20.1272, Calls: Philosophy of Lang,Semantics,Typology/Germany

Sun Apr 5 15:50:47 UTC 2009

LINGUIST List: Vol-20-1272. Sun Apr 05 2009. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 20.1272, Calls: Philosophy of Lang,Semantics,Typology/Germany

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1)
Date: 03-Apr-2009
From: Thomas Gamerschlag < gamer at phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de >
Subject: Concept Types & Frames in Language,Cognition & Science

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 11:47:14
From: Thomas Gamerschlag [gamer at phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de]
Subject: Concept Types & Frames in Language,Cognition & Science

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Full Title: Concept Types & Frames in Language,Cognition & Science 
Short Title: CTF09 

Date: 24-Aug-2009 - 26-Aug-2009
Location: Duesseldorf, Germany 
Contact Person: Anna Grabowski
Meeting Email: ctf at phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de
Web Site:
http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/fff/fff-conference-ctf09/first-announcement/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Philosophy of Language; Semantics; Typology 

Call Deadline: 15-Apr-2009 

Meeting Description:

The topic of the conference is the investigation of concept types of nouns and
verbs and their respective relationships to frames. Frames provide a recursive
device for representing knowledge about arbitrary objects and categories by
means of attributes and their values. They offer a flexible way of representing
concepts of different types in language, philosophy and sciences at different
levels of detail and at different stages of development or processing. The
interdisciplinary conference combines approaches from linguistics, computational
linguistics, mathematics, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, philosophy,
philosophy of science, and the history of science.

The conference will be held in English. 

Last Call for Papers

Extended Deadline: April 15

http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/fff/fff-conference-ctf09/overview-call/

Invited Speakers:
Barbara Abbott, Lawrence W. Barsalou, Jerry Hobbs, Beth Levin, James
Pustejovsky, Barry Smith, Paul Thagard

Linguistic Perspectives:
Nouns in natural language correspond to different basic types of concepts.
Sortal nouns (e.g. 'cow', 'table', 'adjective') constitute the unmarked type of
nouns; individual nouns (e.g. 'Mary', 'pope', 'moon') and functional nouns (e.g.
'mother', 'head', 'size') are marked in being inherently unique; relational
nouns (e.g. 'son', 'leg', 'modifier') and functional nouns are marked by
involving one or more additional arguments. The linguistic perspective on noun
types includes determination in general and productive type shifts, as both
permit systematic transitions between types of nouns. The types of nouns can be
modelled by frames of different types. 

A second focus is on verbs: dimensional verbs such as 'cost', 'last', 'widen',
and 'cool' can incorporate functional concepts as well. Moreover, verbs also
lend themselves naturally to a frame account of lexical meaning. A systematic
frame analysis of verb and noun meanings promises a substantial contribution to
theories of both syntactic and semantic composition. Among the different concept
types, functional concepts are
of particular interest since they directly correspond to attributes in frames.
Therefore, they play a central role not only in linguistics but in conceptual
and theoretical evolution in general.

Philosophical and Cognitive Perspectives:
Frames, in Barsalou's sense, are recursive attribute-value structures. While
frames can be used to implement individual and sortal concepts, their attributes
can themselves be analysed as recursively interrelated functional concepts.
Given that frames are the basic format of concept formation in cognition,
attributes and frames might have neural correlates in our brains. Frames are a
natural linguistic and conceptual format for the representation of complex
ontologies that embody substance-accidence and part-whole relations. Of
particular interest is the relation of frames to complex representational
formats such as conceptual spaces and mental models. Functional concepts and
frames play a crucial role in the human evolution of a stable cognitive
framework for communication and cooperation, in everyday life, as well as in
science. Insofar as the objects of scientific disciplines are defined in terms
of underlying frames, Kuhnian paradigm shifts are related to changes in the
frames employed in science.

The conference invites contributions to the following topics:

Types of nouns and types of determination
- typological characteristics of non-sortal noun types
- compositional properties of non-sortal noun types
- typological accounts of determination, in particular definiteness and possession
- historical development of functional and relational nouns and their
grammatical integration
- automatic classification of noun types in natural language corpora

The vocabulary of dimensions: semantics, typology, and evolution
- abstract functional nouns ('price', 'temperature', 'meaning')
- dimensional adjectives
- stative dimensional verbs ('cost', 'weigh', 'mean')
- dynamic dimensional verbs, in particular degree achievements

Lexical decomposition using frames
- frames for types of nouns
- frames for types of verbs
- large frame systems in the lexicon

Frame approaches to word formation
- frame analysis of compounds
- frame analysis of deverbal nouns

Frames in cognition
- functional and relational frames in cognition
- neural correlates and computational modelling of functional concepts and frames

Frames in science and philosophy
- functional concepts and frames in scientific theory and practice from a
historical perspective, in particular in the history of medical science
- functional and relational concepts and frames in philosophical terminology,
ontology, and metaphysics
- the relation of paradigm shifts to changes in scientific frames
- the structure of scientific ontologies, especially in medicine, biology, and
metaphysics Frame theory
- formalization and computational modelling of functional and relational
concepts and frames
- algebraic properties of frame spaces and spaces of attributes
- value spaces of attributes

Important Dates:
- Conference: 24-26 August
- Submission: April 15 (extended deadline), please use Easyabs for submission
and submit your abstract (not more than 1000 words) anonymously: 
http://linguistlist.org/confcustom/CTF09
- Notification: 30 May

General Chair:
Sebastian Löbner

Scientific Board:
Heiner Fangerau, Hans Geisler, James Kilbury, Gerhard Schurz, Robert D. Van
Valin,Jr., Markus Werning

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LINGUIST List: Vol-20-1272	