Computational Pragmatics (CompPrag2016)
Workshop at the 38th Annual Conference of the German Linguistics Society (DGfS) in Konstanz, February 24-26.
Invited speakers
Kees van Deemter, University of Aberdeen
Noah Goodman, Stanford University
Computational pragmatics can be understood in two different senses. First, it can be seen as a subfield of computational linguistics, in which it has a longer tradition. Example phenomena addressed in this tradition are: computational models of implicature, dialogue act planning, discourse structuring, coreference resolution (Bunt & Black 2000, and others). Second, it can refer to a rapidly growing field at the interface between linguistics, cognitive science and artificial intelligence. An example is the rational speech act model (Frank & Goodman 2012) which uses Bayesian methods for modeling cognitive aspects of the interpretation of sentence fragments and implicatures. Computational pragmatics is of growing interest to linguistic pragmatics, first, due to the availability of theories that are precise enough to form the basis of NLP systems (e.g. game theoretic pragmatics, SDRT, RST), and second, due to the additional opportunities which computational pragmatics provides for advanced experimental testing of pragmatic theories. As such, it enhances theoretical, experimental and corpus-based approaches to pragmatics.
In this workshop, we want to bring together researchers from both branches of computational linguistics, as well as linguists with an interest in formal approaches to pragmatics. Topics of the workshop include, but are not limited to, the following issues:
- implicature calculation and its implementation in NLP systems: interaction with information structure, discourse relations, dialogue goals etc.
- computational models of experimental results and computational systems as a means for experimental research
- corpus annotation of pragmatic phenomena
We welcome contributions by theoretical linguists, computational linguists, and corpus linguists with an interest in computational approaches to pragmatics and their empirical underpinning.
We solicit contributions for 30 (20+10) and 60 minute (45+15) presentations. In case of a 30 minute presentation, authors should submit an anonymous 2 page extended abstract. For 60 minute presentations, authors should submit an anonymous 4 page paper (in both cases: A4, font size: 12pt, line spacing: 1.5).
Please send your abstract and paper to: compprag2016 [at] linguistics.rub.de. The subject of the message should be ‘computational pragmatics 2016’, and the body of the message should include the name(s) of the author(s), affiliation(s), and contact information (including email address).
We are planning to publish selected contributions as a special issue of an appropriate, internationally renowned journal.
Important Dates
Abstract submission deadline: August 9, 2015
Notification of acceptance: September 5, 2015
DGfS annual conference and workshop: February 24-26, 2016
References
Bunt, H. & Black, W. 2000. The ABC of Computational Pragmatics. In: Bunt, H. and W. Black (eds.) Abduction, Belief and Context in Dialogue: Studies in Computational Pragmatics.; 1–46.
Frank, M. C., & Goodman, N. D. (2012). Predicting pragmatic reasoning in language games. Science, 336(6084), 998.