2021Q3 Reports: SIGMOL

SIGMOL is the special interest group on mathematics of language, which refers to the investigation of mathematical structures and methods that are of importance to the study of language.

Activities

Biennial Meeting

The main activity of the SIG is the organization of the biennial meeting “Mathematics of Language (MoL)”. The most recent meeting, MoL 16, was held at the University of Toronto ON, Canada, July 18-19, 2019. The local organizer was Gerald Penn. The meeting received 18 submissions of which 2 were withdrawn and 10 were accepted for presentation. The proceedings of the meeting have been published in the ACL Anthology. The next meeting (MoL 17) will be co-located with LACL, NLCS, and LACOMPLING in December 2021 (delayed due to Covid-19). Christian Retoré and Richard Moot (University of Montpellier) will be the local organizers, but due to the difficulties of organizing a hybrid event they have opted for an online meeting.

Kuroda Prize

The SIG awards the S.-Y. Kuroda Prize for lasting contributions to the mathematics of language. The regulations for the price stipulate that it is awarded by a committee consisting of the current president of SIGMOL (chair), the vice-president/president elect, and the two previous presidents after nominations from the membership. For the 2019 prize the committee decided that none of the nominated candidates fulfilled the requirements formulated in the Kuroda Prize Principles and Procedures. Consequently, it was decided not to award the S.-Y. Kuroda Prize in 2019. Naturally, we hope that the prize can be awarded again at the coming meeting.

Members and Officers

As of 2021-06-28 SIGMOL has 303 registered members. Its current officers are president Frank Drewes and vice president Henrik Björklund (both Umeå universitet, Sweden). Their terms will end at the next business meeting of the SIG, which will be held in connection with MoL 17. At this time the vice president will take over the duties of the president, and the outgoing president will take over the duties of the vice president, until a new vice president will be elected at the beginning of 2022.