First CFP: ESSLLI Workshop on 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/