The traditional view on the construction of phrasal meaning is compositional (i.e., the meaning of individual words is combined into phrasal meaning). For a considerable part of language, however, meaning cannot be directly derived via meaning composition of the individual constituent words of a phrase. Examples of such non-compositional phrases are idioms (e.g., to be on cloud nine), metaphors, (e.g., a blossoming mind), phrasal verbs (e.g. dig into something), prepositional phrases (e.g.,on the other hand), adjective-noun phrases (e.g., black coffee), and compounds (e.g., pineapple). While such examples of non-compositional language are ubiquitous in language use, there is not yet consensus on how these phrases should be represented in psycholinguistic and computational models of processing. It is precisely this non-compositionality that raises important questions for models of meaning, such as:

• How are such phrases represented and comprehended, and to what extent do the individual constituents contribute to phrasal meaning?
• How is meaning constitution impacted by language development (i.e., first and second language acquisition)?
• How does context impact access to noncompositional meaning?

Both computational and psycholinguistic approaches attempt to help us better model the bridge between form and meaning, and this workshop provides a platform for resolving interdisciplinary differences and encouraging cross-talk between junior and senior researchers. Particularly, we aim to ask how psycholinguistic modeling of non-compositional meaning can inform computational linguistic models and vice versa.

Submission Guidelines

For this workshop, we invite submissions for presentation including but not limited to:

• Processing and representation of noncompositional, conventionalized, or figurative meaning
• Idioms, conventional metaphors, phrasal verbs, adjective-noun phrases, prepositional phrases, compound nouns, etc.
• Crosslinguistic perspectives on collocations and other non-compositional expressions
• Acquisition of phrasal meaning (L1 and L2)
• The impact of context on processing noncompositional meaning
• Challenges of noncompositionality for computational modeling of meaning, including logic-based and distributional aspects of meanings
• Datadriven methods for identifying non-compositional phrases and for distinguishing between compositional and non-compositional meanings
• The intersection of psycholinguistic and computational perspectives on noncompositional meaning

Abstracts should be no longer than two (2) A4 pages, single-spaced, 12-point font, including key references and tables/figures. Submissions should be anonymous, and authors can identify themselves in the submission form. Submissions will be selected for either a talk or a poster presentation.

Please submit abstracts in .pdf form by June 17^th, 2018. 

Notifications will be sent out by mid-July.

Committees

Program & Organizing Committee

This conference is sponsored by the SFB 833 and organized by Projects A3, B9 and associates.

• Sara D. Beck (B9)
• Patricia Fischer (A3)
• Ruth Keßler (B9)
• Yana Strakatova (associated faculty)

Program Chairs

• Daniel de Kok
• Claudia Friedrich
• Erhard W. Hinrichs
• Andrea Weber

Invited Speakers

• Inbal Arnon, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Johan Bos, University of Groningen
• Cristina Cacciari, University of Modena
• Gareth Carrol, University of Birmingham
• Aurelie Herbelot, University of Trento

Venue

The conference will be held at the Hohentübingen Castle at the University of Tübingen in Tübingen, Germany.

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to Ruth Keßler at ruth.kessler@uni-tuebingen.de