JoLLI Special Issue 2008

JoLLI Special Issue on New Directions in Type-theoretic Grammars GUEST EDITOR: REINHARD MUSKENS

In 1961 Haskell Curry published his by now famous paper on 'Some Logical Aspects of Grammatical Structure'. In this paper he makes a distinction between the 'tectogrammatics' and 'phenogrammatics' of language (a distinction similar to that between abstract syntax and concrete syntax in compiler theory). The tectogrammatics of an expression reflects the way in which the expression is /built/, while the phenogrammatics is the way it /appears/. On the basis of this distinction Curry argues against directionality in the type system used for language description. In 1953 Bar-Hillel had introduced a distinction between categories seeking material to their right and categories seeking material to the left, a distinction that was taken over in Lambek's (1956) pivotal work on categorial grammar, but in Curry's architecture phenogrammatic structure can take care of word order, making directionality unnecessary.

While Curry's insights never quite made it into the mainstream of type-theoretic grammar, they have for a long time formed an important undercurrent. Recently this undercurrent has surfaced and since the turn of the century there has been a heightened activity within a series of type-theoretical formalisms that could be called "Curryesque". These formalisms, which bear a family resemblance to each other, adopt the pheno/tecto distinction and undirectedness in one way or another and claim various descriptive and formal advantages over more traditional approaches.

Such Curryesque approaches to type-theoretic grammar were the topic of a recent interdisciplinary workshop held in Dublin as part of the European Summer School on Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) 2007 (see http://let.uvt.nl/general/people/rmuskens/ndttg/ for more information). In the wake of this workshop there will be a special issue of the Journal of Logic, Language, and Information on new directions in type-theoretic grammars. We invite papers on all logical, linguistic, and computational aspects of type-theoretic grammars in which the pheno/tecto distinction plays a prominent role. Papers combining linguistic considerations with more formal ones are especially welcome.

Submission Format

Contributions should be submitted electronically to Reinhard Muskens, email: r.a.muskens@uvt.nl. Authors are strongly encouraged to prepare their contribution with the help of LaTeX, making use of the Journal's style file. Papers should not exceed 20 pages and can be excluded if they do. However, good papers for which there is no room in the special issue will be recommended to the Managing Editor for publication in other issues.

Important Dates

Submission deadline: 1 February 2008 Referee reports due: 1 April 2008 Final version due:  1 June 2008 Publication date:   Autumn 2008 This CfP was obtained from WikiCFP