Gesellschaft fuer Semantik

The Gesellschaft fuer Semantik is a loose association for the improvement and intensification of scientific exchange in the area of semantics. It was founded in October 1994 during the Workshop on Recent Developments in the Theory of Natural Language Semantics at Blaubeuren, by the German semanticists Sebastian Loebner, Arnim von Stechow und Thomas Ede Zimmermann, who formulated the following "manifesto" :

"Since the seventies, there are a lot of activities in the German semantic scene, but the semanticists are working very much on their own and with little contact to others. The situation is due to the lack of an appropriate structure of the discipline of linguistics at German universities: in most cases it is part of language and literature departments such as Germanistik or Anglistik, only a few universities have a linguistics department of its own. Within linguistics, semantics is extremely underrepresented. The Gesellschaft für Semantik will try to improve the situation, by:

 

	organizing annual conferences and occasional workshops
	building up a mailing list
	discussing semantic problems
	building up an ftp site for semantic publications
	intensifying contacts to semanticists abroad and to neighbouring disciplines

The Gesellschaft fuer Semantik has been organizing annual conferences under the titel Sinn & Bedeutung since 1996 (1996 Tuebingen, 1997 Berlin, 1998 Leipzig, 1999 Duesseldorf, 2000 Amsterdam). Form now on, the annual conferences will take place in Octobre in the odd years (2001, ...) and in December in the even years. Sinn & Bedeutung 6 will be at Osnabrück in October this year, organized by Peter Bosch. Regine Eckardt and Manfred Kupffer are planning to organize Sinn & Bedeutung 7 at Konstanz, Dec. 2002.

We are maintaining a mailing list semantik. An ftp site for semantic publications was installed in 1995, but it was hardly used by anybody. Instead, we installed a member's list on this site, with links to the homepages of those member's who want to appear in the list.

For members of the Gesellschaft für Semantik a reduced subscription rate for Journal of Semantics has been arranged (currently £36.80/US$66.40 instead of £46/US$83 p.a. for individuals).

The Gesellschaft fuer Semantik is not an officially registered association. We don't have an official chair committee. The three persons who founded the association, Loebner, von Stechow and Zimmermann, still feel responsible and take care of the organizational part.We are a no-money organization -members don't pay fees. There are at present approximately 200 members. The annual meetings are organized at changing places by members of the Gesellschaft.

 

	Prof. Dr. Sebastian Loebner Department of General Linguistics Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet 40225 Duesseldorf Germany tel.: international (+49) 211 81-13399, within Germany: 0211 81-13399 loebner AT phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de
	Prof. Dr. Arnim von Stechow SfS Universitaet Tuebingen Kleine Wilhelmstr. 113 72074 Tuebingen Germany tel.: international (+ 49) 7071 29-77302, within Germany: 07071 29-77302 Arnim.Stechow AT uni-tuebingen.de
	Prof. Dr. Ede Zimmermann Institute for Cognitive Linguistics Universitaet Frankfurt Grueneburgplatz 1 60323 Frankfurt Germany Tel.: international (+49) 69 798-3 23 94, aus Deutschland 069 798-3 23 94 T.E.Zimmermann AT lingua.uni-frankfurt.de