Workshop Proposal: PRE-CogSci 2013: Bridging the gap between cognitive and computational approaches to reference

This full-day workshop explores the Production of Referring Expressions (PRE) from different perspectives. It follows two earlier workshops on the same theme, which were associated with two earlier CogSci conferences. The first of these, PRE-CogSci 2009, focussed on the interplay between computational and empirical methods.1 The second, PRECogSci 2011, broadened this theme to include work on dialogue and linguistic theory.2 Both events were highly successful, with each containing over 20 presentations and an audience of over 60 participants. Following the first workshop, the Topics in Cognitive Science journal published an issue containing 8 peer-reviewed articles selected from 28 full paper submissions (Krahmer et al. 2012). Following the second workshop, we are finalising a Special Issue of the journal Language and Cognitive Processes; accepted papers are expected to appear in 2013-14. A survey of research, by 2 of the organisers, on the generation of referring expressions that came out in the journal Computational Linguistics in March 2012 has since been downloaded over 700 times. This third PRE workshop is part of CogSci 2013. It will be different from its predecessors in two ways. Firstly, a range of new intellectual themes will be explored that have emerged in recent years. Second, the workshop will be coupled with a satellite event, which will be separately funded, and which will be devoted to the role of reference in practical applications. We expand on these issues below.