This award provides funding for the travel and accommodation expenses for graduate students in computational linguistics whose papers have been selected for presentation at the Sixth International Conference on Generative Approaches to the Lexicon (GL2013) conference in Pisa, Italy, in September 2013. The overall goal of the GL conferences is to bring together researchers in theoretical and computational linguistics, computer science, cognitive science, and lexicography to explore the problem of semantic compositionality -- how the meaning of expressions in natural languages derives from the structure of the lexicon, or dictionary, of semantic formatives (words or idiomatic multi-word expressions) in a natural language. GL2013 specifically aims at exploring the relation and potential synergies between generative approaches, which assume that semantic formatives are structured objects, and distributional semantics, whose proponents typically assume that they are internally unstructured and analyze their semantic contribution by means of their distribution in linguistic contexts.
This award enables talented students working on computational semantics to interact with professionals in a variety of fields and perspectives related to that domain, and to present their work in a major international venue. This in turn will help to nurture a lasting interest in the upcoming generation of computational researchers in what is likely to remain a major area of interdisciplinary study for a very long time.
This proposal provided funding to subsidize travel, conference, andhotel expenses for students who were selected to present papers in the6th International Conference on Generative Approaches to the Lexicon(GL2013), in Pisa, Italy, from 24-25th September, 2013. The goal ofthe GL conferences is to bring together diverse contributions fromtheoretical and computational linguistics, computer science, cognitivescience, and lexicography, which explore compositionality from thepoint of view of generative approaches to the lexicon. Historically,contributions have assumed, as a starting point, the view outlined inGenerative Lexicon theory (Pustejovsky, 1995, Pustejovsky et al,2012). This funding provided funding to the most outstanding studentcontributors from the United States to attend this conference. The GL Conferences have been taking place since 2001, in order topromote the interaction of linguistic and computational linguisticmethods towards addressing issues in lexical and compositionalsemantics. To date, there have been five conferences, held in Geneva,Switzerland, Paris, France, and Pisa, Italy. The up-coming conferencewill be held at the CNR in Pisa, Italy. The best papers from theseconferences have been collected and published in a recent Springerbook, entitled Recent Trends in Generative Lexicon Theory, 2012. The specific purpose of this proposal was to encourage talentedstudents in computational and theoretical linguistics to submit theirwork to the GL2013 conference, and then provide support for travel andaccommodation in order to present their work.
