27.462, Calls: Cog Sci, Computational Ling, Lang Acq, Neuroling, Psycholing/Italy

Mon Jan 25 15:24:46 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-462. Mon Jan 25 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.462, Calls: Cog Sci, Computational Ling, Lang Acq, Neuroling, Psycholing/Italy

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Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 10:24:25
From: Alessandro Panunzi [alessandro.panunzi at unifi.it]
Subject: MODELACT Conference on Action, Language and Cognition

Full Title: MODELACT Conference on Action, Language and Cognition 

Date: 06-Jun-2016 - 07-Jun-2016
Location: Roma, Italy 
Contact Person: Alessandro Panunzi
Meeting Email: alessandro.panunzi at unifi.it
Web Site: http://modelact.lablita.it/main.pages/conference.html 

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; Computational Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Neurolinguistics; Psycholinguistics; Semantics 

Call Deadline: 29-Feb-2016 

Meeting Description:

In the last decade the relations between language, action, and cognition have
been investigated from a wide range of perspectives, including semantics,
neurosciences, psychology, philosophy, computational linguistics, and
robotics.

As a matter of fact, action verbs bear the basic information that should be
understood in order to make sense of everyday sentences, but their lexical
encoding remarkably differ from language to language. For this reason, both
the semantic disambiguation and the mutual translation of action verbs in
natural languages are problematic.

In language acquisition (and specifically for sign languages, which rely on a
visual-gestural modality) the link between the conceptualization of actions
and their physical performance through the body become crucial, since gestures
anticipate linguistic behaviors in the early stages of child development.

>From another point of view, the processing of action related sentences
involves the activation of the motor system in the brain, leading to an
embodied representations of the the linguistic meaning. More in general,
neuroscientists investigated the systems which underlie both language and
sensorimotor faculties, and developed models in which linguistic, cognitive
and motor abilities strictly interact.

Researches on recognition, categorization, and execution of actions have also
been exploited in the field of robotics, in order to conceive artificial
systems that can understand instructions and perform actions in accordance to
a human-centered model. These researches have been often carried out in
connection to computer vision tasks, which turn out to be essential for action
recognition and for anchoring words (referring to the objects implied in the
actions) to the real word entities.

In recent years, several important European projects and initiatives have been
developed in order explore the connections among actions, cognition, and
linguistic abilities, with a particular attention to robotics and automatic
systems (Poeticon++, Robot-Era, THE Hand Embodied, ACat).

Among them, the MODELACT Project (based on the IMAGACT linguistic ontology of
action) aims to identify how cognitive and linguistic action categories are
defined in humans, and to develop models that can be used to take account of
these facts. The project board promotes the MODELACT Conference on ''Action,
Language and Cognition'' (to be held in Rome on 6-7 June 2016), which intends
to represent a meeting point for the widening community that is concerned with
the above-mentioned research topics and fields.

Organizing and Programme Committee: 

- Alessandro Panunzi (Università di Firenze)
- Monica Malvezzi (Università di Siena)
- Irene Russo (ILC-CNR Pisa)
- Elena Tomasuolo (ISTC-CNR Roma)

Scientific Committee: 

- Olga Capirci (ISTC-CNR Roma)
- Maria Cristina Caselli (ISTC-CNR Roma)
- Monica Monachini (ILC-CNR Pisa)
- Massimo Moneglia (Università di Firenze)
- Alberto Peruzzi (Università di Firenze)
- Domenico Prattichizzo (Università di Siena)
- Marco Tettamanti (Ospedale San Raffaele)
- Virginia Volterra (ISTC-CNR Roma)
- Silvano Zipoli Caiani (Università di Firenze)

2nd Call for Papers: 

The Organizing and Programme Committee of the MODELACT Conference on Language,
Action and Cognition invites submissions for both talk and poster
contributions. Abstracts 
should be written in English (recommended) or Italian, and should not exceed
1000 words 
including title, main text and references.

Please send your proposals as anonymous documents in txt, doc, or pdf format,
attached 
to an email containing your personal information (name, surname, and
affiliation), 
specifying the main topics of interest (maximum 2 topics; see the list below)
and if your 
proposal is intended as a talk or as a poster contribution (the programme
committee 
reserves the right to change the type of the presentation).

The attendance to the Conference is free of charge, but participants are
limited in number 
(registration required). Please send a registration confirmation to the email
address 
specified below.

For submissions, registrations, and information about the conference, please
write to:
alessandro.panunzi at unifi.it

Important Dates: 

- Abstract submission: February 29, 2016
- Communication of acceptance: March 20, 2016

Invited Speakers: 

- Anna Borghi (University of Bologna)
- Angelo Cangelosi (Plymouth University)
- Luciano Fadiga (University of Ferrara)

Topics of Interest:

- Semantics of action
- Action categorization in language and cognition
- Action verbs in multilingualism and translation
- Language typology and action verb lexical encoding
- Acquisition of action-related lexicon in spoken and sign languages
- Representation of action in sign languages
- Embodied / grounded cognition of action
- Action and language in the brain
- Action processing and motor representation
- Action verbs and natural language processing
- Automatic processing of visual and linguistic information related to action
- Linguistic and visual bases of knowledge for the representation of action
- Action recognition and motor skills in artificial systems
- Tools, affordances, and gestures in language and cognition
- Action and motion verbs in figurative language
- Abstract concepts representation
- Actions and tools in novel concept formation

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