Workshop: Formal Semantic Evidence

A few months ago I wrote a post on the exciting new directions that formal semantics as a field seems to be taking, and I mentioned in particular the workshop on formal semantic evidence that my former colleagues Katrin Schulz and Galit Weidman Sassoon are organizing within the Amsterdam Colloquium 2011. Now the CFP is out, and the organizers are keen on having many submissions dealing with very foundational, methodological/philosophical issues, as the CFP clearly indicates. Up to now, the Amsterdam Colloquium has not been a particularly prominent forum for discussions on this level, so they want to make sure that people who may not view themselves as working on 'Amsterdam Colloquium material' will nevertheless consider submitting for the workshop. As I suspect that at least some of the readers of this blog fall within this category, I paste here the CFP in full:

Formal Semantic Evidence

Workshop hosted by the

Amsterdam Colloquium

December 19-21, 2011

Invited speakers

Richard Breheny, University College London

Bart Geurts, Radboud University Nijmegen

Call for papers

Formal semantics as a field of linguists undergoes a rapid change with respect to the status of quantitative methodologies, the application of which is gradually becoming a standard in the field, replacing the good old 'armchair' methodology. In light of this development, we invite submissions reporting of high level formal semantic research benefiting from the use of a quantitative methodology, corpora-based, experimental, neurolinguistic, computational or other. Ideal presentations include informed reflections on the role of a particular methodology in formal semantics.

• We welcome submissions focusing on wide spread, yet not unproblematic or elusive semantic-pragmatic concepts such as 'context', 'accommodation', 'question under discussion', 'ordering source', and so forth; what methodologies can shed new light on such notions and the way they might be systematically studied and decoded?
• What kind of experimental evidence (if any) can bear on fundamental issues such as the nature of the semantic lexicon on the one hand, and compositionality and projection on the other? What is the nature of semantic infelicity or markedness? What kind of experimental evidence (if any) can support or refute hypotheses concerning the nature of the logical form or its very existence? Concerning empty categories?
• Finally, can formal semantic tools contribute to our understanding of experimental results and theoretical issues within cognitive psychology as pertaining to natural language semantics?

Instructions for authors

Authors can submit anonymous abstracts of at most two pages via the website of the Amsterdam Colloquium.

Important dates

Submission deadline: September 1, 2011

Notification of acceptance: October 15, 2011

Deadline for pre-proceedings: December 1, 2011

Deadline for registration: December 1, 2011

Conference: December 19 - 21, 2011

Organizers

Katrin Schulz

Galit Weidman Sassoon