Inference in Computational Semantics

The first workshop on Inference in Computational Semantics (ICoS-1) was held at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation of the University of Amsterdam, on August 15, 1999. It was aimed at bringing together researchers from scientific disciplines to discuss approaches and applications of inference in natural language semantics, ranging from theoretical to implementational issues. In particular, ICoS-1 featured three invited presentations, six contributed talks, and six system demonstrations showing how inference tools are used in natural language applications. The variety of the program was also mirrored by the spectrum of contributing authors, which included researchers from Computational Linguistics, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, and Logic. This special issue is derived from ICoS-1. In it we bring together nearly all of the papers presented at the workshop, as well as short descriptions of the systems that were demonstrated at ICoS-1. Before giving a brief description of the contributions, we discuss some generalities.