6.1187, Calls: Implicature Symposium

[The Linguist List]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List:  Vol-6-1187. Thu Aug 31 1995. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines:  126
 
Subject: 6.1187, Calls: Implicature Symposium
 
Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. <aristar at tam2000.tamu.edu>
            Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at emunix.emich.edu>
 
Associate Editor:  Ljuba Veselinova <lveselin at emunix.emich.edu>
Assistant Editors: Ron Reck <rreck at emunix.emich.edu>
                   Ann Dizdar <dizdar at tam2000.tamu.edu>
                   Annemarie Valdez <avaldez at emunix.emich.edu>
 
Software development: John H. Remmers <remmers at emunix.emich.edu>
 
Editor for this issue: dseely at emunix.emich.edu (T. Daniel Seely)
 
---------------------------------Directory-----------------------------------
1)
Date:  Wed, 30 Aug 1995 11:10:42 EDT
From:  Nancy_Green at ANTARCTO.SOAR.CS.CMU.EDU (Nancy Green)
Subject:  CFP: implicature symposium
 
---------------------------------Messages------------------------------------
1)
Date:  Wed, 30 Aug 1995 11:10:42 EDT
From:  Nancy_Green at ANTARCTO.SOAR.CS.CMU.EDU (Nancy Green)
Subject:  CFP: implicature symposium
 
 
                   Call for Participation (long version)
                        AAAI Spring Symposium on
             COMPUTATIONAL IMPLICATURE: COMPUTATIONAL APPROACHES TO
             INTERPRETING AND GENERATING CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE
                  March 25-27, 1996 at Stanford University
 
 
Since the 1980's, several computational and formal approaches have
been developed to address pragmatic phenomena with the properties of
Gricean conversational implicatures.  The purpose of this symposium
is to bring together researchers interested in developing computational
approaches to conversational implicature in non-figurative use of natural
language.  The symposium will address the following related questions.
 
    - Is the notion of conversational implicature still useful?
      What role if any do Grice's maxims and Cooperative Principle still
      play in computational and formal approaches?  What types of
      conversational implicature have been modeled successfully
      so far?  What do they have in common?  (E.g., with the exception
      of scalar implicatures, which are based upon Quantity, the majority
      seem to be based on Relevance.  But is Relevance a well-defined notion?)
      What interesting classes of implicature have not yet been addressed?
      What are the reasons for generating conversational implicatures (e.g.,
      conciseness, politeness, avoiding misconceptions)?
 
    - How does conversational implicature relate to other discourse
      phenomena, e.g., coherence and discourse expectations?
      What is the role of linguistic (e.g., prosodic or pragmatic)
      constraints versus background knowledge?
      Are there classes of discourse phenomena (e.g., ellipsis) which it would
      be advantageous to analyze as types of conversational implicature
      although they are not currently recognized as such in the computational
      literature?  What distinguishes conversational implicatures from other
      defeasible inferences in discourse (e.g., default inferences in text
      understanding)?
 
    - How successful have recent developments in discourse processing such as
      use of non-monotonic reasoning, abduction, and planning/plan inference
      been in modeling conversational implicature?  How well do these models
      address related problems of intention, mutual belief, cancellation, and
      reinforceability?  How well do they address both generation and
      interpretation?  How should they be evaluated?
      Most models have focused on single classes of conversational
      implicature.  What problems would arise in integrating them?
      Are they scalable?  What are the knowledge acquisition and
      knowledge representation issues in using various formal
      models as the basis for implementing systems that recognize and
      generate implicatures?
 
    - What problems in conversational implicature should be addressed
      in the immediate future?  E.g., how can corpora be used?  What
      corpora are available for studying implicature?  How does the
      problem of generating implicatures differ from the problem of
      interpreting them?
 
 
Program Committee:
 
Barbara Di Eugenio (Co-chair), Carnegie Mellon University
  Email: dieugeni at lcl.cmu.edu
Nancy Green (Co-chair), Carnegie Mellon University
  Email: nancy.green at cs.cmu.edu
Julia Bell Hirschberg,  AT&T Bell Laboratories
Marilyn Walker, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories
R. Michael Young, University of Pittsburgh
 
 
Submission Information:
 
Persons interested in participating should submit (1) a 4-6 page position
paper addressing one or more of the above questions, or (2) a 1-2 page
statement of interest describing the author's relevant work and publications.
We welcome diverse points of view on the nature of and proper treatment of
conversational implicature, provided that they contribute to the development
of computational approaches to discourse interpretation and generation.
 
Papers should be formatted with 11-point font and 1-inch margins, and
should include the author's email address.  Please send 5 hard copies to:
Dr. Nancy Green, Re: AAAI-SSS96, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon
University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890, USA.
 
 
Timetable for participants:
 
October 31, 1995        Submission deadline.
November 30, 1995       Notification of acceptance.
January 19, 1996        Papers to appear in working notes are due.
February 23, 1996       Registration deadline.
 
 
For more information:
 
Available via the url:  http://www.isp.pitt.edu/implicature
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-6-1187.