37.2285, Confs: APPROX-IA 2027: Approximation, Human Judgments and LLMs (France)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2285. Wed Jul 08 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2285, Confs: APPROX-IA 2027: Approximation, Human Judgments and LLMs (France)

Moderator: Steven Moran (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Valeriia Vyshnevetska
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Mara Baccaro, Daniel Swanson
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Editor for this issue: Valeriia Vyshnevetska <valeriia at linguistlist.org>

================================================================


Date: 07-Jul-2026
From: Basilio Calderone [basilio.calderone at u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr]
Subject: APPROX-IA 2027: Approximation, Human Judgments and LLMs


APPROX-IA 2027: Approximation, Human Judgments and LLMs
Short Title: APPROX-IA 2027
Theme: Approximation, human judgments and plausibility of large
language models

Date: 25-Mar-2027 - 26-Mar-2027
Location: Bordeaux, France
Meeting URL: https://approx-ia.github.io/

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; Pragmatics;
Psycholinguistics; Semantics; Text/Corpus Linguistics

Submission Deadline: 15-Jan-2027

Natural languages make extensive use of approximative expressions:
forms that describe an event, state or situation as being close to a
threshold, a goal or an expected outcome, without necessarily reaching
it. This domain includes scalar approximators such as almost, nearly,
barely and hardly, as well as constructions expressing
near-attainment, near-avoidance, unrealized outcomes or frustrated
expectations, including be about to, be on the verge of, come close
to, try to and attempt to, especially when these constructions are
interpreted in contexts of non-realization, failed realization or
frustrated expectation.
Approximatives have been studied in semantics and pragmatics as
expressions involving scalar structure, contextual thresholds and
non-realization. Work on almost, barely and related words in other
languages has examined how speakers determine what counts as
sufficiently close to a threshold, and how this judgment is affected
by granularity, causal proximity and prior expectations (Nouwen 2006;
Penka 2006; Gerstenberg & Tenenbaum 2016). In addition, the domain of
approximatives has intriguing connections to modality, intention,
expectation and aspect, as shown by constructions of near-attainment,
averted outcomes and frustrated expectations (Kuteva 1998; Vincent
2013; Collins 2014; Kroeger 2017; Overall 2017; Matthewson et al.
2022; Everdell & Nadathur 2025).
This makes approximatives a rich test case for comparing human
pragmatic judgments with the behavior of LLMs. Unlike tasks with a
single correct answer, approximatives often involve graded
acceptability, speaker variation and intermediate zones where meaning
is neither fully true nor fully false. The central question is
therefore not only whether LLMs provide the “right” interpretation,
but whether their response profiles resemble those of human speakers:
whether they draw similar thresholds, react to the same contextual
cues, reproduce zones of agreement and disagreement, and show
sensitivity to expectation, intention and causal structure.
The APPROX-IA workshop brings together researchers working on
approximation from different perspectives, including semantics,
pragmatics, psycholinguistics, typology, cognitive modeling and LLM
evaluation. The workshop uses approximatives as a test case for
investigating where human interpretation and LLM behavior converge or
diverge, and what these patterns reveal about pragmatic competence,
model evaluation and linguistic theory.
Relevant Questions:
- Do humans and LLMs draw similar thresholds for expressions such as
almost, nearly, barely and hardly?
- Do LLMs reproduce human zones of agreement, disagreement and
uncertainty?
- How do humans and LLMs interpret near-attainment, near-avoidance and
unrealized outcomes, as in constructions such as be about to, be on
the verge of, try to or attempt to?
- Are LLMs sensitive to contextual factors such as intention,
expectation, causality and prior plausibility?
- How stable are LLM responses across prompts, runs and model
families?
- Can human–LLM comparison help us refine both theories of pragmatic
interpretation and evaluation protocols for language models?
Relevant Topics:
We invite contributions that use approximatives, broadly construed, to
investigate the relation between human interpretation and LLM
behavior. Submissions may be theoretical, experimental,
cross-linguistic, computational or methodological.
- human judgments and LLM behavior on approximative expressions;
- scalar approximators such as almost, nearly, barely and hardly and
related words across languages;
- verbal approximatives and constructions expressing near-attainment,
near-avoidance, unrealized outcomes or frustrated expectations;
conative, frustrative, avertive and apprehensional constructions;
- prospective or proximal-future expressions, and related phenomena
involving thresholds, partial realization, failed outcomes or
contextual margins;
- approximation and granularity: thresholds, margins, contextual
modulation;
- experimental pragmatics of approximation: acceptability, forced
choice, graded ratings, response variability;
- LLM pragmatics and evaluation: pragmatic reasoning, robustness,
calibration, non-literal meaning;
- human–LLM comparison protocols: prompt design, reproducibility,
stability across runs, agreement/disagreement analyses;
- quantitative measures: surprisal, semantic similarity,
alignment/misalignment indices, modeling of response profiles;
- cross-linguistic variation in approximative expressions and
human–LLM alignment;
- resources, datasets, guidelines, code and reproducible releases.



------------------------------------------------------------------------------

********************** LINGUIST List Support ***********************
Please consider donating to the Linguist List, a U.S. 501(c)(3) not for profit organization:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=87C2AXTVC4PP8

LINGUIST List is supported by the following publishers:

Australian Linguistics Society https://als.asn.au/Home

Bloomsbury Publishing http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/

Cambridge University Press http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics

Cascadilla Press http://www.cascadilla.com/

Edinburgh University Press http://www.edinburghuniversitypress.com

Language Science Press http://langsci-press.org

Lincom GmbH https://lincom-shop.eu/

MIT Press http://mitpress.mit.edu/

Multilingual Matters http://www.multilingual-matters.com/

Wiley http://www.wiley.com


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2285
----------------------------------------------------------