Final call: Ambiguity in Anaphora

                  Ambiguity in Anaphora: Final Call for Papers

    Deadline for receipt of five-page extended abstracts: 8 March 2006
    Address for submission: anaphora <at> essex.ac.uk

    http://cswww.essex.ac.uk/anaphora/

    The workshop is held as part of ESSLLI 2006, the Eighteenth European
    Summer School in Logic, Language and Information, 7-11 August 2006,
    Málaga, Spain.

Organizers

    Ron Artstein, Massimo Poesio (University of Essex)

Description

    We invite extended abstracts for 45-minute presentations (including
    discussion) relating to ambiguity in anaphora. Anaphoric expressions
    such as pronouns and definite descriptions can be ambiguous: they may
    relate to more than one antecedent, or (potentially) denote more than
    one referent. Such ambiguity poses challenges to the representation
    of anaphoric relations in grammar and discourse and to computational
    algorithms which resolve anaphoric reference, all of which should
    allow for representing ambiguity.

    The workshop aims to create a dialogue between researchers who work on
    anaphoric ambiguity from a variety of perspectives, such as:

Programme Colloque DLTAF2006 Montréal

list of surnames and first names

Dear All,

I am looking for a list of surnames, male and female first names that
are common in Francophone countries. Something like a freely
available census of France would be just excellent. This information
will be further used in the task of anaphora resolution.

Thanks in advance,
Alexander Vorontsov

'Standard European English' ?

Has anyone of you here ever heard of a 'Standard European English'? If yes:

- What are its characteristics? 
- Which researcher added that 'English' to the World Englishes?
- How does it differ from the 'Standard British English'?
- Where can I read more about it?  

Thanking you all in advance.

list of surnames and first names

Quoting Vorontsov Alexander <vorontsov <at> inmax.info>:
> I am looking for a list of surnames, male and female first names that
> are common in Francophone countries. Something like a freely
> available census of France would be just excellent. This information
> will be further used in the task of anaphora resolution.

A list of firstnames is available at: http://abu.cnam.fr/DICO/

Disclaimer: http://www.kuleuven.be/cwis/email_disclaimer.htm

RE: 'Standard European English' ?

Yes I have heard of it informally, referred to as "Euro-English". In
answer to your first and third questions, I can't answer extensively,
but can offer a few anecdotal examples ...

Using "eventual(ly)" to mean "if it happens" rather than "final"
Using "resp." as an abbreviation to mean either "respectively"  or
"and/or" (as in "tea resp. coffee"). Other innovative abbreviations
include "f.ex." (for example), "a.s.o." (and so on).
Using "precise" (pronounced [pri'saiz]) to mean "to make specific or
precise"
Saying "please" instead of "you're welcome".

None of these are "correct" in standard British English, and some
(especially the last) might still be seen as errors rather than
Euro-Englishisms. They are all examples of interference from other
languages.

I look forward to seeing this list expanded and/or (or should I say
resp.) answers to your other questions. 

Harold Somers  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-corpora <at> lists.uib.no 
> [mailto:owner-corpora <at> lists.uib.no] On Behalf Of Parveen Lallmamode
> Sent: 02 March 2006 09:33
> To: corpora
> Subject: [Corpora-List] 'Standard European English' ?
> 
> Has anyone of you here ever heard of a 'Standard European 
> English'? If yes:
> 
> - What are its characteristics? 
> - Which researcher added that 'English' to the World Englishes?
> - How does it differ from the 'Standard British English'?
> - Where can I read more about it?  
> 
> Thanking you all in advance.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

Re: 'Standard European English' ?

My intuition is that, in addition to some "pan-european(except-UK)" English terms,
as suggested by Harold, there will be national variants of English with 
local L1-inspired vocabulary and usages.

I have just set my final-year undergrad Computing class a coursework challenge, 
"Finding English terms specific to a domain on the World Wide Web",
where "domain" here means a national top-level domain like .DE or .UK
- the 85 students in the class each have to study WWW-English in a different
country, and many have signed up for European nations.
So, I should have some answers for you after 24 March when the courseworks 
have to be submitted!

Eric Atwell, School of Computing, Leeds University

PS CORPORA readers are welcome to send me advice or tips to pass on to
my students, esp on appropriate technologies  they can use (so they
dont have to write the programs themselves!) - the coursework outline is

http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/eric/db32cw.doc

On Thu, 2 Mar 2006, Parveen Lallmamode wrote:

> Has anyone of you here ever heard of a 'Standard European English'? If yes:
>
> - What are its characteristics?
> - Which researcher added that 'English' to the World Englishes?
> - How does it differ from the 'Standard British English'?
> - Where can I read more about it?
>
> Thanking you all in advance.
>
>
>
>
>
>

--

-- 
Eric Atwell, Senior Lecturer, Language research group, School of Computing,
Faculty of Engineering, University of Leeds, LEEDS LS2 9JT, England
TEL: +44-113-2335430  FAX: +44-113-2335468  http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/eric

Re: 'Standard European English' ?

Somers, Harold wrote:
> Using "eventual(ly)" to mean "if it happens" rather than "final"

I believe this is from the German "eventuell".

> Using "resp." as an abbreviation to mean either "respectively"  or
> "and/or" (as in "tea resp. coffee"). 

I believe this is from the usage of the German "beziehungsweise".

> I look forward to seeing this list expanded and/or (or should I say
> resp.) answers to your other questions. 

More generally:

The use of the comma to indicate the decimal point, such as "3,142" instead 
of "3.142" (pi). This follows French and German usage.

The use of the period/full stop instead of the comma to indicate "thousands", 
such as 1.000 instead of 1,000 for "one thousand". Again, this follows French 
and German usage.

The combination of the above usages can be very confusing for a British person!

Best regards

Briony Williams

Re: 'Standard European English' ?

Could this be the ELF (English as a lingua franca) as defined by Anna 
Mauranen, Barbara Seidlhofer, and others?
See a discussion here:
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/iatefl2004/visnja_16_conf.shtml#plenary
And Sylviane Granger is working on varieties of learner English which 
might also be of interest.

And would "courseworks" (see Eric Atwell's remark, below) be an example 
of  Euro English, or of language change?
I moved from England to France almost thirty years ago, so I would have 
classed coursework as an uncountable noun in British English.
And I'm looking forward to Eric's results on the domain .fr
Carmela Chateau

Eric Atwell wrote:

> My intuition is that, in addition to some "pan-european(except-UK)" 
> English terms,
> as suggested by Harold, there will be national variants of English 
> with local L1-inspired vocabulary and usages.
>
> I have just set my final-year undergrad Computing class a coursework 
> challenge, "Finding English terms specific to a domain on the World 
> Wide Web",
> where "domain" here means a national top-level domain like .DE or .UK
> - the 85 students in the class each have to study WWW-English in a 
> different
> country, and many have signed up for European nations.
> So, I should have some answers for you after 24 March when the 
> courseworks have to be submitted!
>
> Eric Atwell, School of Computing, Leeds University
>
> PS CORPORA readers are welcome to send me advice or tips to pass on to
> my students, esp on appropriate technologies  they can use (so they
> dont have to write the programs themselves!) - the coursework outline is
>
> http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/eric/db32cw.doc
>
>
> On Thu, 2 Mar 2006, Parveen Lallmamode wrote:
>
>> Has anyone of you here ever heard of a 'Standard European English'? 
>> If yes:
>>
>> - What are its characteristics?
>> - Which researcher added that 'English' to the World Englishes?
>> - How does it differ from the 'Standard British English'?
>> - Where can I read more about it?
>>
>> Thanking you all in advance.
>

Re: 'Standard European English' ?

> Somers, Harold wrote:
> > Using "eventual(ly)" to mean "if it happens" rather than "final"
> 
> I believe this is from the German "eventuell".

In Italian "eventualmente" means the same, "in case" or something like
that.
"Eventualmente, ti chiamo" = "If xxx (it is necessary, if I feel like
doing it, etc.), I'll call you".

Best,

Gloria