Call for Papers for

DisSALT: 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 DisSALT 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). Interested
authors are invited to submit a tentative title of the submission by
January 31, 2016 (this step is not required but will help us estimate
the number of interested authors and the range of topics). The
abstract submission deadline is April 7, 2016. Submissions are
accepted by email at dissalt2016@gmail.com.


IMPORTANT DATES

Deadline for (non-binding) expression of interest: January 31 2016

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) TBC


ORGANIZERS

Gemma Boleda (University of Trento)
Denis Paperno (University of Trento)