[TYPES/announce] call for papers: quantifiers and determiners (QUAD, ESSLLI 2017 Workshop)

2017-03-07 Thread Christian RETORE
[ The Types Forum (announcements only),
 http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-announce ]

QUAD: QUantifiers And Determiners
http://www.lirmm.fr/quad
Toulouse, Monday  July 17 --- Friday July 21:  17:00-18:30 
As part of ESSLLI 2017 
Christian Retoré, LIRMM & université de Montpellier, 
Mark Steedman, University of Edinburgh 

Schedule:

deadline for submissions:  17 Mars 2017 
submission website: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=quad2017  
notification to authors:  15 April 2017 
final version due: 19 May 2017 
conference: 17-21 July 2017 

Presentation:

The compositional interpretation of determiners relies on quantifiers  — in a 
general acceptation of this later term which includes generalised quantifiers, 
generics, definite descriptions i.e. any operation that applies to one or 
several formulas with a free variable, binds it  and yields a formula or 
possibly a generic term  (the operator is then called a subnector, following 
Curry). There is a long history of quantification in the Ancient and Medieval 
times at the border between logic and philosophy of language, before the proper 
formalisation of quantification by Frege.

A common solution for natural language semantics is the so-called theory of 
generalised quantifiers. Quantifiers like « some, exactly two, at most three, 
the majority of, most of, few, many, … » are all described in terms of 
functions of two predicates viewed as subsets.

Nevertheless, many mathematical and linguistic questions remain open.

On the mathematical side, little is known about generalised , generalised and 
vague quantifiers, in particular about their proof theory. On the other hand, 
even for standard quantifiers, indefinites and definite descriptions, there 
exist alternative formulations with choice functions and generics or subnectors 
(Russell’s iota, Hilbert-Bernays, eta, epsilon, tau). The computational aspects 
of these logical frameworks are also worth studying, both for computational 
linguistic software and for the modelling of the cognitive processes involved 
in understanding or producing sentences involving quantifiers.

On the linguistic side, the relation between the syntactic structure and its 
semantic interpretation, quantifier raising, underspecification, scope issues,… 
 are not fully satisfactory. Furthermore extension of linguistic studies to 
various languages have shown how complex quantification is in natural language 
and its relation to phenomena like generics, plurals,  and mass nouns.

Finally, and this can be seen as a link between formal models of quantification 
and natural language,  there by now exist psycholinguistic experiments that 
connect formal models and their computational properties to the actual way 
human do process sentences with quantifiers, and handle their inherent 
ambiguity, complexity, and difficulty in understanding. 

All those aspects are connected in the didactics of mathematics and computer 
science: there are specific difficulties to teach (and to learn) how to  
understand, manipulate,  produce and  prove quantified statements, and to 
determine  the proper level of formalisation between bare logical formulas and 
written or spoken natural language. 

This workshop aims at gathering  mathematicians, logicians, linguists, computer 
scientists  to present their latest advances in the study of quantification.

Among the topics that wil be addressed are the following :

• new ideas in quantification in mathematical logic, both model theory 
and proof theory:
• choice functions,
• subnectors (Russell’s iota, Hilbert’s epsilon and tau),
• higher order quantification,
• quantification in type theory
• studies of the lexical, syntactic and semantic of quantification in 
various languages
• semantics of noun phrases
• generic noun phrases
• semantics of plurals and mass nouns
• experimental study of quantification and generics
• computational applications of quantification and polarity especially 
for question-answering.
• quantification in the didactics of mathematics and computer science. 


Submissions: 

The program committee is looking for  contributions introducing 
new viewpoints on quantification and determiners,  
the novelty being either in the mathematical logic framework 
or in the linguistic description  or in the cognitive modelling. 
Submitting purely original work is not mandatory,
but authors should clearly mention that the work is not original,
and why they want to present it at this workshop 
(e.g. new viewpoint on already published results) 

Submissions should be 
- 12pt font (at least) 
- 1inch/2.5cm margins all around (at least) 
- less than 2 pages (references exluded)  
- with an abstract of less then 100 words 
and they should be submitted in PDF by easychair here: 
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=quad2017

In case the committee 

[TYPES/announce] call for papers: quantifiers and determiners (QUAD, ESSLLI 2017 Workshop)

2017-01-25 Thread Christian RETORE
[ The Types Forum (announcements only),
 http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-announce ]

QUAD: QUantifiers And Determiners
http://www.lirmm.fr/quad
Toulouse, Monday  July 17 --- Friday July 21:  17:00-18:30 
As part of ESSLLI 2017 
Christian Retoré, LIRMM & université de Montpellier, 
Mark Steedman, University of Edinburgh 

Schedule:

deadline for submissions:  17 Mars 2017 
submission website: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=quad2017  
notification to authors:  15 April 2017 
final version due: 19 May 2017 
conference: 17-21 July 2017 

Presentation:

The compositional interpretation of determiners relies on quantifiers  — in a 
general acceptation of this later term which includes generalised quantifiers, 
generics, definite descriptions i.e. any operation that applies to one or 
several formulas with a free variable, binds it  and yields a formula or 
possibly a generic term  (the operator is then called a subnector, following 
Curry). There is a long history of quantification in the Ancient and Medieval 
times at the border between logic and philosophy of language, before the proper 
formalisation of quantification by Frege.

A common solution for natural language semantics is the so-called theory of 
generalised quantifiers. Quantifiers like « some, exactly two, at most three, 
the majority of, most of, few, many, … » are all described in terms of 
functions of two predicates viewed as subsets.

Nevertheless, many mathematical and linguistic questions remain open.

On the mathematical side, little is known about generalised , generalised and 
vague quantifiers, in particular about their proof theory. On the other hand, 
even for standard quantifiers, indefinites and definite descriptions, there 
exist alternative formulations with choice functions and generics or subnectors 
(Russell’s iota, Hilbert-Bernays, eta, epsilon, tau). The computational aspects 
of these logical frameworks are also worth studying, both for computational 
linguistic software and for the modelling of the cognitive processes involved 
in understanding or producing sentences involving quantifiers.

On the linguistic side, the relation between the syntactic structure and its 
semantic interpretation, quantifier raising, underspecification, scope issues,… 
 are not fully satisfactory. Furthermore extension of linguistic studies to 
various languages have shown how complex quantification is in natural language 
and its relation to phenomena like generics, plurals,  and mass nouns.

Finally, and this can be seen as a link between formal models of quantification 
and natural language,  there by now exist psycholinguistic experiments that 
connect formal models and their computational properties to the actual way 
human do process sentences with quantifiers, and handle their inherent 
ambiguity, complexity, and difficulty in understanding. 

All those aspects are connected in the didactics of mathematics and computer 
science: there are specific difficulties to teach (and to learn) how to  
understand, manipulate,  produce and  prove quantified statements, and to 
determine  the proper level of formalisation between bare logical formulas and 
written or spoken natural language. 

This workshop aims at gathering  mathematicians, logicians, linguists, computer 
scientists  to present their latest advances in the study of quantification.

Among the topics that wil be addressed are the following :

• new ideas in quantification in mathematical logic, both model theory 
and proof theory:
• choice functions,
• subnectors (Russell’s iota, Hilbert’s epsilon and tau),
• higher order quantification,
• quantification in type theory
• studies of the lexical, syntactic and semantic of quantification in 
various languages
• semantics of noun phrases
• generic noun phrases
• semantics of plurals and mass nouns
• experimental study of quantification and generics
• computational applications of quantification and polarity especially 
for question-answering.
• quantification in the didactics of mathematics and computer science. 


Submissions: 

The program committee is looking for  contributions introducing 
new viewpoints on quantification and determiners,  
the novelty being either in the mathematical logic framework 
or in the linguistic description  or in the cognitive modelling. 
Submitting purely original work is not mandatory,
but authors should clearly mention that the work is not original,
and why they want to present it at this workshop 
(e.g. new viewpoint on already published results) 

Submissions should be 
- 12pt font (at least) 
- 1inch/2.5cm margins all around (at least) 
- less than 2 pages (references exluded)  
- with an abstract of less then 100 words 
and they should be submitted in PDF by easychair here: 
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=quad2017

In case the committee