The 9th International Lexical Functional Grammar Conference will be hosted by the Department of Linguistics, University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand from 10 to 12 July 2004. A pre-conference activity is planned for 9 July.

For the week preceding the conference weekend (4-8 July 2004), a Winter School in LFG and computational linguistics is planned. The Winter School is yet to be confirmed.

LFG 2004 welcomes work within the formal architecture of Lexical-Functional Grammar as well as typological, formal, and computational work within the 'spirit of LFG' as a lexicalist approach to language employing a parallel, constraint-based framework.  The conference aims to promote interaction and collaboration among researchers interested in non-derivational approaches to grammar, where grammar is seen as the interaction of (perhaps violable) constraints from multiple levels of structuring, including those of syntactic categories, grammatical relations, semantics and discourse. Further information about LFG as a syntactic theory is available at the following sites:

Essex LFG site (UK)

Stanford LFG site(USA)

SUBMISSIONS

TALKS AND POSTERS

The main conference sessions will involve 40-minute talks (30 min. + 10 min. discussion), and poster/system presentations. Contributions should focus on results from completed as well as ongoing research, with an emphasis on novel approaches, methods, ideas, and perspectives, whether descriptive, theoretical, formal or computational.  Presentations should describe original, unpublished work.

DISSERTATION SESSION

We plan to hold a special session for students to present recent PhD dissertations (or other student research dissertations).  The dissertations must be completed by the time of the conference, and they should be made publicly accessible (e.g., on the World Wide Web).  The talks in this session should provide an overview of the contents of the dissertation; the time slots for the presentations will be 30 minutes in total.  The International LFG Association (ILFGA) will pay the conference fees for the students presenting at the student session.

Students should note that the main sessions are certainly also open to student submissions.

WORKSHOPS

We also invite proposals for workshops -- a small group of talks (2-4) on a coherent topic that can be expected to generate opposing views and discussion with the broader audience.  Panelists for workshops are usually determined by the workshop organizers.  Workshop papers should be distributed in advance among panelists so they can cross-reference one another's approaches.

At this point in time, we welcome suggestions for workshops from potential organisers or people with specific interests. The suggestions should be sent to the local organizers at: ida.toivonen@canterbury.ac.nz asudeh@csli.stanford.edu

TIMETABLE

SUBMISSION SPECIFICATIONS

Abstracts for talks, posters and the dissertation session must be received by February 15, 2004.

Submissions should be in the form of abstracts only. Abstracts can be up to two A4 pages in 10pt or larger type and should include a title. Omit name and affiliation, and obvious self reference. Note: we no longer ask for a separate page for data and figures (c-/f- and related structures). They can be included in the text of the abstract, obeying the overall two-page limit.

Abstracts may be submitted by email or by regular mail.
Email submission is preferred.

The following information should be provided on a separate page or in the body of the email:

*Note: In the absence of session type specification, submissions will be considered for both the talk and the poster sessions, and the program co-chairs may decide that certain submissions are better as poster presentations than as read papers.

Submission by Regular Mail:

Include:

• Eight copies of the abstract/paper.
• A card or cover sheet with author information.

Submission by Email:

ORGANISERS AND THEIR CONTACT ADDRESSES