[LFG] Call for Papers: Empirical Advances in Categorial Grammar (ESSLLI 2015)

[Yusuke Kubota]

[Apologies for multiple postings]

Call for Papers

Empirical Advances in Categorial Grammar (ESSLLI 2015 Workshop)

Dates: August 10-14, 2015
Location: Barcelona
Workshop Webpage: http://www.u.tsukuba.ac.jp/~kubota.yusuke.fn/cg2015.html
Contact email: cg2015 at easychair.org
Submission deadline: February 15, 2015
Submission webpage: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cg2015


Organizers:

Yusuke Kubota, University of Tsukuba
Robert Levine, Ohio State University


Workshop information:

This workshop provides a forum for discussion of recent empirical
advances in categorial grammar (CG). After the revival of interest in
CG in linguistics in the 80s, various extensions to the Lambek
calculus (in the Type-Logical Categorial Grammar (TLCG) tradition;
Morrill 1994, Moortgat 1997) and an early version of Combinatory
Categorial Grammar (CCG; Ades and Steedman 1982, Steedman 2000,
Baldridge 2003) have been proposed. But the fundamental question of
whether CG constitutes an adequate linguistic theory still seems to be
wide open. Moreover, there are now numerous variants of CG, both in
the TLCG tradition and in CCG (Oehrle 1994, Jacobson 1999, Moortgat
2007, Pollard and Mihalicek 2010, Morrill et al. 2011, Barker and Shan
2015, to name just a few). Which of these theories constitutes the
most adequate version of an empirical theory of natural language?

Logical, mathematical, and computational analyses have tended to take
precedence over empirical ones in the past 30 years in CG research.
These are all important and very illuminating, but at the same time we
may now want to pause and reflect on the question of just where we are
in terms of empirical adequacy. In this connection, it is, we believe,
instructive to remind ourselves that the most profound areas of
mathematics, such as analysis, are those which first emerged in the
course of investigations into the properties of the natural universe
by physicists (Boyer 1949). There probably is a similar relation
between formal and empirical investigations in our field as well, and
we think that the time is ripe to critically scrutinize the empirical
consequences of the various formal techniques/frameworks proposed in
the literature in the past 30 years, as well as ones that are being
developed at this very moment. 

The following is a list of topics which naturally fit the theme of the
workshop, but this is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list; we
welcome any submission whose topic pertains to the empirical adequacy
of CG. 

- What are the empirical advantages of CG as compared to other
  grammatical theories? A classical case is coordination (Steedman
  1985, Dowty 1988), but is coordination the only empirical domain in
  which CG can claim advantage over other theories?

- Are there any major relative advantages/disadvantages among
  different variants of CG? For example, Kubota and Levine (2014) and
  Moot (2014) have recently argued that Abstract Categorial Grammar
  (ACG; de Groote 2001) and related approaches cannot deal with
  coordination; is such a claim justified, or can one extend ACG to
  respond to this criticism?

- Almost all variants of CG countenance much more flexible notions of
  constituency than other theories, and this has been seen as a
  (potential) weakness of CG by researchers outside of the CG
  community. How can one respond to this concern?

- There is much rethinking on the nature of so-called 'syntactic
  islands' in the recent linguistic literature (Kluender 1992, 1998,
  Hofmeister and Sag 2010). The processing-based alternatives of these
  phenomena are however typically stated in terms of configurational
  properties. Is there a natural translation of such conditions to
  CG-based grammars?

- Can progress be made in relatively underdeveloped areas of CG? For
  example, there were some early explorations of 'categorial
  morphology' back in the 80s (Moortgat 1984, Hoeksema 1984, Hoeksema
  and Janda 1988), but this line of work did not develop into a major
  research program. Can we gain new insights on questions in such
  areas by building on the advances in CG research since then? 

- Can CG incorporate recent results in other grammatical theories,
  such as the notion of 'constructions' in construction grammar
  (Goldberg 1995)? 

- Any improvements on the syntax-semantics interface? CG is known for
  its transparent syntax-semantics interface. But incorporating recent
  advances in formal semantics, especially, the tradition of dynamic
  semantics in a fully compositional manner, still seems to be an
  ongoing effort. Has any progress been made in this domain? 


Submission:

We invite submissions of anonymous abstracts of up to five pages,
including examples, references, and figures. Usual spacing, font and
margin should be used (single-spaced, 11pt or larger, and 1 inch
margin on A4 or letter size paper). Abstracts should be submitted by
February 15, 2015 as pdf files through the EasyChair conference
system: 

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cg2015


Reviewing:

Abstracts will be reviewed by members of the program committee, and,
where appropriate, outside reviewers. The organizers will be
responsible for making decisions partly in consultation with the
program committee. Notifications will be made by April 15, 2015. 


Workshop format:

We expect to allot 45 minutes for each accepted paper (30 minutes for
presentation and 15 minutes for questions and discussion). The exact
format of the workshop may be slightly adjusted depending on the
number of submissions we receive. 


Proceedings:

We plan to put together electronic proceedings by the time of the
workshop. We will ask authors of accepted papers to submit full papers
(max. 20 pages) by May 22, 2015. We are also planning to publish an
edited volume after the workshop. There will be a separate reviewing
process for this. More information will be provided in due course. 


Important dates:

February 15, 2015: Submission deadline
April 15, 2015: Notification of acceptance
May 22, 2015: Proceedings paper due
August 10-14, 2015: Workshop (at ESSLLI 2015 in Barcelona, Spain)


Program committee:

Chris Barker (New York University)
Daisuke Bekki (Ochanomizu University)
Pauline Jacobson (Brown University)
Yusuke Kubota (University of Tsukuba, co-chair)
Robert Levine (Ohio State University, co-chair)
Michael Moortgat (Utrecht University)
Glyn Morrill (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya)
Richard Oehrle (OS Foundation)
Carl Pollard (Ohio State University)
Mark Steedman (University of Edinburgh)
Yoad Winter (Utrecht University)