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"Formal and experimental approaches to discourse particles and modal adverbs", Hamburg (Germany), 4-8 Aug 2008

LAST CALL FOR PAPERS
Formal and experimental approaches to discourse particles and modal adverbs
http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/fb10/schmitz/esslli2008/
August 4-8, 2008

organised as part of the European Summer School on Logic, Language and 
Information ESSLLI 2008 (http://www.illc.uva.nl/ESSLLI2008/), 415 August, 2
008 
in Hamburg, Germany

Workshop Organisers:
Hans-Christian Schmitz, schmitz@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de
Henk Zeevat, henk.zeevat@uva.nl

The workshop is organised in cooperation with the SIG Dialogue Systems of t
he 
Gesellschaft fr Linguististische Datenverarbeitung (GLDV, 
http://www.gldv.org).

Workshop Purpose and Topics:

Discourse particles and modal adverbs form a borderline case between semant
ics 
and pragmatics and so can be the source of new insights in these areas. The
 use 
of particles has been connected with discourse relations and other coherenc
e 
relations, the relation between semantic content and discourse context, 
especially the mutual knowledge and the common discourse goals of the disco
urse 
participants, with expression of speaker beliefs, desires and intentions an
d 
with the control of interpretations that go beyond semantic content, i.e.
 
explicatures and implicatures. And, last but not least, particles and modal
 
adverbs can contribute to expressive and other non-truth-conditional aspect
s of 
meaning. From the perspective of computational linguistics, these words are
 a 
promise, because it would seem that their treatment would help NLP systems 
to 
get a better grasp on the intentions of the user in interpretation and to
 
achieve natural and comprehensible output in generation.  However, they are
 
also a challenge, because their analysis seems to involve concepts beyond
 
current levels of sophistication.
The workshop proposes to collect contributions to the formal description an
d 
implementation of discourse particles and modal adverbs.   This third editi
on 
of workshop will in addition have a focus on the experimental investigation
 of 
the use and interpretation of discourse particles and modal adverbs, with a
 
special view to the validation of formal and computational approaches.

The workshop aims to provide a forum for researchers (including advanced Ph
D 
students) to present and discuss their work with colleagues and researchers
 who 
work in the broad subject of the disciplines relevant for particles and mod
al 
adverbs, as represented in ESSLLI.

Submission details:
Authors are invited to submit an anonymous, extended abstract. Submissions
 
should not exceed 2 pages, including references + a separate ID page with t
he 
authors names, affiliations and email-addresses. Submissions should be in P
DF 
format. Please send your submission electronically to both workshop organis
ers 
by the deadline listed below. The submissions will be reviewed by the 
workshop's programme committee.

Workshop format:
The workshop is part of ESSLLI and is open to all ESSLLI participants. It w
ill 
consist of five 90-minute sessions held over five consecutive days in the f
irst 
week of ESSLLI. There will be 2 slots for paper presentation and discussion
 per 
session. On the first day the workshop organisers will give an introduction
 to 
the topic.

Invited Speakers:
Christopher Potts, Amherst/ Mass.
Robyn Carston, UCL

Workshop Programme Committee:
Laura Alonso i Alemany, University of Crdoba, Argentina
Peter Bosch, University of Osnabrck
Regine Eckardt, University of Gttingen
Bart Geurts, University of Nijmegen
Rick Nouwen, University of Utrecht
Antje Rossdeutscher, University of Stuttgart
Hans-Christian Schmitz, University of Frankfurt
Bernhard Schrder, University of Duisburg-Essen
Manfred Stede, University of Potsdam
Henk Zeevat, University of Amsterdam
Thomas Ede Zimmermann, University of Frankfurt

Important Dates:
Submission Deadline: March 8, 2008
Notification: April 21, 2008
Preliminary programme: April 24, 2008
ESSLLI early registration: May 1, 2008
Final papers for proceedings: May 17, 2008
Final programme: June 21, 2008
Workshop dates: August 48, 2008

Local Arrangements: All workshop participants including the presenters will
 be 
required to register for ESSLLI. The registration fee for authors presentin
g a 
paper will correspond to the early student/workshop speaker registration fe
e. 
There will be no reimbursement for travel costs and accommodation.

Further Information:
About the workshop: http:////www.uni-frankfurt.de/fb10/schmitz/esslli2008/
About ESSLLI: http://www.illc.uva.nl/ESSLLI2008/