LFG BULLETIN
DECEMBER 1998
-----------
* EDITORS *
-----------
Please send updates, suggestions and news for inclusion in the next
LFG Bulletin (March 1999) to:
miriam.butt@uni-konstanz.de
thking@parc.xerox.com
Most importantly, please send information about:
- your recent publications or papers
- publically available grammars
- current grammar development efforts
Thank you,
Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King
----------
* NEWS *
----------
Announcements:
--------------
- The LFG Website at Stanford welcomes proposals for subpages and
volunteers to create and maintain them. Current subpages include:
LFG Morphosyntax, Optimal Syntax, Glue, and DOP-LFG. These can be
found at: http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg
Ideas for further pages include language-oriented sites, such as
African, Australian, Austronesian, etc.
If you would like to volunteer to create such pages or have ideas
of other kinds of pages, please contact Tracy Holloway King
(thking@parc.xerox.com) or Miriam Butt
(miriam.butt@uni-knostanz.de) with your suggestions.
- LFG99 will be held at the University of Manchester, Manchester,
England, July 19-21, 1999. A first call for papers is attached
below.
- LFG2000 will be held in Berkeley, CA, USA in the third week of
July as part of the "Berkeley Formal Grammar Conference 2000".
This conference will encompass LFG2000 as well as an HPSG
conference and a day of workshops and talks of common interest.
The conference has been scheduled to take place as shown below.
LFG 2000: July 19-20
Common sessions: July 21
7th Int'l HPSG Conference: July 22-23
Authors will be asked to submit to the LFG On-Line Proceedings as
usual. In addition, all presenters at the Formal Grammar
Conference will be invited to submit their work to a volume in
CSLI's "Studies in Constraint-Based Lexicalism" series (editors
yet to be determined).
-------------------------
* INFORMATION *
-------------------------
More Websites
--------------
Check out Joan Bresnan's "Unofficial Links and Notes" page for a
wealth of information on old, new and on-going work in LFG/OT.
http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg/bresnan/unofficial-links.html
---
Also check out the new page on "LFG Morphosyntax" created by Louisa
Sadler as part of the Stanford Web Site. Although this page is still
in its infancy, it is already looking very good and groups relevant
materials into clearly defined and helpful categories.
For example, the page includes links to works on argument structure
and lexical mapping theory in LFG, including the new starter
bibliography developed by Joan Bresnan and Farrell Ackerman from the
LFGBIB currently maintained by Avery Andrews.
http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg/ms/ms.html
---
Joan Bresnan has also begun a page "Optimal Syntax: LFG in an OT
Setting" under Current Research Directions in LFG. Watch this site
for future additions.
http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg/ot-lfg/ot-lfg.html.
---
A web page focussing on Dissertations and Papers on Modern Greek in
LFG and HPSG has been created by Valia Kordoni. It can be found at:
http://www.sfs.nphil.uni-tuebingen.de/~korder/greek_lfg_hpsg.html
---
The archive of LFG papers established earlier this year continues to
grow steadily and Avery Andrews has redesigned the main archive page
of LFG papers for easier print-out. Check it out at:
http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg/archive/
Proceedings News
----------------
Proceedings of the LFG98 Conference (CSLI on-line Publications)
are now available at:
http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/publications/
Choose: Proceedings ON-LINE (The proceedings of LFG96 and LFG97
are also available here).
The editors (Miriam Butt and Tracy King) would like to thank all
the authors not only for the submissions, but also for plenty of
feedback and discussion on the format of the proceedings.
Recent LFG Publications
-----------------------
Barron , Julia. 1998. Have contraction: explaining "trace effects" in
a theory without movement. Linguistics 36: 223-251.
Butt, Miriam. 1998. Constraining argument merger through aspect. In
E. Hinrichs, A. Kathol, and T. Nakazawa, editors, Syntax and Semantics
No. 30: Complex Predicates in Nonderivational Syntax. Academic Press.
Bod, Rens. 1998. Beyond Grammar: An Experience-Based Theory of Language.
Stanford: CSLI Publications.
B"orjars, Kersti and Carol Chapman. 1998. Agreement and pro-drop in
some dialects of English. Linguistics 36.1: 71-9.
Her, One-Soon. 1997. Interaction and Variation in the Chinese VO
Construction. Taipei: Crane Publishing
Nordlinger, Rachel. 1998. Constructive Case. Evidence from Australian
Languages. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Nordlinger, Rachel. 1998. A Grammar of Wambaya. Canberra: Pacific
Linguistics.
Request For Dissertation Announcements
---------------------------------------
If you or your students complete an dissertation of interest to the
LFG community, please post an announcement to the LFG list with:
Title
Author
University
Email address or other way to contact the author
Summary or abstract
-------------------------------
* Upcoming Events/Conferences *
-------------------------------
1) LFG99 at the University of Manchester
2) CSLI/Stanford Workshop: "Is syntax different? Common cognitive
structures for syntax and phonology in Optimality Theory"
3) ESSLLI-99: Eleventh European Summer School in Logic, Language and
Information at Utrecht, The Netherlands
4) ESSLLI-99 Workshop on "Lexical Semantics and Linking in
Constraint-Based Theories"
5) Further Conference Announcements
1)
CALL FOR PAPERS
LFG99
1999 INTERNATIONAL LEXICAL FUNCTIONAL
GRAMMAR CONFERENCE
19 July - 21 July 1999
The University of Manchester
Submission receipt deadline: 15 February 1999
URL: http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/html/LFG/
Enquiries: LFG99@man.ac.uk
The University of Manchester is pleased to invite you to participate
in LFG99 which will take place from Monday, July 19 till Wednesday,
July 21 1999 at the University of Manchester, UK.
The conference welcomes work both within the formal architecture of
Lexical-Functional Grammar and typological, formal, and computational
work within the 'spirit of LFG', as a lexicalist approach to language
employing a parallel, constraint-based framework. The conference aims
to promote interaction and collaboration among researchers interested
in nonderivational approaches to grammar, where grammar is seen as the
interaction of constraints from multiple dimensions of linguistic
substance, including category information, grammatical relations, and
semantic information. Further information about the syntactic theory
LFG can be obtained from:
http://clwww.essex.ac.uk/LFG/
SUBMISSIONS
The conference will involve 30-minute talks, poster/system
presentations, and workshops. Talks and poster presentations will
focus on results from completed as well as ongoing research, with an
emphasis on novel approaches, methods, ideas, and perspectives,
whether descriptive, theoretical, formal or computational. We
particularly welcome papers and suggestions for workshops on a given
language area. Presentations should describe original, unpublished
work.
Abstracts and papers must be received by February 15, 1999, and should
be submitted to the program committee chairs at the address given
below. For further information or offers of organisational help,
contact the local organisers at the address below.
POSTER/SYSTEM PRESENTATIONS
A scheduled session for posters and the demonstration of systems is
planned as part of the conference, with the posters also available for
viewing at other times throughout the conferece.
WORKSHOPS
Workshops are a small group of talks (2-4) on a coherent topic that
can be expected to generate opposing views and discussion with the
broader audience. Participants to workshops are usually
invited. Workshop papers should be distributed in advance among
participants and participants should refer to each others approaches.
At this point in time, we welcome suggestions for workshops from
potential organisers or people with certain interests. Suggestions
for workshops should be sent to the local organizers at
LFG99@man.ac.uk.
Topics that have been mentioned for potential workshops include:
- phenomena within a given language area (such as Amerindian)
- field work and linguistic theory
- event conceptualization and lexical semantics
- constructions/construction grammar and LFG
Actual workshop topics and participants will be announced later.
TIMETABLE
Deadline for workshop proposals: 30 November 1998
Deadline for receipt of submissions: 15 February 1999
Acceptances sent out: 31 March 1999
Conference: 19 July - 21 July 1999
SUBMISSION SPECIFICATIONS
People may submit either abstracts or full length papers for
refereeing. The advantages of full paper submission are that it allows
better assessment of your work and that (at least for some people)
accepted refereed full papers count as a higher status
publication. The program chairs may decide that certain submissions
are better as poster presentations than as read papers. Submitters
may also indicate if they wish a submission to be considered as a
poster/system presentation.
Full length papers. Papers should be no more than 15 pages, including
figures and references, in 11 or 12pt type, on A4/US Letter paper. The
printed text area must not exceed 165x230mm (6.5x9 inches), and should
be centred horizontally and vertically on the page. Omit name and
affiliation, and obvious self reference from the version for
review. Papers should include a roughly 100-200 word abstract at the
beginning.
Abstracts. Abstracts should be one A4 page in 10pt or larger type and
include a title. Omit name and affiliation, and obvious self
reference. A second page may be used for data, c-/f- and related
structures, and references.
Papers/abstracts may be submitted by email or by regular mail (or by
both means as a safety measure). Email submission is preferred.
Regular Mail
Include:
- Five copies of the abstract/paper.
- A card or cover sheet with the paper title, name(s) of the
author(s), affiliation, address, phone/fax number, e-mail address, and
whether the author(s) are students.
Email.
Include or attach your paper as either a plain ASCII text, HTML, or
postscript file. Include the paper title, name(s) of the author(s),
address, phone/fax number, email address, and whether the author(s)
are students in the body of your email message.
All papers/abstracts will be reviewed by at least two people.
papers will appear in the proceedings which will be published online
by CSLI Publications. Selected papers may also appear in a printed
volume published by CSLI Publications.
ORGANISERS AND THEIR CONTACT ADDRESSES
Send paper/abstract/poster submissions and inquiries about submissions to:
Program Committee Chairs:
Tracy King <thking@parc.xerox.com>
Miriam Butt <miriam.butt@uni-konstanz.de>
Mail:
Tracy Holloway King
Information Sciences and Technologies Laboratory
Xerox PARC
3333 Coyote Hill Road
Palo Alto CA 94304
USA
Contact the conference organisers at:
Email: LFG99@man.ac.uk
Mail: Kersti Borjars or Nigel Vincent
Department of Linguistics
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
UK
ASSOCIATED EVENTS
Given the great success of the pre-conference bushwalk organized as
part of LFG98, we are planning an organised walk in the Peak District
for the weekend preceding the conference. Details and information on
how to sign up for it will be provided in a subsequent call for
papers.
On the last evening of the conference there will be a conference
dinner in a stately home on the outskirts of Manchester.
LOCATION
The conference will be held at Hulme Hall, a Hall of Residence near the
main University buildings. Different types of B&B accommodation will be
available in Hulme Hall, where all lectures, book displays etc will also
take place. Details of this and registration form will be provided at a
later stage.
2) CSLI/Stanford Workshop: "Is Syntax Different? Common cognitive
structures for syntax and phonology in Optimality Theory"
Organizers: Peter Sells, Joan Bresnan
Dates: 12-13 December, 1998
Venue: CSLI, Stanford University
The workshop is open to anyone interested.
Speakers will include:
Judith Aissen (UCSC)
Joan Bresnan (Stanford)
Jane Grimshaw (Rutgers and RUCCS)
Petra Hendriks (Groningen) and Helen de Hoop (Utrecht)
Hanjung Lee (Stanford)
Giraldine Legendre (Johns Hopkins)
Peter Sells (Stanford)
Paul Smolensky (Johns Hopkins)
Anne Vainikka (Johns Hopkins)
Nigel Vincent (Manchester)
OT/LFG related papers will be presented by the following speakers:
Joan Bresnan, Hanjung Lee, Peter Sells, and Nigel Vincent.
Details can be found at:
http://hypatia.stanford.edu/linguistics/colloq/ot98.html
3) ESSLII-99, the Eleventh European Summer School in Logic, Language
and Information will be held next year during the month of August
at Utrecht in The Netherlands. More information and a list of courses
and lectures can be found at:
http://esslli.let.uu.nl/
Some courses of LFG-related interest are:
Language and Computation
========================
Introductory:
- Bod/Kaplan: Data-oriented Parsing Models of Natural Language
- Butt/Frank/Kuhn: Development of Large Scale LFG Grammars
Language
========
- de Hoop: Optimality Theory
4)
ESSLLI-99 Workshop on
LEXICAL SEMANTICS AND LINKING IN CONSTRAINT-BASED THEORIES
August 16-20, 1999
A workshop held as part of the
11th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information
(ESSLLI-99)
August 9 - 20, 1999, Utrecht, The Netherlands
** FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS **
ORGANISER: Valia Kordoni (University of Tuebingen)
BACKGROUND:
In recent years, there has been an increasing interest among
syntacticians in the interface between syntax and word meaning. In n
recent years, there has been an increasing interest among
syntacticians in the interface between syntax and word meaning. In
constraint-based theories like LFG and HPSG, this interest has led to
the development of the Lexical Mapping Theory (LMT) and the
Hierarchical Lexicon models, respectively.
Having as a common starting point their recognition for the importance
of word classes for the interface between syntax and lexical semantics,
LMT and the Hierarchical Lexicon models vary both ontologically, and in
the range of linguistic phenomena they attempt to explain, some of which
include, but in no way are they limited to, the following:
- Split Intransitivity phenomena (unaccusative vs. unergative verbs)
- Variation among verbs of emotion and location
- Subcategorization alternations and the linking of indirect arguments
- Morpholexical Processes, including causative verbs
- Complex predicates
- Symmetric predicates
The aim of the workshop is to provide a forum for researchers and
advanced Ph.D. students to present and discuss approaches on empirical
and formal issues related to the Syntax-Lexical Semantics Interface in
the frameworks of LFG and HPSG. The workshop intends to continue the
series of courses and workshops on lexical semantics and on the
interactions between morphology, syntax and semantics held at previous
summer schools. It is also dedicated to support inter-framework
discussions, since it is focussing on the lexical semantics and
linking components of both LFG and HPSG.
WORKSHOP FORMAT:
The workshop will consist of five sessions with two 30+10-minute
presentations in each session.
SUBMISSIONS:
All researchers in the area, but especially Ph.D. students and young
researchers, are encouraged to submit a two-page abstract either as
hardcopy or electronically (postscript only).
Submissions should be sent until February 15, 1999. Notification of
acceptance will be given to contributors around April 15, 1999.
Contributors of accepted papers will be asked to provide an extended
abstract (10 pages) in LaTeX format to be included in a Summer School
reader. The deadline for the submission of the extended abstracts is May
31, 1999.
Submissions should be sent to the following address:
Valia Kordoni
Universitaet Tuebingen
Seminar fuer Sprachwissenschaft
Kleine Wilhelmstr. 113
D-72074 Tuebingen
GERMANY
korder@sfs.nphil.uni-tuebingen.de
REGISTRATION:
Workshop contributors will be required to register for ESSLLI-99, but
will be eligible for a reduced registration fee.
IMPORTANT DATES:
Feb 15, 99: Deadline for submissions
Apr 15, 99: Notification of acceptance
May 31, 99: Deadline for final copy
Aug 16, 99: Start of workshop
FURTHER INFORMATION:
The workshop will take place in association with the 11th European
Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) to be held in
Utrecht, the Netherlands (9-20 August 1999).
4) Further Conference Announcements
Here is a brief summary of conference calls and announcements posted to this
list:
HPSG-99
6th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar.
submission deadline: February 15, 1999
hpsg99@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~hpsg99/
Deixis, demonstration and deictic belief in multimedia contexts
submission deadline: Feb 15, 1999
pkuehnle@lili.uni-bielefeld.de (Peter Kuehnlein)
Foundations of intensional logic and natural language semantics
submission deadline: March 15, 1999
orilia@unimc.it (Francesco Orilia)
The Generation of Nominal Expressions
submission deadline: March 1, 1999
Rodger.Kibble@itri.brighton.ac.uk Kees.van.Deemter@itri.brighton.ac.uk
http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/projects/gnome/esslli99.html
The ESSLLI'99 student session
submission deadline: March 15, 1999
amalia@liia.u-strasbg.fr amalia@thor.infoiasi.ro
http://www-ensais.u-strasbg.fr/todirascu/esslli-fr.html
Resource logics and minimalist grammars
submission deadline: March 15, 1999
rlmg@irisa.fr
http://www.irisa.fr/RLMG
Israeli Association for Theoretical Linguistics (IATL 15)
June 16-17 1999
Haifa University, Haifa
submission deadline: Feb 8, 1999
msjihad@mscc.huji.ac.il
9th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for
Computational Linguistics (EACL 99)
June 8-12, 199
Bergen, Norway
submission deadline: Jan 18, 1999
eacl99@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
Venezia per il Trattamento Automatico delle Lingue (VExTAL)
Sept 20-22, 1999
submission deadline: Mar 6, 1999
vextal@byron.cgm.unive.it
http://byron.cgm.unive.it/eventi/VEXTAL
7. International BOBCATSSS Symposium
25-27 January 1999
Bratislava, Slovakia
BOBCATSSS@hbi-stuttgart.de
First International Workshop on Practical Aspects of Declarative
Languages (PADL'99)
Jan. 18-19, 1999
Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA
complog@cs.nmsu.edu
http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~complog/conferences/padl99
Traitement Automatique du Langage Naturel (TALN'99)
July 12-17, 1999
Institut d'Etudes Scientifiques de Cargese (Corse)
submission deadline: Jan 31, 1999
taln99@linguist.jussieu.fr
http://talana.linguist.jussieu.fr/taln99
37th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
June 22--27 1999
University of Maryland
submission deadline: Jan 25, 1999
kwc@research.att.com Robert.Dale@mq.edu.au
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Frequently Asked Questions: FAQs
Information on the following topics (FAQs) is available on the
LFG WebPage:
http://clwww.essex.ac.uk/LFG/
1. WHAT IS LEXICAL-FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR?
2. WHAT ARE THE BEST INTRODUCTORY BOOKS/ARTICLES TO LFG?
3. THE LFG WWW SITE
4. THE LFG MAILING LIST
5. LFG BIBLIOGRAPHY, RECENT PUBLICATIONS IN LFG
6. HOW TO RETRIEVE LFG DOCUMENTS
7. PUBLICALLY AVAILABLE LFG SYSTEMS
8. CURRENT GRAMMAR DEVELOPMENT EFFORT
9. UPCOMING EVENTS
If you have access to ftp, but no access to Web, you can get a copy of
the FAQ by ftp (see "How to Retrieve LFG Documents" below). If you
have neither ftp nor Web access, but have email, send a mail
requesting a copy of the FAQ to doug#essex.ac.uk.
Please help keep this document and the FAQ up to date!
Send updates and suggestions for improvements to the FAQ to
doug#essex.ac.uk.
Send updates, suggestions and news for inclusion in the LFG Bulletin
to miriam.butt@uni-konstanz.de or thking@parc.xerox.com, or post them
on the LFG list (lfg@list.stanford.edu). Most importantly, please
send information about:
- your recent publications or papers
- publically available grammars
- current grammar development efforts
---
* HOW TO RETRIEVE LFG DOCUMENTS *
Some LFG documents are available on the web, by FTP, or by email.
There are three ways to get them.
(1) Most of the documents are accessible via the WWW:
The current version of the list of Frequently Asked Questions about LFG:
http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg/lfg-information.html
Introductions to LFG:
http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg/clwww.essex.ac.uk/LFG/Introductions.html
http://clwww.essex.ac.uk/LFG/Introductions.html
The LFG bibliography:
http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg/bibliography.html
http://clwww.essex.ac.uk/LFG/Bibliography.html
The bibliography is also available at the CL/MT Group Bibliographic
Search Page, maintained by Doug Arnold of the University of Essex.
The URL is:
http://clwww.essex.ac.uk/search/
(2) You can get the documents by anonymous FTP from:
ftp ftp-lfg.stanford.edu
All of the documents are in subdirectories of the directory
/pub/lfg. Here is a list of some of the files in that directory that
are relevant for LFG researchers:
in the directory /pub/lfg/bibliography:
The LFG Bibliography in various versions and formats.
in the directory /pub/lfg/lfg-information:
FAQ [the latest version of the list of
Frequently Asked Questions about LFG]
in the directory /pub/lfg/lfg-introductions:
pracinstrucsforlfg.ps [an introduction to LFG notation by Michael
Wescoat]
formal-architecture.ps [an introduction to LFG by Ron Kaplan]
neidle.ps [an introduction to LFG by Carol Neidle]
sadler.ps [a paper on recent developments in LFG by
Louisa Sadler]
in the directory /pub/lfg/lfg-presentations:
Slides and handouts from LFG conferences and courses.
in the directory /pub/lfg/papers:
Papers that have been submitted to the LFG Archive.
Compressed versions of some of these files are also available.
The file names of the compressed versions are the same, except
they have ".gz" at the end. There may be other LFG-related files
in that directory as well, which you are welcome to retrieve.
(3) You can get some files by email, via the Majordomo "get"
command. A list of currently available files can be obtained by
sending a message to
majordomo@list.stanford.edu
containing the following command:
index lfg
The following files are available, and there may be additional files
as well:
FAQ [the list of Frequently Asked Questions]
pracinstrucsforlfg.ps [an introduction to LFG notation by Michael
Wescoat]
formal-architecture.ps [an introduction to LFG by Ron Kaplan]
neidle.ps [an introduction to LFG by Carol Neidle]
lfg.bib [the LFG bibliography in BibTeX format]
lfgbib.text [the LFG bibliography in plain text format]
lfgbib.ps [the LFG bibliography in Postscript format]
lfgbib.rtf [the LFG bibliography in RTF format]
To get a file, send a message to majordomo@list.stanford.edu
containing the following command:
get lfg <filename>
For example, if you want to get the latest version of the FAQ, you
would send a message to majordomo@list.stanford.edu with the
following command:
get lfg FAQ
You will receive the file in an email message.
CAUTION: Some of the files that are available by this method are
Postscript files, which can be VERY LARGE. Postscript files end in
the extension .ps (for example, the file "neidle.ps" is a Postscript
file). If your mailer cannot handle EXTREMELY LARGE messages, don't
try to get these files by email. Instead, use the FTP option,
described in (2) above.