Call Deadline: 20-Jun-2010
Interdisciplinary Workshop on Verbs -
The Identification and Representation of Verb Features
Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa 4-5 November 2010
The aim of this interdisciplinary workshop is to bring together researchers from
linguistic domains such as linguistics, computational linguistics, computational
lexicography, psycholinguistics, cognitive science and neuroscience, in order to
discuss their perspectives on verb senses and verb features, exchanging new
ideas and methods. Such an event can help to bridge the gap between the
linguistic, computational and cognitive communities, promote knowledge and
resource sharing, and help initiate interdisciplinary research projects. The
focus of the workshop is on the identification and representation of verb
features at the syntax-semantics interface.
disciplines concerned with linguistic research, since their contribution is
essential to the structure and the interpretation of language. In recent years,
the availability of new lexical resources and increasingly large corpora, the
application of empirical methods and statistical algorithms and the development
of technical devices such as eye-trackers and magnetic resonance imaging has led
to advances in several linguistic areas.
Their great interest and relevance notwithstanding, verbs still defy attempts by
linguists and cognitive scientists to achieve a clear understanding of their
organisational principles, as well as of the features entering into their
constitution. Verb complexity derives not only from their notoriously high
polysemy, but also and especially from the fact that verbs are crucially the
cornerstone of the syntax-semantics interface. The semantic behaviour of verbs
is therefore strongly intertwined with the syntagmatic constraints governing
their distributions. As a consequence, while there is a consensus on the
multifarious nature of verb semantic representations, the different types of
verb features analysed in the literature (e.g., event properties, argument
structure, aspect, etc.) still lie as separate pieces of a puzzle which is far
Success in this type of research is brought about by close collaboration between
(computational) linguists and cognitive scientists. To this end,
interdisciplinary workshops can play a key role in advancing existing and
initiating new research. This was demonstrated by the interest generated by the
Verb Workshop 2005, which received 33 submissions and was held as a standalone
event at Saarland University over 2 days. A more clear understanding of the
(computational) linguistic and cognitive properties of verbs will bring a
positive reflection on the results of the research done within these
communities. Therefore there is a real need to provide a forum where researchers
can meet across disciplines.
The focus of the workshop is on the identification and representation of verb
features at the syntax-semantics interface. Papers are invited on, but not
limited to, the following topics:
- Empirical studies and formal descriptions of verb features and verb senses:
these are some of the key fundamental factors in verb treatment, and are
relevant for representing and distinguishing verbs across disciplines.
- Representation of verbs by verb classes: generalisation is crucial to the
acquisition of verbs and categorisation in cognitive linguistics, and for many
computational linguistic tasks; computational learning of verb classes and
properties provides insights into argument alternations, verb polysemy,
selectional preferences, etc.
- Cognitively motivated models of verbs: the definition of verb semantics
according to human perception, the collection of human judgements on verb senses
and verb properties, and psycholinguistic studies and experiments on verbs are
important interdisciplinary contributions to verb characterisation.
- Evidence from cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology on verb features and
corpus-based methods to extract empirical features: the distributional account
of verb senses and verb features provides essential contributions to verb
analysis. We also welcome contributions on the use of distributional data to
model (neuro)cognitive evidence on verb representation.
- Data resources and tools: the definition of verb senses and verb properties
are important for basic and task-oriented research; especially the annotation of
lexical verb information provides valuable data to computational learning
procedures and evaluation methods.
- Language-specific and cross-linguistic aspects of verbs: which verb features
are specific to a language, and which are universal?
Pier Marco Bertinetto (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy)
Anna Korhonen (University of Cambridge, UK)
Alessandro Lenci (University of Pisa, Italy)
Alissa Melinger (University of Dundee, UK)
Sabine Schulte im Walde (University of Stuttgart, Germany)
Aline Villavicencio (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and
University of Bath, UK)
Afra Alishashi (Department of Computational Linguistics and Phonetics, Saarland
Tim Baldwin (Department of Computer Science & Software Engineering, University
of Melbourne, Australia)
Colin Bannard (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany)
Roberto Basili (Department of Computer Science, University of Roma Tor Vergata,
Nuria Bel (University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain)
Gemma Boleda (Technical University of Barcelona, Spain)
Chris Brew (Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University, USA)
Miriam Butt (Department of Linguistics, University of Konstanz, Germany)
Amit Dubey (School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, UK)
Sonja Eisenbeiß (Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex, UK)
Katrin Erk (Department of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin, USA)
Afsaneh Fazly (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Shiraz
Pablo Gamallo (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
Tracy King (Microsoft, USA)
Jean-Pierre Koenig (Department of Linguistics, University at Buffalo, USA)
Beth Levin (Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, USA)
Bernardo Magnini (Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy)
Daniela Marzo (Department of Linguistics, University of Stuttgart, Germany)
Diana McCarthy (Lexical Computing Ltd., Brighton, UK)
Ken McRae (Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, Canada)
Sebastian Padó (Institute for Natural Language Processing, University of
Martha Palmer (Department of Linguistics, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA)
Massimo Poesio (Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Italy)
James Pustejovsky (Department of Computer Science, Brandeis University, USA)
Anna Rumshisky (Department of Computer Science, Brandeis University, USA)
Ekaterina Shutova (Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK)
Gabriella Vigliocco (Department of Psychology, University College London, UK)
David Vinson (Deafness Cognition and Language Research Center, University
College London, UK)
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