FYI: CFP: Second Conference on Concept Ty pes and Frames in Language, Cognition, and Scie nce, D üsseldorf

[Stefan Müller]

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                 FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS

    Second Conference on Concept Types and Frames
         in Language, Cognition, and Science

              August 24 - 26, 2009
               Duesseldorf, Germany

       Submission Deadline: April 15, 2009

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Submission site (Extended abstracts up to 1000 words)
http://linguistlist.org/confcustom/CTF09

Conference site:
http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/fff/fff-conference-ctf09/overview-call/

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INVITED SPEAKERS

Barbara Abbott
Lawrence W. Barsalou
Jerry Hobbs
Beth Levin
James Pustejovsky
Barry Smith
Paul Thagard


GENERAL DESCRIPTION

The topic of the conference is the investigation of concept types
of nouns and verbs and their respective relationships to frames.
Frames provide a recursive device for representing knowledge
about arbitrary objects and categories by means of attributes and
their values. They offer a flexible way of representing concepts
of different types in language, philosophy and sciences at
different levels of detail and at different stages of development
or processing. The interdisciplinary conference combines
approaches from linguistics, computational linguistics,
mathematics, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, philosophy,
philosophy of science, and the history of science.


LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES

Nouns in natural language correspond to different basic types of
concepts. Sortal nouns (e.g. 'cow', 'table', 'adjective')
constitute the unmarked type of nouns; individual nouns (e.g.
'Mary', 'pope', 'moon') and functional nouns (e.g. 'mother',
'head', 'size') are marked in being inherently unique; relational
nouns (e.g. 'son', 'leg', 'modifier') and functional nouns are
marked by involving one or more additional arguments. The
linguistic perspective on noun types includes determination in
general and productive type shifts, as both permit systematic
transitions between types of nouns. The types of nouns can be
modelled by frames of different types. A second focus is on
verbs: dimensional verbs such as 'cost', 'last', 'widen', and
'cool' can incorporate functional concepts as well. Moreover,
verbs also lend themselves naturally to a frame account of
lexical meaning. A systematic frame analysis of verb and noun
meanings promises a substantial contribution to theories of both
syntactic and semantic composition. Among the different concept
types, functional concepts are of particular interest since they
directly correspond to attributes in frames. Therefore, they play
a central role not only in linguistics but in conceptual and
theoretical evolution in general.


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 brains.
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 scientific disciplines are defined in terms of underlying
frames, Kuhnian paradigm shifts are related to changes in the
frames employed in science.


SPECIFIC CONFERENCE TOPICS

Types of nouns and types of determination

- typological characteristics of non-sortal noun types
- compositional properties of non-sortal noun types
- typological accounts of determination, in particular
  definiteness and possession
- historical development of functional and relational nouns and
  their grammatical integration
- automatic classification of noun types in natural language
  corpora

The vocabulary of dimensions: semantics, typology, and evolution

- abstract functional nouns ('price', 'temperature', 'meaning')
- dimensional adjectives
- stative dimensional verbs ('cost', 'weigh', 'mean')
- dynamic dimensional verbs, in particular degree achievements

Lexical decomposition using frames

- frames for types of nouns
- frames for types of verbs
- large frame systems in the lexicon

Frame approaches to word formation

- frame analysis of compounds
- frame analysis of deverbal nouns

Frames in cognition

- functional and relational frames in cognition
- neural correlates and computational modelling of functional
  concepts and frames

Frames in science and philosophy

- functional concepts and frames in scientific theory and
  practice from a historical perspective, in particular in the
  history of medical science
- functional and relational concepts and frames in philosophical
  terminology, ontology, and metaphysics
- the relation of paradigm shifts to changes in scientific frames
- the structure of scientific ontologies, especially in medicine,
  biology, and metaphysics

Frame theory

- formalization and computational modelling of functional and
  relational concepts and frames
- algebraic properties of frame spaces and spaces of attributes
- value spaces of attributes


IMPORTANT DATES

Submission:   15 April
Notification: 30 May
Conference:   24-26 August


SUBMISSION INFORMATION

Extended abstracts (.pdf or .doc) of up to 1000 words should be
submitted anonymously at the Easyabs web site
http://linguistlist.org/confcustom/CTF09


GENERAL CHAIR

Sebastian Loebner


SCIENTIFIC BOARD

Heiner Fangerau
Hans Geisler
Jim Kilbury
Gerhard Schurz
Robert D. Van Valin, Jr.
Markus Werning


ORGANIZATION

Thomas Gamerschlag
Doris Gerland
Rainer Osswald
Wiebke Petersen