10.325, Calls: Generation of Nominals, Economy of Lang Design

Tue Mar 2 05:47:32 UTC 1999

LINGUIST List:  Vol-10-325. Tue Mar 2 1999. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 10.325, Calls: Generation of Nominals, Economy of Lang Design

Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Wayne State U.<aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at linguistlist.org>
            Andrew Carnie: U. of Arizona <carnie at linguistlist.org>

Reviews: Andrew Carnie: U. of Arizona <carnie at linguistlist.org>

Associate Editors:  Martin Jacobsen <marty at linguistlist.org>
                    Brett Churchill <brett at linguistlist.org>
                    Ljuba Veselinova <ljuba at linguistlist.org>

Assistant Editors:  Scott Fults <scott at linguistlist.org>
		    Jody Huellmantel <jody at linguistlist.org>
		    Karen Milligan <karen at linguistlist.org>

Software development: John H. Remmers <remmers at emunix.emich.edu>
                      Chris Brown <chris at linguistlist.org>

Home Page:  http://linguistlist.org/

Editor for this issue: Scott Fults <scott at linguistlist.org>
 ==========================================================================

As a matter of policy, LINGUIST discourages the use of abbreviations
or acronyms in conference announcements unless they are explained in
the text.

=================================Directory=================================

1)
Date:  Fri, 26 Feb 1999 15:57:43 GMT
From:  Rodger.Kibble at itri.brighton.ac.uk (Rodger Kibble)
Subject:  Extended deadline: ESSLLI'99 Workshop on Generation of Nominals

2)
Date:  Mon, 1 Mar 1999 17:45:13 +0100 (MET)
From:  Anne Reboul <Anne.Reboul at loria.fr>
Subject:  LICSSOL 1

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Fri, 26 Feb 1999 15:57:43 GMT
From:  Rodger.Kibble at itri.brighton.ac.uk (Rodger Kibble)
Subject:  Extended deadline: ESSLLI'99 Workshop on Generation of Nominals

                    ESSLLI-99 workshop on

           The Generation of Nominal Expressions

            University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
                      9-13 August 1999

Following a number of requests we have decided to extend the deadline
for abstracts until *** MARCH 15th ***.

However we ask intending submitters to notify us of their intention
by email as soon as possible, preferably by March 1st.

Abstracts and notification of intention to submit should be sent to
Rodger.Kibble at itri.brighton.ac.uk, with "ESSLLI99" in the Subject line.

Full details of the call are appended below.

Rodger Kibble & Kees van Deemter
Information Technology Research Institute (ITRI)
University of Brighton
Lewes Road, Watts Building
Brighton BN2 4GJ
United Kingdom

http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/projects/gnome/esslli99.html

--Details of Call--

Context:

The workshop will take place in association with the 11th
European Summer School "Logic Linguistics and Information"
(ESSLLI), to be held in Utrecht, The Netherlands, from 9-20
August 1999. The format of the workshop is 5 x 90 minutes on
the 5 consecutive days of 9 to 13 August 1999.

The ESSLLI Summer School is organized under the auspices of the
European Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI).
Previous ESSLLI Summer Schools have been highly successful,
attracting around 500 students from Europe and elsewhere. The
school has developed into an important meeting place and forum
for discussion for students and researchers interested in the
interdisciplinary study of Logic, Language and Information.
For more information see <http://esslli.let.uu.nl>.

Workshop Description:

  If someone attempted to assess the `state of the art' of
  linguistic research on nominal expressions by looking at
  how present-day programs generate nominals, he or she would
  no doubt underestimate the level of sophistication
  of theoretical work on nominals. It can be argued that this is
  because existing work on the computational generation of nominals
  has limited itself to relatively simple nominals, often focussing
  on simple (singular) definite descriptions and pronouns.
  Alternatively, it might be contended that much of the theoretical
  work in this area is not mature enough to be appicable in
  generation. Be this as it may, work on the generation of nominals
  has not profited much from theoretical research in formal semantics
  and psycholinguistics on the meaning, interpretation and production
  of nominal expressions.

  This workshop will try to bridge the gap between theory and
  practice in this area by focusing on the generation of nominal
  expressions of different linguistic types including, for example,
  indefinite and quantificational NPs (of different monotonicity
  types).

  The theme of the workshop is closely related to that of a number
  of ongoing research projects, including the GNOME (`Generation of
  NOMinal Expressions') project, in which the ITRI (Brighton) and
  HCRC (Edinburgh/Durham) collaborate, and which is funded by the
  EPSRC in the United Kingdom.

  Topics for which submissions are invited include:

 (1) The influence of discourse context on the appropriateness
     and interpretation of a nominal expression
 (2) Descriptive issues concerning the treatment of plurality,
     bridging, aggregation, eventualities, discourse deixis,
     cross-modal reference, etc.
 (3) Representational issues (i.e., what kind of meaning
     representations should form the input to the generation
     algorithm?)
 (4) Reversibility of grammars
 (5) Differences in textual style or `genre'
 (6) Psycholinguistic research relevant to computational
     Natural Language Generation (NLG)
 (7) Corpus-based work leading to insights relevant for
     computational NLG
 (8) Issues of system/algorithm evaluation.

Practical issues:

We welcome short (i.e., roughly 1000-1500 words) electronic
submissions (send email to Rodger.Kibble at itri.brighton.ac.uk)
on the theme of the workshop. Submissions should be in Postscript
or plain ascii. Please include "ESSLLI99" in the Subject line of
your message to make things easy for us.  The deadline for
receipt of abstracts is March 1st; submissions may also be sent by post
to the address below, but they must reach ITRI by this date.

In accordance with the description of the Workshop Description,
we encourage submissions about theoretical (e.g., formal semantic
or psycholinguistic), applied, or corpus-based work, as long as
the work is clearly relevant for NLG programs. No matter what
they consider the main focus of their work, we ask authors to
*stress relevance for NLG* in their submission (and, later, in
their presentation). This will ensure that all contributions will
contain a common `core', notwithstanding their differences in
perspective.

It is ESSLLI's practice to make sure that workshops go ahead only
if there turns out to be a sufficient level of interest, based on
quantity and quality of submissions.

Workshop speakers are required to register for the Summer School;
however, workshop speakers will be able to register at a reduced
rate to be determined by the Organizing Committee. Limited funds
are available to contribute to speakers' expenses in exceptional
circumstances.

Important dates:

- First call for papers: 22 October 1998
- Second call for papers: 28 January 1999
- Deadline for submissions of abstracts: *** 15 March 1999 ***
- Notification of acceptance: 1 May 1999
- Workshop to be held: August 9-13

For any questions, please contact the organizers or
consult our web page at
<http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/projects/gnome/esslli99.html>.

Rodger Kibble & Kees van Deemter
Information Technology Research Institute (ITRI)
University of Brighton
Lewes Road, Watts Building
Brighton BN2 4GJ
United Kingdom

Email: Rodger.Kibble at itri.brighton.ac.uk
       Kees.van.Deemter at itri.brighton.ac.uk
Fax: +44 1273 642908

-------------------------------- Message 2 -------------------------------

Date:  Mon, 1 Mar 1999 17:45:13 +0100 (MET)
From:  Anne Reboul <Anne.Reboul at loria.fr>
Subject:  LICSSOL 1

The Lyon Institute for Cognitive Science (LICS) is hosting The First
International Symposium on Linguistics (LICSSOL1) October 12-15, 1999
Lyon, FRANCE.

The Lyon Institute for Cognitive Science is pleased to announce its
first international conference in linguistics to be held at the
institute on the following topic:

               Economy in Language Design, Computation and Use

 Notions of 'least effort' and 'economy' in a pretheoritical sense
have always played a part in explanations concerning language use,
evolution and design; they became an important formal construct with
the rise of Generative Grammar in the mid fifties and their role is
now again at the center of much contemporary research in phonology,
syntax, semantics and pragmatics.

  This is particularly true of recent work prompted by what is known
as the"Minimalist Program" of Generative Grammar. At the core of this
research program are two distinct but related notions of ecomony; the
first one investigates how parcimonious the Faculty of Language "FL"
is in availing the speakers' Internal Language "IL" with devices
providing access to other components of the mind/brain: should one
countenance more than the structures and features that enter into the
Logical Form (meaning) and the Phonetic Form (sound) of utterances?
The second one attempts to find out how considerations of economy
enter into the way linguistic expressions are generated; do
computations that are more economical along well-defined dimensions
--e.g. number of steps, "distance", "weight", "structural complexity"
etc.-- block less economical ones? Can economy in this latter sense
always be construed "locally" or should the theory of FL also allow
for a more "global" notion.

 In a related, though clearly distinct sense, post-Gricean pragmatics,
in particular Sperber's and Wilson's theory of Relevance, devotes a
great deal of attention to considerations of economy. It has by now
been convincingly shown that the pragmatic interpretation of
utterances is under-determined by the strictly linguistic
information. If so, the question of how and on what (formal) basis
speakers and hearers select contextual information is evidently
crucial. Relevance theory suggests that the mecanisms that make that
selection possible rest on a general economy principle that require
that a balance be found between processing costs and interpretive
gains.

 Notions of economy also play a role in various areas of formal
semantics.  Sample issues investigated in this perspective concern the
role of economy in favoring certain quantifier scope interpretations,
in resolving anaphoric processes in their broadest sense --including
focus determination, VP elipsis etc.-- or in limiting the availability
of recourse to op-erations such as type shifting etc.  As for
Phonology one need hardly stress that much contemporary debate centers
on the best way to encode considerations of simplicity economy and
optimality into a suitable formalism.

 It is the organisers' hope that this symposium will help refine the
various notions of economy sketched above and promote fruitful
interdisciplinary research on this topic by providing a suitable
format for comparison, confrontation and debate. The conference will
have 4 sessions; each session will have six one hour presentations (45
minutes talks + 15 minutes discussions); each session will have a
number of guest lecturers whose work has played a major part in
shaping and/or reintroducing issues of economy in contemporary
linguistic research.

Invited speakers:
Nicholas Asher, Gennaro Chierchia, Tanya Reinhart (semantics) Diane
Blakemore, Jacques Moeschler, Deirdre Wilson (pragmatics) Chris
Collins, Luigi Rizzi, Edwin Williams (syntax) Franois Dell, Morris
Halle, Alan Prince (phonology)

 Linguists are invited to send 5 copies of their anonymous two page
abstracts to:

Economy Conference Selection committee,
c/o Viviane Dprez, Jean-Yves Pollock & Anne Reboul
Institut des Sciences Cognitives
CNRS UPR 9075,
67 Boulevard Pinel
69675 Bron cedex
France

or by email berger at isc.cnrs.fr

Deadline for submission: May 1, 1999
Results of the selection process no later than July 1, 1999

call for papers : http://www.isc.cnrs.fr/cilisc1eng.htm

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-10-325