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9th Szklarska Poreba Workshop on the Roots of Pragmasemantics, Szklarska Poreba (Poland), 21-25 Feb 2008

=Announcement and Call for Papers=

9th Szklarska Poreba Workshop on the Roots of Pragmasemantics
February 21--25, 2008
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~sjagerde/szklarska/

This is to announce the ninth installment of the workshop that takes
linguists and experimental philosophers to the ski slopes. It will be held
February 21--25 2008, on the mountaintop Szrenica, Poland (the same
location as every year).

=Submission of abstracts=

We invite authors to submit a one-page abstract to Jakub Szymanik before
January 1st, for a talk of between 30 and 45 minutes (including
discussion). Authors will be notified of acceptance by January 15th. Very
welcome would also be proposals for the non-scientific programme,
preferably to Marc Staudacher. (See below for email addresses.)

=Workshop themes=

The workshop aims to bring together linguists, philosophers, logicians, and
all others interested in the semantics and pragmatics of natural
language. This year the theme is *Complexity and Language* -- as usual this
'hot topic' should not exclude submissions on other subjects, but talks
relating typical Szklarska Poreba concerns to complexity are especially
welcome. We prefer new and original ideas, even if the material is not
fully ripe and the presentation still tentative.

Especially relevant topics include:

 * Definitions of complexity relevant to language
 * The relation of complexity to markedness
 * Pragmatics as a strategy for reducing complexity
 * Formal complexity of language learning
 * Cognitive complexity of linguistic competence
 * Complexity in computational linguistics

And more traditional Szklarska Poreba themes:

 * Explicatures and implicatures
 * Fossilization theory
 * Lexical pragmatics
 * Experimental pragmatics
 * The architecture of the syntax/semantics interface
 * Diachronic aspects of syntax
 * Quantum cognition
 * Language and computation
 * Grammaticalization studies
 * Information structure and prosody
 * Licensing of polarity elements, quantification, etc.
 * The evolution of communication and language
 * Language typology
 * Evolutionary foundations of general pragmatic principles.

=Invited Speakers=

* Fritz Hamm
* Laszlo Kalman

=Early skiing request=

The possibility exists to hire cross-country skis, however we need to know
in advance who would be interested and (crucially) how big their feet are.

=All the best, and see you on the mountaintop!=

Organisation and programme committee:
* Jakub Szymanik (chair) <szymanik@science.uva.nl>
* Reinhard Blutner (accommodation) <blutner@uva.nl.de>
* Henk Zeevat (finances) <henk.zeevat@uva.nl>
* Nina Gierasimczuk (local coordinator) <nina.gierasimczuk@gmail.com>
* Marc Staudacher (social programme) <mstaudac@science.uva.nl>
* Tikitu de Jager <S.T.deJager@uva.nl>