LINGUIST List 10.298

Tue Feb 23 1999

Calls: Methods for Modalities, Three ACL Conferences

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Methods for Modalities, Methods for Modalities
2. Priscilla Rasmussen, Association for Computational Linguistics Workshops

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

METHODS FOR MODALITIES (M4M)


Institute for Logic, Language and Computation
University of Amsterdam 
May 6-7, 1999
www.illc.uva.nl/~mdr/M4M/

DEADLINE: March 15, 1999

THEME
The workshop `Methods for Modalities' (M4M) aims to bring together 
researchers interested in developing proof tools and decision methods for 
modal logic broadly conceived, including description logic, feature logic, 
temporal logic.

SPECIAL FEATURES
To stimulate interaction and transfer of expertise, M4M will be centered 
around a number of long presentations by leading researchers; these 
presentations will provide both the background and inside information in a 
number of key areas. To complement these, we are inviting submissions of 
short, focussed presentations aimed at highlighting new developments, and 
submissions of system demonstrations.

SUBMISSIONS
We invite two kinds of submissions: research papers on proof tools and 
decision methods for modal logic as well as their applications; and system 
descriptions. Research papers need not be original; they can be up to 10 
A4 size pages, and system descriptions can be up to 4 A4 size pages. 
System descriptions should focus on actual implementations, explaining 
system architecture issues and specific implementation techniques. Every 
system description should be accompanied by a system demo at M4M. The 
primary means of submission will be electronic, in PostScript format. 
Submissions should be sent to m4mwins.uva.nl.

PROGRAM
So far, the following people have agreed to give long presentations:
 * David Basin (Verification Based on Monadic Logic)
 * Patrick Blackburn (Labeled Deduction and Tableaux)
 * Ian Horrocks (Tableaux Implementations)
 * Hans de Nivelle (Resolution Implementations)
 * Renate Schmidt (Resolution-Based Methods)
 * Roberto Sebastiani (Testing; to be confirmed)
In addition, there will be demonstration sessions, and short, 30 minute, 
contributed presentations.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
The program committee for M4M consists of Carlos Areces (Amsterdam), Enrico 
Franconi (Manchester), Rajeev Gore (Canberra), Hans de Nivelle 
(Amsterdam/Saarbruecken), Hans Juergen Ohlbach (London), Maarten de Rijke 
(Amsterdam), Holger Schlingloff (Bremen).

IMPORTANT DATES
 * Deadline for submissions: March 15, 1999
 * Notification: April 5, 1999
 * Workshop dates: May 6-7, 1999

REGISTRATION
For information on registration please visit www.illc.uva.nl/~mdr/M4M/.

SPONSORS
M4M is generously sponsored by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific 
Research (NWO), the Computational Logic Group at ILLC, the Spinoza project 
`Logic in Action', and DFG.

FURTER INFORMATION
Please visit www.illc.uva.nl/~mdr/M4M/ for further information about M4M. 

Below, separated by askerisks (*) are THREE ACL'99 associated Workshop 
announcements: 1) Coreference and Its Applications; 2) Joint EMNLP
and Very Large Corpora; and 3) Relationship Between Discourse/Dialogue
Structure and Reference.

*********************************************************************

 ACL'99 Workshop

 COREFERENCE AND ITS APPLICATIONS

June 22, 1999

 University of Maryland

 College Park,
MD. USA

 http://www.cs.duke.edu/~amit/acl99-wkshp.html


WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION 


Coreference is in some sense nature's own hyperlink. It conveys how
individual statements are connected within documents, across documents
and across bodies of human knowledge. Consequently coreference
resolution algorithms are at the core of Natural Language
Processing. Most of the work done on coreference deals with
a single language and a single text document (usually newswire).

As NLP research matures into "application" phases (as opposed to
theory-development), NLP systems are moving beyond traditional
research sources to document sets which reflect a more natural, 
research-oriented mix. This shift can be seen in both the document 
sets and tasks used in recent HUB, MET, and TDT evaluations. The
new sources consist of documents in several different languages, 
documents with data from noisy sources, and documents containing 
multimedia. In order for NLP systems to make a successful
transition to these new sources, it is critical for coreference 
resolution systems to also work on these new sources.

The workshop invites papers regarding the theory, design, and
evaluation of coreference resolution systems that deal with
non-traditional data sources. In particular, we encourage 
submission of papers for the following types of coreference:

 *-Cross-document coreference

 *-Coreference resolution in languages other than English

 *-Coreference resolution on noisy data

 *-Coreference resolution on non-text data (example: human speech)

 *-Coreference resolution on multimedia data

In addition, the workshop also invites papers on innovative NLP
applications that rely heavily on coreference resolution systems.

FORMAT FOR SUBMISSION

Paper submissions should consist of a full paper (5000 words or less,
including references). Each submission should include a separate
title page providing the following information: the title, a short
abstract, names and affiliations of all the authors, the full address
of the primary author (or alternate contact person), including phone,
fax, and email.

Papers may be submitted by submitting three hard copies to:

Amit Bagga
General Electric CRD 
Room K1-5C38B
1 Research Circle
Niskayuna, NY
12309. USA

phone: 1-518-387-7077

email: baggacrd.ge.com

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission deadline: March 29

Notification of acceptance: April 16

Camera ready papers due: 	April 30

ORGANIZATION COMMITTEE
Co-Chairs:

Amit Bagga (Contact Person) 
General Electric Corporate
Research and Development 
K1-5C38B 
1 Research Circle
Niskayuna, NY 12309. USA

baggacrd.ge.com
518-387-7077 (voice)
518-387-6845 (fax)

Breck Baldwin 
Institute for Research in Cognitive Science
University of Pennsylvania 
3401 Walnut Street, #400C 
Philadelphia, PA 19104. USA

brecklinc.cis.upenn.edu 

Sara J. Shelton 
US Department of Defense 
9800 Savage Road, E24 
Ft Meade, MD 20755. USA 

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Amit Bagga - GE CRD 
Breck Baldwin - University of Pennsylvania 
Branimir Boguraev - IBM T.J. Watson Research Center 
Ed Hovy - Information Sciences Institute (USC/ISI) 
Mark T. Maybury - MITRE 
Ruslan Mitkov - University of Wolverhampton 
Sara Shelton - DoD 


**********************************************************************

> > First Call For Papers
> >
> > (EMNLP/VLC-99) JOINT SIGDAT CONFERENCE ON
> > EMPIRICAL METHODS IN NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND
> > VERY LARGE CORPORA
> >
> > Sponsored by SIGDAT (ACL's Special Interest Group for Linguistic Data
> > and Corpus-based Approaches to NLP)
> >
> > June 21-22, 1999
> > University of Maryland
> >
> > In conjunction
> >
> > ACL'99: the 37th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational
> > Linguistics
> >
> > This SIGDAT-sponsored joint conference will continue to provide a forum
> > for new research in corpus-based and/or empirical methods in NLP. In
> > addition to providing a general forum, the theme for this year is
> >
> > "Corpus-based and/or Empirical Methods in NLP for Speech, MT, IR, and
> > other Applied Systems"
> >
> > A large number of systems in automatic speech recognition(ASR) and
> > synthesis, machine translation(MT), information retrieval(IR), optical
> > character recognition(OCR) and handwriting recognition have become
> > commercially available in the last decade. Many of these systems use
> > NLP technologies as an important component. Corpus-based and empirical
> > methods in NLP have been a major trend in recent years. How useful are
> > these techniques when applied to real systems, especially when compared
> > to rule-based methods? Are
> > there any new techniques to be developed in EMNLP and from VLC in order
> > to improve the state-of-the-art of ASR, MT, IR, OCR, and other applied
> > systems? Are there new ways to combine corpus-based and empirical
> > methods with rule-based systems?
> >
> > This two-day conference aims to bring together academic researchers and
> > industrial practitioners to discuss the above issues, through technical
> > paper sessions, invited talks, and panel discussions. The goal of the
> > conference is to raise an awareness of what kind of new EMNLP techniques
> > need to be developed in order to bring about the next breakthrough in
> > speech recognition and synthesis, machine translation, information
> > retrieval and other applied systems.
> >
> > The conference solicits paper submissions in (and not limited to) the
> > following areas:
> >
> > 1) Original work in one of the following technologies and its relevance
> > to speech, MT, or IR:
> > (a) word sense disambiguation
> > (b) word and term segmentation and extraction
> > (c) alignment
> > (d) bilingual lexicon extraction
> > (e) POS tagging
> > (f) statistical parsing
> > (g) others (please specify)
> >
> > 2) Proposals of new EMNLP technologies for speech, MT, IR, OCR, or other
> > applied systems (please specify)
> >
> > 3) Comparative evaluation of the performance of EMNLP technologies in
> > one of the areas in (1) and that of its
> > rule-based or knowledge-based counterpart in a speech, MT, IR, OCR or
> > other applied systems
> >
> >
> > Submissions Requirements
> >
> > Submissions should be limited to original, evaluated work. All papers
> > should include background survey and/or reference to previous work. The
> > authors should provide explicit explanation when there is no evaluation
> > in their work. We encourage paper submissions related to the conference
> > theme. In particular, we encourage the authors to include in their
> > papers, proposals and discussions of the relevance of their work to the
> > theme . However, there will be a special session in the conference to
> > include corpus-based and/or empirical
> > work in all areas of natural language processing.
> >
> > Important Dates
> >
> > March 31 Submission of full-length paper
> > April 30 Acceptance notice
> > May 20 Camera-ready paper due
> > June 21-22 Conference date
> >
> > Program Chair
> >
> > Pascale Fung
> > Human Language Technology Center
> > Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
> > University of Science and Tehnology (HKUST)
> > Clear Water Bay, Kowloon
> > Hong Kong
> > Tel: (+852) 2358 8537
> > Fax: (+852) 2358 1485
> > Email: pascaleee.ust.hk
> >
> > Program Co-Chair
> > Joe Zhou
> > LEXIS-NEXIS, a Division of Reed Elsevier
> > 9555 Springboro Pike
> > Dayton, OH 45342
> > USA
> > Email: joezlexis-nexis.com
>

**********************************************************************

 CALL FOR PAPERS

 ACL'99 Workshop on the Relationship Between
 Discourse/Dialogue Structure and Reference
 June 21 1999
 University of Maryland

		http://www.isi.edu/~marcu/discourse-ref-acl99/

		 ---------------------------------

 The relationship between the structure of discourse and dialogue and
the
 use of referring expressions has been the focus of much research in
 linguistics, computational linguistics, and psycholinguistics.
Although
 individual efforts have been couched in a variety of frameworks
ranging
 from (S)DRT and RST to Centering, they all share two underlying
 assumptions:

 1. The structure of discourse affects the interpretation of
referring
 expressions and the space of anaphoric accessibility.
 2. The use of referring expressions restricts the set of possible
 discourse interpretations.
v
 However, most approaches address only one of these two views on the
 relation between structure and reference. And although several
theories
 explaining this relationship exist, few have made a significant impact
 on practical applications such as discourse parsing, summarization,
 generation, and name-entity recognition.

 This workshop will provide a forum for researchers in all areas of
 linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics who are
 interested in advancing the state of the art in understanding the
 relationship between discourse/dialogue structure and reference.
 Submissions are invited on, but not limited to, the following topics
and
 issues:

 1. Linguistic issues:
 + what is the relation between lexico-grammatical
 constructs, referring expressions, and the structure of
 discourse/dialogue?
 2. Psycholinguistic issues:
 + how does the use of referents affect the human
 interpretation of discourse/dialogue?
 3. Corpus-specific issues:
 + what coding schemata and annotation tools should one
use
 in order to encode the relation between
 discourse/dialogue structure and reference?
 4. Representation issues:
 + how should discourse/dialogue structures and referents
be
 represented?
 + how should one represent the relationship between them:
 as preferences; or as constraints?
 5. Algorithmic issues:
 + how can discourse/dialogue structures, referents, and
 co-referential links be identified and computed?
 + knowledge-intensive vs. shallow approaches
 + rule-driven vs. statistical vs. corpus-based approaches
 + Wordnet-based approaches
 + how do discourse/dialogue structure and referential
 expressions interact in natural language generation?
 6. General issues:
 + what are the commonalities of current approaches to
 studying the relation between discourse/dialogue and
 referents?
 + what are the differences?
 + what are the arguments against a relation between
 discourse/dialogue structure and reference?
 + how language-dependent is the relation between
 discourse/dialogue structure and reference?

 Post-Workshop Dissemination:

 Selected papers from the workshop will be compiled into a volume
 tentatively scheduled to appear in the Text, Speech, and Language
 Technology book series from Kluwer Academic Press.

 Submission Procedure:

 * Authors are requested to submit one electronic version of their
 papers OR four hardcopies. Please submit hardcopies only if
 electronic submission is impossible.
 * Maximum length is 8 pages including figures and references.
 * Please conform with the traditional two-column ACL Proceedings
 format. Style files can be downloaded from
 http://www.isi.edu/~marcu/stylefiles/ or from
 ftp://ftp.cs.columbia.edu/acl-l/Styfiles/Proceedings/

 Submission should be sent to:

 Nancy Ide
 Department of Computer Science
 Vassar College
 124 Raymond Avenue
 Poughkeepsie, New York 12604-0520 USA
 Fax: (+1 914) 437 7498
 WWW: http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~ide
 E-mail: idecs.vassar.edu

 Timetable:

 Deadline for submissions: March 26, 1999.
 Notification of acceptance: To Be Announced.
 Camera ready copies due: To Be Announced.

 Organizing committee:

 * Dan Cristea - University "A.I. Cuza" of Iasi, Romania.
 * Nancy Ide - Vassar College, USA.
 * Daniel Marcu - Information Sciences Institute/University of
 Southern California, USA.

 Program Committee:
 * Nicholas Asher (University of Texas)
 * Eugene Charniak (Brown University)
 * Udo Hahn (Freiburg University)
 * Lynette Hirschman (MITRE Corp.)
 * Graeme Hirst (University of Toronto)
 * Massimo Poesio (University of Edinburgh)
 * Ehud Reiter (University of Aberdeen)
 * Michael Strube (University of Pennsylvania)
 * Wietske Vonk (Max Planck Institute)
 * Marilyn Walker (AT&T)

 Related Events

 * ACL'99
 * ACL'99 SIGDIAL Business Meeting
 * ACL'99 Workshop on Tagging
 * ACL'99 Workshop on Coreference and Its Applications
 * EuroLAN'99 Summer School