Final call for papers: ESSLLI 2026 Workshop on Referring expression choice in grounded contexts: Linguistic, cognitive, and computational aspects

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: [email protected]

Important dates:

Deadline for abstract submission:  March 31, 2026

Notification of acceptance: April 30, 2026

Workshop dates: August 3-7, 2026

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