LFG BULLETIN
SEPTEMBER 1998
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* NEWS *
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Announcements:
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- 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 in the third week of July,
immediately followed by an HPSG conference with a day of workshops
and talks scheduled between the two conferences to address issues
of common interest.
- ILFGA 98 BUSINESS MEETING
A business meeting of ILFGA was held as part of LFG98 in Brisbane.
ILFGA is now registered as an unincorporated nonprofit
organization within the state of California. This official status
allows for potential fund raising activities, etc.
Among the issues discussed at the business meeting were the
location of LFG2000 and the format of abstract/paper submissions
to LFG conferences.
A detailed report of the meeting was compiled and distributed to
ILFGA members. The organization now has 69 members. Activities
in the past year have included
a. establishment of organization
b. LFG98
c. ILFGA mailing list and webpage
d. Stanford LFG web pages and archives
If you would like to join the organization, send
mail to the Majordomo server majordomo@lists.stanford.edu with the
following message:
subscribe ilfga-members
By joining the email list, you will become a member of ILFGA. If you
do not have an email address, you can join ILFGA by sending email to
ilfga@csli.stanford.edu
or regular mail to the Secretary-Treasurer at:
Tracy Holloway King
Natural Language Theory and Technology Area
Information Sciences and Technologies Laboratory
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
3333 Coyote Hill Rd.
Palo Alto, CA 94304 USA
Membership in the Association is free of charge
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* PUBLICITY/INFORMATION *
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More Websites
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There is now a collection of slides and teaching materials from LFG
conferences and summer institutes on the Stanford LFG server:
ftp://ftp-lfg.stanford.edu/pub/lfg/lfg-presentations/
There is also a WWW index to this collection:
ftp://ftp-lfg.stanford.edu/pub/lfg/lfg-presentations/index.html
Currently available at the FTP site are slides and handouts from LFG96
and LFG97, and teaching materials from the ESSLLI95 institute. The
web page also has a pointer to teaching materials from Joan Bresnan
and Louisa Sadler's class at the ESSLLI98 institute.
Thanks to Mary Dalrymple for setting this up.
---
The archive of LFG papers established earlier this year is
growing steadily. Check it out at:
http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg/archive/
Many thanks go to Avery Andrews, who has donated quite an enormous
amount of his time towards setting up and maintaining the archive.
So, if you have any papers that you would like to be immediately
accessible to a wider community, please do visit the archive
and upload them! Or check out the archive for papers you might want
to download.
Proceedings News
----------------
Proceedings of the LFG98 Conference (CSLI on-line Publications)
will be available at:
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/publications/
Choose: Proceedings ON-LINE (The proceedings of LFG96 and LFG97
are also available here).
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
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* Upcoming Events/Conferences *
-------------------------------
1) LFG99 at the University of Manchester
2) ESSLLI-99: Eleventh European Summer School in Logic, Language and
Information at Utrecht, The Netherlands
3) 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) 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. A detailed scheduled is not out yet,
however here are some of the courses that might be of interest:
Bod and Kaplan --- Data-oriented Parsing Models of Natural
Languages
Butt, Frank, and Kuhn --- Development of large scale LFG
grammars
de Hoop --- Optimality Theory
3) Further Conference Announcements
Brief summary of conference calls and announcements posted to this
list:
Vilem Mathesius Lecture Series 13
November 9--20, 1998
Prague, Czech Republic
{hajicova,brdickov}@ufal.mff.cuni.cz
http://kwetal.ms.mff.cuni.cz/~gj/vmc/
NELS 29: Northeastern Linguistic Society
October 16-18, 1998
University of Delaware, Newark, DE
Submission deadline: July 1, 1998
nels-29@UDel.Edu
http://sun.ling.udel.edu/nels-29
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
Advances in Modal Logic'98
October 16-18, 1998
Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Krister.Segerberg@filosofi.uu.se
http://www.wins.uva.nl/~mdr/AiML
* EDITORS *
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Please send any items you wish to include in the next bulletin
(December 1998) to:
miriam.butt@uni-konstanz.de
thking@parc.xerox.com
Thank you,
Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King
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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.