Call for Papers

Workshop on Compositional Approaches in Physics, NLP, and Social Sciences

September 2 2018

Nice, France

https://sites.google.com/view/capns2018/home

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Deadline extension! Submissions now accepted until July 15th

Compositional Approaches for Physics, NLP, and Social Sciences (CAPNS 2018) will be colocated with QI 2018 (http://qi2018.quantum-interaction.org/). The workshop is a continuation and extension of the Workshop on Semantic Spaces at the Intersection of NLP, Physics and Cognitive Science https://sites.google.com/site/semspworkshop/ held in June 2016.

AIMS AND SCOPE

The ability to compose parts to form a more complex whole, and to analyze a whole as a combination of elements, is desirable across disciplines. In this workshop we bring together researchers applying compositional approaches to NLP, Physics, Cognitive Science, and Game Theory. The categorical model of Coecke et al. [2010], inspired by quantum protocols, has provided a convincing account of compositionality in vector space models of NLP. Similar category-theoretic approaches have been applied in cognitive science, and now are being extended to game theory. The interplay between the three disciplines will foster theoretically motivated approaches to understanding how meanings of words interact in sentences and discourse, how concepts develop, and how complex games can be analyzed. Commonalities between the compositional mechanisms employed may be extracted, and applications and phenomena traditionally thought of as 'non-compositional' will be examined.

Topics of interests include (but are not restricted to):

Applications of quantum logic in natural language processing and cognitive science

Compositionality in vector space models of meaning

Compositionality in conceptual spaces

Compositional approaches to game theory

Compositional approaches to computer science for linguistics, cognitive, and social sciences

Logic for linguistics, cognitive, and social sciences

Reasoning in vector spaces and conceptual spaces

Conceptual spaces in linguistics

Game-theoretic models of language and conceptual change

Category-theoretic diagrammatic reasoning for natural language processing, cognitive science, and game theory

Compositional explanations of so-called 'non-compositional' phenomena such as metaphor

IMPORTANT DATES:

July 15th: Paper submission

July 31st: Notification to contributors

September 2nd: Workshop date

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS:

Paul Smolensky, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research, and Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University

SUBMISSIONS:

We invite:

Original contributions (up to 12 pages) of previously unpublished work. Submission of substantial, albeit partial results of work in progress is welcomed.

Extended abstracts (3 pages) of previously published work that is recent and relevant to the workshop. These should include a link to a separately published paper or preprint.

Contributions should be submitted in the EPTCS format (http://style.eptcs.org/) at:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=capns2018

Proceedings of the workshop will be published as an EPTCS (Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science) volume.

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE:

Peter Bruza, Queensland University of Technology

Trevor Cohen, University of Texas

Fredrik Nordvall Forsberg, University of Strathclyde

Liane Gabora, University of British Columbia

Peter Gärdenfors, Lund University

Helle Hvid Hansen, TU Delft

Chris Heunen, University of Edinburgh

Peter Hines, University of York

Alexander Kurz, University of Leicester

Antonio Lieto, University of Turin

Glyn Morrill, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

Dusko Pavlovic, University of Hawaii

Taher Pilehvar, University of Cambridge

Emmanuel Pothos, City, University of London

Matthew Purver, Queen Mary University of London

Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh, Queen Mary University of London

Marta Sznajder, Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy

Pawel Sobocinski, University of Southampton

Dominic Widdows, Grab Technologies

Geraint Wiggins, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Victor Winschel, OICOS GmbH

Philipp Zahn, University of St. Gallen

Frank Zenker, University of Konstanz

ORGANIZATION:

Bob Coecke, University of Oxford

Jules Hedges, University of Oxford

Dimitri Kartsaklis, University of Cambridge

Martha Lewis, ILLC, University of Amsterdam

Dan Marsden, University of Oxford