18.1410, Calls: General Ling/Italy; Applied Ling/Finland

Wed May 9 15:24:58 UTC 2007

LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1410. Wed May 09 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 18.1410, Calls: General Ling/Italy; Applied Ling/Finland

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

1)
Date: 09-May-2007
From: Senso Comune < segreteria at senso-comune.it >
Subject: Cooperative Construction of Linguistic Knowledge Bases 

2)
Date: 08-May-2007
From: Fred Dervin < freder at utu.fi >
Subject: Lingua Francae in the Nordic Countries: Workshop

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 11:21:18
From: Senso Comune < segreteria at senso-comune.it >
Subject: Cooperative Construction of Linguistic Knowledge Bases 

Full Title: Cooperative Construction of Linguistic Knowledge Bases 

Date: 10-Sep-2007 - 10-Sep-2007
Location: Rome, Italy 
Contact Person: Guido Vetere
Meeting Email: segreteria at senso-comune.it
Web Site: http://www.senso-comune.it/pages/aiia2007/workshop.html 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 11-Jun-2007 

Meeting Description:

Workshop 'Cooperative Construction of Linguistic Knowledge Bases', organized by
Senso Comune (www.senso-comune.it) at the 10th Congress of Italian Association
for Artificial Intelligence, AIIA 2007 (aiia.info.uniroma2.it/)
Rome September 10-13 2007 

Key to the ''Semantic Web'' vision is the intuition that in order for the Web's
content to be fully exploited, automatic systems must be given the ability to
interpret words as carriers of meaning, rather than just tags. As a global place
where people and systems talk to each other, the Web reflects today the
complexity of natural language. Hence, the Web's development is necessarily
heavily tied to natural language semantics. 
Linguistic ontologies are usually regarded as knowledge bases for enabling
automatic systems performing crucial tasks such as information extraction and
semantic search. Thus the problem of acquiring, maintaining and enhancing these
knowledge bases is one of the most relevant tasks for the Web community. 
Natural languages are social products whose main strength is the consensus of
the speakers. The usual approach to the development of linguistic ontologies,
however, is merely authoritative. This approach reveals two major drawbacks: on
one hand, the volume of natural language senses, along with their relationships,
overwhelms the capability of any singular authority; on the other hand, the
continuous creation of sense within concrete communities can hardly be framed by
highly structured regulation activities. 
A novel promising approach to the acquisition of linguistic knowledge bases
starts from the idea of a direct exploitation of human communities. Huge
encyclopedic resources such as Wikipedia have been freely built by large
communities, thus it is reasonable to pose the question whether a
community-based approach can be applied to the creation of linguistic knowledge.

Topics:

A number of relevant issues are to be addressed when approaching the cooperative
construction of linguistic knowledge bases: 
- Formal representation of linguistic resources 
- Natural language semantics and foundational ontologies 
- Reasoning tasks and reasoning techniques for the construction of linguistic
knowledge bases 
- Acquisition and enrichment of lexical resources 
- Interoperability with lexical databases 
- Learning, evaluation, and revision of linguistic knowledge bases 
- Methodologies for the cooperative construction of linguistic knowledge bases 
- Human interfaces for the rapid creation of linguistic knowledge bases 

Paper Submission Format:

We encourage submissions of long (8 pages) papers describing completed and
ongoing research, as well as short (4 pages) papers describing tools. There will
also be a demo session where tools can be presented. Standing the page limits
defined above, please follow the main AIIA submission format when preparing your
paper. Submissions are due in PDF format attached to an email sent to the
following email address: segreteria at senso-comune.it 

Important Dates: 

Deadline for paper submission: June 11th 2007 
Notification of workshop paper acceptance: July 6th 2007 
Camera-ready workshop papers: July 20, 2007

-------------------------Message 2 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 11:21:25
From: Fred Dervin < freder at utu.fi >
Subject: Lingua Francae in the Nordic Countries: Workshop 

Full Title: Lingua Francae in the Nordic Countries: Workshop 

Date: 26-Oct-2007 - 27-Oct-2007
Location: Åbo Akademi University, Finland 
Contact Person: Fred Dervin
Meeting Email: freder at utu.fi
Web Site: http://www.etmu.fi/etmudays/eng/2nd_call_eng.html 

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 10-Sep-2007 

Meeting Description:

Workshop on lingua francae in the Nordic countries. To take place at the
following conference:
Nordic Migrations: Past & Present
October 26-27, 2007
Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland 

This is a call for papers for a workshop that will take place at ETMU 2007
(Finland, cf. http://www.etmu.fi/etmudays/eng/2nd_call_eng.html).

Title of the workshop: Living, working and studying in lingua francae in the
Nordic countries: the case of migrants.  

Lingua francae are languages that some people use to communicate with others,
and of whom none of the interlocutors is a native speaker. With the current
surge in physical and virtual mobility, the use of lingua francae is becoming
more widespread, positioning any language as a potential mediating language
between people. 

The aim of this workshop is to gather researchers who are currently involved in
research on migrants' use of lingua francae in the Nordic countries.

The overarching philosophy of the workshop is that lingua francae are
''benefic'' and ''normal'', and that they are neither ''impure'', nor signs of
''lost identities''. 

The contexts of use under scrutiny will be living, working and studying. 

Contexts of use can include (among others):
-The use of lingua francae in close relationships (friendship, couples, etc.);
-The use of lingua francae in casual encounters;
-The use of lingua francae in tourism;
-The use of lingua francae in shopping;
-The use of lingua francae in business;
-The use of lingua francae on the streets;
-The use of lingua francae in classrooms.

Research topics that are of interest:
-Problems involved in lingua francae communication;
-Code-switching/code-mixing in lingua francae communication;
-Representations of lingua francae users on the use of lingua francae
(co-/construction of identities);
-Representations of non-lingua francae users on the use of lingua francae;
-Representations of lingua francae in cinema, literature, media in general;
-Intercultural communication and lingua francae.

The language of the workshop is English but any lingua franca can be dealt with.

Abstracts should be sent to the workshop coordinator: Fred Dervin, The
University of Turku, freder at utu.fi 

The length of the paper abstract is ca. 200 words. The abstract should also
include the name of the participant, contact information, organisation and the
name of the workshop. The organisers reserve themselves the right to move papers
between sessions. Suggestions should also specify the language of the paper to
be used and are to be submitted by 10th September 2007.

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