Sinn und Bedeutung 28 will take place at Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) from September 5-8, 2023. The conference is jointly organized by the RUB Department of Linguistics, the Linguistic Data Science Lab, the Department of German Language and Literature, and the Departments of Philosophy I and II. The conference will feature a three-day main session (Sept. 6-8) and two parallel one-day special sessions on The Semantics and Pragmatics of Co-Speech / Co-Sign Communication and on Big Data in Semantics and Pragmatics (Sept. 5).

Invited Speakers (main session):

• Dorothy Ahn (Rutgers University)
• Hazel Pearson (Queen Mary University of London)
• Graham Priest (City University of New York, University of Melbourne, RUB)

Special session I:  The Semantics and Pragmatics of Co-Speech / Co-Sign Communication

This special session is dedicated to research on the semantics and pragmatics of visual communication, in particular gestures and related phenomena that occur together with spoken or signed language. We invite theoretical, empirical, or applied work that addresses the meaning of these gestures and how it can be composed with the meaning of the verbal spoken or signed channel.

• Invited speaker: Cornelia Ebert (Goethe University Frankfurt)
• Organizer: Tatjana Scheffler (RUB)

Special session II: Big Data in Semantics and Pragmatics

This special session aims to bring together researchers with an interest in using large data sets for semantic and pragmatic analyses. Topics of this session include all aspects of creating and annotating corpora and other data sets for semantic and pragmatic issues, and, in particular, using such corpora and data sets for testing corresponding semantic and pragmatic theories, be it by confronting these theories with corpus data, or by learning nexuses the theories should deal with.

• Invited speaker: Raquel Fernandez (University of Amsterdam)
• Organizer: Ralf Klabunde (RUB, Linguistic Data Science Lab)

Organizers:

• Kristina Liefke (RUB Philosophy II)
• Ralf Klabunde (RUB Linguistic Data Science Lab)
• Agata Renans (RUB Linguistics)
• Daniel Gutzmann (RUB German Language & Literature)
• Tatjana Scheffler (RUB German Language & Literature)
• Dolf Rami (RUB Philosophy I)
• Heinrich Wansing (RUB Philosophy I)
• Markus Werning (RUB Philosophy II)

Email: sub28@ruhr-uni-bochum.de