20-22 August 2007
Duesseldorf, Germany
Conference Annoncement "Concept Types and Frames in Language, Cognition,
and Science " in D?sseldorf
First Call for Papers
- Please circulate, apologies for multiple posting -
Concept Types and Frames in Language, Cognition, and Science
International Conference
D?sseldorf (GER), August 20-22, 2007
Heinrich-Heine University D?sseldorf
Research Unit: Functional Concepts and Frames
http://phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/fff/ctf/
Invited speakers:
Lawrence Barsalou
Xiang Chen
Charles Fillmore
Peter Gaerdenfors
Nicola Guarino
William McGregor
Peter Simons
Barbara Partee
Jeff Pelletier
Friedemann Pulverm?ller
The topic of the conference is the investigation of concept types (sortal,
relational, individual and functional concepts) and their respective
relationships to frames (recursive attribute-value structures). The
interdisciplinary conference combines approaches from linguistics,
computational linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, philosophy of science
and the history of science.
General chair: Sebastian L?bner
Organization: Thomas Gamerschlag, Christian Horn, Albert Ortmann, Markus
Werning, Stefanie Zaun
Scientific board: Heiner Fangerau, Hans Geisler, Christoph Kann, Jim
Kilbury, Gerhard Schurz, Ede Zimmermann
Administration & contact: Anna Grabowski (ctf@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de)
Linguistic perspectives
Nouns in natural language can be related to different basic types of
concepts. The basic types are sortal nouns (cow); individual nouns (e.g.
proper names) and functional nouns (size) are marked as inherently unique;
relational nouns (part) and functional nouns are marked by involving one
or more additional arguments. The focus of the conference is on functional
nouns. Linguistically, functional nouns are linked to grammatical
phenomena such as possessive constructions and definiteness. Cognitively,
functional concepts enable the unique identification of referents, for
example as unique parts of wholes, or as unique values of attributes.
Therefore, functional nouns and concepts are of special importance in the
advanced evolution of human language and scientific terminology. In fact,
most lexicalised functional concepts are the products of complex
linguistic developments. 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 brain. 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 a scientific disciplines are defined in terms of underlying
frames, Kuhnian paradigm shifts are related to changes in the frames
employed science.
The conference invites contributions to the following topics:
* Semantics and logic of concept types, in particular of functional,
relational and individual nouns.
* Typological characteristics of functional, relational and individual
nouns, including the typology of possession and definiteness.
* Historical development of functional and relational nouns and their
grammatical integration.
* Semantics, typology and evolution of stative dimensional verbs such
as cost, weigh, mean.
* Automatic classification of noun types in natural language corpora.
* Frames as meaning representations in compositional and mpositional
ntics.
* The evolution of meaning and the role of functional concepts and
frames therein.
* The structure of scientific ontologies, especially in medicine and
biology, and their relation to functional concepts and frames.
* The development of central functional concepts such as "substance"
in the history of metaphysics.
* Functional concepts and frames in scientific theory and practice,
from a historical perspective, in particular in the history of
medical science.
* The relation of changes of scientific frames to paradigm shifts.
* Potential neural correlates and neural net models of functional epts
and frames.
* Formalization and computational modeling of functional concepts and
frames.
Abstract submissions of no more than 500 words are due by March 1, 2007.
Please use the online submission form at:
http://phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/fff/ctf/
For further information please email to: ctf@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de.
The conference is sponsored by the DFG (German Research Foundation).