Logic List Mailing Archive

DSALT: Distributional Semantics and Linguistic Theory

15-19 Aug 2016
Bolzano, Italy

Second Call for Papers for

DSALT: Distributional Semantics and Linguistic Theory
ESSLLI 2016 Workshop

15-19 August 2016, Bolzano, Italy

* Two-page abstract submission deadline: April 7 2016 *

URL: http://esslli2016.unibz.it/?page_id=256

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

The DSALT workshop seeks to foster discussion at the intersection of
distributional semantics and various subfields of theoretical linguistics,
with the goal of boosting the impact of distributional semantics on
linguistic research beyond lexical semantic phenomena, as well as
broadening the empirical basis and theoretical tools used in linguistics.
We welcome contributions regarding the theoretical interpretation  of
distributional vector spaces and/or their application to theoretical
morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse, dialogue, and any other subfield
of linguistics. Potential topics of interest include, among others:

* distributional semantics and morphology: How do results in the
distributional semantics-morphology interface impact theoretical accounts
of morphology? Can distributional models account for inflectional
morphology? Can they shed light on phenomena like productivity and
regularity?

* distributional semantics and syntax: How can compositionality at the
semantic level interact with syntactic structure? Can we go beyond the
state of the art in accounting for the syntax-semantics interface when it
interacts with lexical semantics? How can distributional accounts for
gradable syntactic phenomena, e.g. selectional preferences or argument
alternations, be integrated into theoretical linguistic accounts?

* distributional semantics and formal semantics: How can distributional
representations be related to the traditional components of a semantics for
natural languages, especially reference and truth? Can distributional
models be integrated with discourse- or dialogue-oriented semantic theories
like file change semantics or inquisitive semantics?

* distributional semantics and discourse: Distributional semantics has
shown to be able to model some aspects of discourse coherence at a global
level (Landauer and Dumais 1997, a.o.); can it also help with other
discourse-related phenomena, such as the choice of discourse particles,
nominal and verbal anaphora, or the form of referring expressions as
discourse unfolds?

* distributional semantics and dialogue: Distributional semantics has
traditionally been mostly static, in the sense that it creates a semantic
representation for a word once and for all. Can it be made dynamic so it
can help model, for example, phenomena related to Questions Under
Discussion (QUDs) in dialogue? Can distributional representations help
predict the relations between utterance units in dialogue?

* distributional semantics and pragmatics: Distributional semantics is
based on the statistics of language use, and therefore should include
information related to pragmatics of language. How do distributional models
relate to such aspects of pragmatics as focus, pragmatic presupposition, or
conversational implicature?

SUBMISSIONS

We solicit two-page (plus references) abstracts in at most 11pt font. No
proceedings will be published, so workshop submissions may discuss
published work (as well as unpublished work). The abstract submission
deadline is April 7, 2016. Submissions are accepted by email at
dsalt2016@gmail.com <dissalt@gmail.com>.

IMPORTANT DATES

Deadline for abstract submission: April 7 2016

Author notification: May 15 2016

Workshop dates: August 15-19 2016

INVITED SPEAKERS

Marco Baroni (University of Trento)

Katrin Erk (University of Texas at Austin)

Aurélie Herbelot (University of Trento)

Alessandro Lenci (University of Pisa)

Jason Weston (Facebook)

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

Nicholas Asher, Marco Baroni, Emily Bender, Robin Cooper, Ann Copestake,
Katrin Erk, Ed Greffenstette, Aurelie Herbelot, Alessandro Lenci, Marco
Marelli, Louise McNally, Sebastian Pado, Barbara Partee, Laura Rimell, Mark
Steedman, Bonnie Webber, Galit Weidman Sassoon, Roberto Zamparelli.

ORGANIZERS

Gemma Boleda (University of Trento)

Denis Paperno (University of Trento)
--
[LOGIC] mailing list
http://www.dvmlg.de/mailingliste.html
Archive: http://www.illc.uva.nl/LogicList/

provided by a collaboration of the DVMLG, the Maths Departments in Bonn and Hamburg, and the ILLC at the Universiteit van Amsterdam