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crl.nmsu.edu>CALL FOR PARTICIPATION Analysis for Generation a Workshop in conjunction with The International Conference on Natural Language Generation INLG'2000 (June 13-14) June 12, 2000, Mitzpe Ramon, Israel 1. The reasons why the workshop is of interest at this time. The last decade has seen an explosion in the work done in the field of NLG with the emphasis on the development of independent NLG applications rather than generation modules of MT systems. While it seems natural to consider problems of analysis and generation as two sides of a coin in such NLP applications as MT, researchers working on "pure" generation systems sometimes treat problems arising at every stage of generation--content specification, sentence planning, and surface realization--as independent. Time may be ripe for examining the mutual utility of analysis and generation in greater detail. The impetus is, as can be expected, the goal of minimizing system-building efforts in language engineering. 2. A brief technical description of the issues the workshop will address. The workshop proposes to address: * issues connected to the needs of analysis in generation systems as well as * issues of interrelation between generation and analysis from the standpoint of reusability and adaptability of analysis techniques and tools for generation. * issues of reusability of analysis knowledge and methodology of its acquisition for generation. Analysis as part of generation. A wide range of complex problems which are considered to be specific for generation--content specification, planning, and grammaticalization--may lead one to believe that generation is completely independent of analysis. Most generators tacitly assume that an intermediate system module can use the output of the preceding module as its input without any processing (that is, analysis) of this output. This is not, however, the case in practice. A modicum of analysis is, in fact, an essential part of every generation system. The input to generation systems such as raw data in tables, lists, diagrams, elements of various databases or even text snippets that are fed into the system directly by a user still must first be somehow processed, that is, analyzed. The analysis is needed to provide both the necessary content and, often, format for the content specification (see, for example, Dale 1995, Robin 1994, Kukich 1988, McKeown et al. 1994, Bateman and Teich 1995). This problem becomes especially important in those applications (including multilingual ones) in which at least some input to generation is in textual form (e.g., Sheremetyeva and Nirenburg 1996). Many NLG systems often use a variety of analysis techniques. The question arises whether it is possible to develop criteria to better choose and integrate analysis techniques which could be efficiently applied at different stages of generation. Reusability and adaptability of analysis techniques and tools for generation. While it is not uncommon to believe that generation and analysis are not reversible, a number of contributions over the years have discussed reversibility of analysis and generation resources, especially the grammars. Appelt 1987, Barnett and Mani 1990 and van Noord 1993, among others, demonstrate how the use of reversible grammars may lead to efficient and flexible natural language parsing and generation systems. It is worth discussing constraints on reversibility. Reusability of analysis knowledge and methodology of its acquisition for generation. Generation and analysis are closely related in that both processes use many similar resources, and often it is less expensive to reorganize an existing "analysis" resource (e.g., an analysis lexicon) than to acquire one for generation from scratch. (Allgayer et al. 1989, Viegas and Beale 1996, Sheremetyeva and Nirenburg 1999a, 1999b). It is worth discussing how to establish whether a resource built for analysis can be used for generation and at what price. THE PROGRAM: June,12, 00 13.00 - 13.15 S. Sheremetyeva. Introduction 13.15-13.50 H. Manuelian. Reusability of Mental Representation Theory in Automatic Generation: Generating Expressions Referring to Objects with G-TAG and RMs 13.50-14.25 D. Lonsdale. Leveraging Analysis Operators in Incremental Generation 14.25-15.00 S. Busemann. Interfacing Constraint-Based Grammars and Generation Algorithms 15.00-15.20 Break 15.20-17.00 Panel : R. Kempson, S. Nirenburg, M.Zock, S.Sheremetyeva. PLEASE FIND DETAILS ABOUT REGISTRATION AND ACCOMMODATION at the main conference homepage at http://www.cs.bgu.il/~nlg2000 Organizing Committee Svetlana Sheremetyeva, Chair and contact person Computing Research Laboratory, New Mexico State University, USA lanaMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue