)
    * Manfred Sailer (Goettingen, co-chair)
    * Mark Steedman (Edinburgh)
    * Henriette de Swart (Utrecht)
    * Zoltan Szabo (Ithaca)
    * Thomas Ede Zimmermann (Frankfurt)

Important Dates:

Submission: March 9, 2005
Notification: April 18, 2005
Preliminary programme: April 23, 2005
ESSLLI early registration: May 1, 2005
Final papers for proceedings: May 18, 2005
Final programme: June 22, 2005
Workshop dates: August 8-12, 2005

Local Arrangements:

All workshop participants including the presenters will be required to
register for ESSLLI. The registration fee for authors presenting a paper will
correspond to the early student/workshop speaker registration fee. Moreover, a
number of additional fee waiver grants will be made available by the
Organization Committee on a competitive basis and workshop participants are
eligible to apply for those.

There will be no reimbursement for travel costs and accommodation. Workshop
speakers who have difficulty in finding funding should contact the local
organizing committee to ask for the possibilities for a grant.

Further information:

About the workshop: http://www.sfs.uni-tuebingen.de/~fr/esslli/05/
About ESSLLI: http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/esslli05/