Last CFP: ESSLLI Workshop on Challenges & Alternatives to Strict Compositionality

[Manfred Sailer]

[Apologies for multiple postings]

                        Final for Papers
                         CALL FOR PAPERS

                          Workshop on
          Empirical 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

tba

                   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)
    * Theo Janssen (Amsterdam)
    * 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