Contents

1.The Lacl conference series

2. European Summer School on Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI-2001)

3. European Summer School on Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI-2002)

There is a lasting interest in the use of formal methods and logic in natural language modeling and processing, both for syntactical and semantical models, and, in particular, for the interplay between syntax and semantics. Typical topics which have shown their relevance and are still under development include : Categorial grammars, Categorial type logics, Compositionality, Discourse representation theory, Dynamics, Feature Logics, Formal language theory, Game-theoretical semantics, Grammatical inference, Learning theory, Linear logical frameworks, Minimalism, Modal logics, Montague semantics, Parsing as deduction, Prooftheoretic approaches, Situation semantics and situation theory, Type-theoretic approaches.

The LACL series of conferences aims at providing a forum for the presentation and discussion of current research in all the formal and logical aspects of computational linguistics, which are listed above. It started as a workshop held in Nancy (France), in 1995, whose selected papers appears as the issue 7(4) of the Journal of Logic, language and Information. Due to its success, it was turned, the next year, into an international conference. The proceedings of the LACL conferences (96, 97, 98, 01) are published by Springer Verlag as volumes 1328, 1582, 2014 and 2099 of the lecture notes in A.I. An idea of the topics covered by the LACL conference series can be given by naming some of renowned speakers: Denis Bouchard, Jean-Yves Girard, Aravind Joshi, Makoto Kanazawa, Marcus Kracht, Seth Kulick, Yves Lafont, Joachim Lambek, Dale Miller, Michael Moortgat, Fernando Pereira, Geoffrey K. Pullum, Maarten de Rijke, Barbara C. Scholz, Edward Stabler, and Mark Steedman.

The LACL conference series enriches the spectrum of conferences in computational linguistics, firstly by the emphasis on methods issued form mathematical logic, and also by the threefold nature of the objectives :

• the design of logical tools for natural language processing,

• but also the understanding of human processing of natural language,

• as well as the mathematical and computational study of the underlying formal systems, in particular the logical ones.

Information on the next LACL]

[*] Co-chair of the 1st LACL workshop; chair of the program and organizing committees of the first LACL (96); member of the program committte of LACL‘98; chair of the organizing committee of LACL‘01.

The ESSLLI Summer Schools are annually organized under the auspices of FoLLI the `European Association for Logic, Language and Information'.

The main focus of ESSLLI is on the interface between linguistics, logic and computation. The school has developed into an important meeting place and forum for discussion for students, researchers and IT professionals interested in the interdisciplinary study of Logic, Language and Information.

This year ESSLLI is organized by ITC irst and University of Trento, ittakes place in Trento, Italy, August 5 16. The programme is available at: http://www.esslli2002.it/. Vienna (Austria) will host ESSLLI in the year 2003.

Previous ESSLLI summer schools have been highly successful, attracting around 500 participants from Europe and elsewhere. They were held in Groningen (The Netherlands, 1989), Leuven (Belgium, 1990), Saarbrucken (Germany, 1991), Colchester (UK, 1992), Lisbon, (Portugal, 1993), Copenhagen (Denmark, 1994), Barcelona (Spain, 1995), Prague (Czech Republic, 1996), Aix en Provence (France, 1997), Saarbrucken (Germany, 1998), Utrecht (The Netherlands, 1999), Birmingham (UK, 2000), Helsinki (Finland, 2001).

In previous editions of ESSLLI the courses covered a wide variety of topics within six areas of interest: Logic, Computation, Language, Logic and Computation, Computation and Language, Language and Logic. The novelty of this year edition is the special emphasis on the interface between the basic areas (Logic, language, and Computation). So, this edition offers about 50 courses, organized into three interdisciplinary areas (Language & Computation, Language & Logic, and Logic & Computation), at a variety of levels (foundational, introductory, advanced), as well as a number of workshops.

The courses and workshops. There are three dierent types of courses: Foundational, Introductory and Advanced. Foundational Courses aim to provide truly introductory courses into a eld. The courses presuppose absolutely no background knowledge, and should be accessible to people from other disciplines. The Introductory Courses aim to give students the chance to familiarize themselves with subjects and problem areas which does not fall within the eld of expertise of staat their home institutions. Advanced Courses, instead, are aimed at the acquisition of more specialized knowledge about already familiar topics. They also provide the opportunity for researchers to give intensive courses at high levels.

The Workshops are intended to encourage collaboration and the crossfertilization of ideas by stimulating in-depth discussion of issues which are at the forefront of current research in the field.

Student Session, Evening lectures, and Satellite Events. In addition to courses and workshops there are a student session, evening lectures, and a number of satellite events, such as `Formal Grammar.

During ESSLLI'96 in Prague, by way of experiment, the rst ESSLLI Student Session was organized. Since then its aim is to provide Masters and PhD students with an opportunity to present their own work to a professional audience, thereby getting informed feedback on their own results. Unlike workshops, the student session is not tied to any specic theme. And each year, the Best Paper Prize is awarded, after evaluating the quality of the submission and presentation. In addition, those students involved each year in the organization of the student session, obtain a valuable experience on running such scientic event, having to deal by themselves with reviews, editing of the proceedings, etc. Even though the session is completely on the hands of the students, they continuously receive support, guidance and feedback from experts in the field.

All in all, the student session is proving itself as a very valuable addition to ESSLLI _ The ever increasing number of submissions, coming from all over the world, definitely shows that there is an interest in a forum like this.

Evening lectures are given by distinguished scholars, and address the general ESSLLI public. More and more satellite events are being organized during and around ESSLLI summer schools. Since ESSLLI'95 in Barcelona, a Formal Grammar conference is organized the weekend preceding the summer school. It provides a forum for the presentation of new and original research on formal grammar, especially with regard to the application of formal methods to natural language analysis.

This year's conference will have a modular architecture. It will feature a special session on nite-state methods as they pertain to formal grammar, and a panel on "Formal Grammar and the Curriculum". The panel should create the basis for the development of an archive of educational material related to formal grammar such as course notes, assignments, software and demos. It will also host a Symposium Session, co-sponsored by CologNet and ESLNET, on "Combining logical and data-oriented approaches in NLP".

The Summer School is increasingly being used as a stepping stone for publications: several special JoLLI issues based on workshops held during previous summer schools have appeared, or are about to, and a number of titles in the SiLLI book series are based on workshops and courses held during previous Summer schools. Summer School lecturers and workshop organizers are encouraged to contact members of the editorial boards of JoLLI and SiLLI to discuss publication plans.

Applications to host the summer school must be sent to FoLLI's Standing Committee for the Summer School that decides on locations, appoints the program committees and organizing committees, and discusses matters of policy regarding the summer schools.

The European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) is this year in its 14 edition and will take place in Trento from the 4th to the 17th of August 2002, co-organized by the Istituto Trentino di Cultura and the University of Trento, under the auspices of the European Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI).

Initiated by a small group of researchers, the first ESSLLI was held in Groningen (The Netherlands) in 1989. Successfully fighting off the many financial, organisational and scientific difficulties inherent in making such an event come true, ESSLLI has now become a significant event in the logic, language and computation community.

A mark of its significance is the large number of applications to hold courses and workshop that were received last year : in total, 97 such applications were received from which the scientific committee had the difficult task of selecting 42 courses and 6 workshops. A new feature this year is that all courses and workshops are interdisciplinary bearing on logic & language, logic & computation or language & computation. As usual, courses are classified as foundational (requiring no knowledge of the field), introductory or advanced while the workshops present a range of selected papers centered around a specific topic.

Other features of the summer school include the evening lectures (five this year), a satellite workshop on "Learning algorithms for lexicalised grammars", a colocated event "The 7th conference on Formal Grammar" and a student session which this year boasts 17 oral presentations and 12 posters (The full program, with the detailed description of the courses and workshops, is available on the web site www.esslli2002.it).

All in all, it seems that ESSLLI has become what it was meant to be: "an important meeting place and forum for discussion for students and researchers interested in the interdisciplinary study of Logic, Language and Information".