Subject: nominal expressions

first announcement and call for papers ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ esslli-99 workshop on the generation of nominal expressions university of utrecht , the netherlands 9-13 august 1999 context : the workshop will take place in association with the 11th european summer school " logic linguistics and information " ( esslli ) , to be held in utrecht , the netherlands , from 9-20 august 1999 . the format of the workshop is 5 x 90 minutes on the 5 consecutive days of 9 to 13 august 1999 . the esslli summer school is organized under the auspices of the european association for logic , language and information ( folli ) . previous esslli summer schools have been highly successful , attracting around 500 students from europe and elsewhere . the school has developed into an important meeting place and forum for discussion for students and researchers interested in the interdisciplinary study of logic , language and information . for more information see http : / / esslli . let . uu . nl . workshop description : if someone attempted to assess the ` state of the art ' of linguistic research on nominal expressions by looking at how present-day programs generate nominals , he or she would no doubt underestimate gravely the level of sophistication of theoretical work on nominals . it can be argued that this is because existing work on the computational generation of nominals has limited itself to relatively simple nominals , often focussing on simple ( singular ) definite descriptions and pronouns . alternatively , it might be contended that much of the theoretical work in this area is not mature enough to be appicable in generation . be this as it may , work on the generation of nominals has not profited much from theoretical research in formal semantics and psycholinguistics on the meaning , interpretation and production of nominal expressions . this workshop will try to bridge the gap between theory and practice in this area by focusing on the generation of nominal expressions of different linguistic types including , for example , indefinite and quantificational nps ( of different monotonicity types ) . the theme of the workshop is closely related to that of a number of ongoing research projects , including the gnome ( ` generation of nominal expressions ' ) project , in which the itri ( brighton ) and hcrc ( edinburgh / durham ) collaborate , and which is funded by the epsrc in the united kingdom . topics for which submissions are invited include : ( 1 ) the influence of discourse context on the appropriateness and interpretation of a nominal expression ( 2 ) descriptive issues concerning the treatment of plurality , bridging , aggregation , eventualities , reference to text , cross-modal reference , etc . ( 3 ) representational issues ( i . e . , what kind of meaning representations should form the input to the generation algorithm ? ) ( 4 ) reversibility of grammars ( 5 ) differences in textual style or ` genre ' ( 6 ) psycholinguistic research relevant to computational natural language generation ( nlg ) ( 7 ) corpus - based work leading to insights relevant for computational nlg ( 8 ) issues of system / algorithm evaluation . practical issues : we welcome short ( i . e . , roughly 1000-1500 words ) electronic submissions ( send email to rodger . kibble @ itri . brighton . ac . uk ) on the theme of the workshop . submissions should be in postscript or plain ascii . please include " esslli99 " in the subject line of your message to make things easy for us . in accordance with the description of the workshop description , we encourage submissions about theoretical ( e . g . , formal semantic or psycholinguistic ) , applied , or corpus-based work , as long as the work is clearly relevant for nlg programs . no matter what they consider the main focus of their work , we ask authors to * stress relevance for nlg * in their submission ( and , later , in their presentation ) . this will ensure that all contributions will contain a common ` core ' , notwithstanding their differences in perspective . it is esslli 's practice to make sure that workshops go ahead only if there turns out to be a sufficient level of interest , based on quantity and quality of submissions . workshop speakers are required to register for the summer school ; however , workshop speakers will be able to register at a reduced rate to be determined by the organizing committee . limited funds are available to contribute to speakers ' expenses in exceptional circumstances . important dates : - first call for papers : 22 october 1998 - deadline for submissions of abstracts : 1 march 1999 - notification of acceptance : 1 may 1999 - workshop to be held : august 9-13 for any questions , please contact the organizers or consult our web page at < http : / / www . itri . brighton . ac . uk / projects / gnome / esslli99 . html > which will shortly be available . rodger kibble & kees van deemter information technology research institute ( itri ) university of brighton lewes road , watts building brighton bn2 4gj united kingdom email : rodger . kibble @ itri . brighton . ac . uk kees . van . deemter @ itri . brighton . ac . uk fax : + 44 1273 642908
