Semantics and Meaning Representation

Dear Colleagues,

This Languages Special Issue Semantics and Meaning Representation focuses on the new challenges that current research on semantics and meaning representation of natural languages must tackle to provide the grounds for today's interdisciplinary needs concerning data science, machine learning, knowledge organisation or artificial intelligence.

Semantics and meaning representation come hand-to-hand in the context of language modeling and processing but also when it comes to dealing with the organisation and use of knowledge. The way natural languages convey information and knowledge requires the representation of the meaning of lexical, syntactic, or pragmatic units, and the representation of the concepts in which the meanings are anchored. But it also requires the understanding on how lexical and conceptual systems interact and how their units are related to each other, allowing dynamic and context-sensitive reasoning, wide-ranging and versatile resources, and interoperability.

Going beyond the purely linguistic perspective (Geeraerts 2010, Riemer, 2015, Truswell 2019, Feist 2022) or the fundamentally formal representation models (Bojar et al. 2019, Hershkowitz and Donatelli 2021), the goal of this Special Issue is to discuss and explore theoretical and applied approaches to semantics and meaning representation that respond to the new challenges, either by presenting specific cases of new semantic/meaning resources, either by discussing the theoretical grounds, applications or short comes of the new paradigms such as the Linked Data or the Semantic Web.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editors (rute.costa@fcsh.unl.pt|raquelamaro@fcsh.unl.pt). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

References

Bojar, Ondřej, Bernardi, Raffaella, & Webber, Bonnie. 2019. Representation of sentence meaning (A JNLE Special Issue). Natural Language Engineering, 25(4), 427–432. doi:10.1017/S1351324919000172.

Feist, Jim. 2022. Significance in Language: A Theory of Semantics. Routledge.

Geeraerts, Dirk. 2010. Theories of Lexical Semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN-13: 9780198700319 | ISBN-10: 0198700318, x+341 pp.

Hershkowitz, Daniel & Donatelli, Lucia (eds.). 2021. NLP and Semantics. Special Issue. Künstl Intell 35. Organ des Fachbereichs "Künstliche Intelligenz" der Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.

Riemer, Nick (ed.). 2015. The Routledge Handbook of Semantics. 1st ed. Taylor and Francis.

Truswell, Robert (ed.). 2019. The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure. Oxford University Press.

Dr. Rute Costa
Dr. Raquel Amaro
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.