Final call for papers: CORE Project Workshop @ESSLLI 2026
Referring expression choice in grounded contexts: Linguistic, cognitive, and computational aspects ESSLLI 2026 Workshop 3-7 August 2026, Prague, Czech Republic
Extended abstract submission deadline: April 15, 2026
Workshop URL: https://www.upf.edu/web/glif/esslli2026-workshop
ESSLLI 2026 URL: https://2026.esslli.eu
Workshop description:
When we refer to entities and events in our environment, particularly (but not only) when visual information is present, we have choices. Depending on what has been said before, who or what else is in a scene, and the characteristics of what we want to refer to, we might say (among many other options) "the person running", "the runner", "the woman in the red shirt", "the one with the glasses", or "them over there". The extent of this variation in referring expression (RE) choice has become evident in recent large-scale datasets (Monroe et al. 2017, Silberer et al. 2020, He et al. 2023).
Some of the factors influencing some kinds of choices in RE use have been amply studied – for example, between full noun phrases and shorter expressions involving demonstratives or pronouns (Ariel 1990, Gundel et al. 1993 and much later work), or between noun phrases with and without modification (e.g., Degen et al. 2020, Rubio-Fernandez and Jara-Ettinger 2020, and literature cited there). Others have received less attention – these include choices among noun phrases that reflect different levels of taxonomic granularity ("dog" vs. "husky", Graf et al. 2016, Kobrock et al. 2024, Liang and Liao 2024), choices arising from the cross-classifiability of referents (woman vs. runner, Mädebach et al. 2022, Gualdoni et al. 2023), choices based on salience or contrast (Clarke et al. 2013, Rubio-Fernández 2024, Bolea et al. to appear) or options for referring to individuals based on what they are doing or the scenes they appear in ("person running" vs. "runner", Tagliaferri et al. 2023), sometimes with the goal of producing particular sorts of causal inferences (Sasaki et al. 2025).
The goals of this workshop are 1) to further document and gain insight into the range of this variation; 2) to highlight its relevance for semantic/pragmatic theory, for theories of language and cognition, and for the use of language in computation; and 3) to promote communication and synergies between researchers at the interfaces of linguistics, cognitive science, and computation who have studied different aspects of referring expression choice in grounded contexts.
We welcome contributions on the following and other related questions:
- Cognitive biases that influence tendencies in RE choice in grounded contexts. - The role of contrast in RE choice. - The role of the specific available linguistic alternatives and alternative-based reasoning in influencing RE choice. - The information load a referring expression has to bear given extralinguistic sources of information in the context, especially visual information. - Lexical/constructional effects and association strength between RE options and the referent in question. - RE variability and language change
Invited speakers:
Raffaella Bernardi (Bolzano) Laia Mayol (UPF) Denis Paperno (Utrecht)
Submission guidelines:
Abstracts should be at most two pages in 12pt font (plus up to one extra page for data and references). Since we want to promote participation and discussion and no proceedings will be published, workshop submissions are not limited to unpublished work. We welcome proposals for both long (30 min. + discussion) and short (15 min. + discussion) presentations. We also plan to devote one day to a poster session accompanied by lightening talks. Please indicate on your abstract which type(s) of participation you are interested in.
Submission deadline: March 31, 2026. Submission is through Open Review at: https://openreview.net/group?id=ESSLLI.eu/2026/Workshop/CORE
Contact email: louise.mcnally@upf.edu
Important dates:
Deadline for abstract submission: March 31, 2026
Notification of acceptance: April 30, 2026
Workshop dates: August 3-7, 2026