With this second issue, published by the “Italian Association of Computational Linguistics” (AILC, www.ai-lc.it), the Italian Journal of Computational Linguistics (IJCoL) continues to contribute to the promotion and dissemination of research results in the field of computational linguistics, tackled from different and complementary perspectives. This is a miscellaneous volume reporting the results of promising lines of computational linguistics research in Italy and abroad. In particular, it includes an invited contribution by Paola Merlo (University of Geneva) and the extended version of a selection among the best papers involving junior researchers and presented at CLiC-en 2015, the second edition of the “Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics” which was held in Trento in December 2015.
The issues revolving around natural language and computation relate, on the one hand, to the computer’s ability to understand the structure and content of linguistic productions (both written and oral) and to interact with the outside world in natural language, and, on the other hand, to a better understanding of the way in which the language works, is learned and changes in time in space, through different communicative situations or channels. These are two directions of research which are complementary and in constant osmosis. The contributions of this volume are representative of both directions of research, in line with the goals of the journal, i.e. acting as a forum in which the various “souls” of computational linguistics can meet and discuss.