LINGUIST List 11.1440

Wed Jun 28 2000

Confs: Efficiency in Parsing Systems (Coling 2000)

Editor for this issue: Jody Huellmantel <jodylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. John Carroll, Efficiency in Large-Scale Parsing Systems (Coling 2000)

 EFFICIENCY IN LARGE-SCALE PARSING SYSTEMS

 a workshop to be held at

 Coling 2000, the 18th International Conference
 on Computational Linguistics

 Luxembourg, 5 August 2000

This workshop will focus on methods, grammars, and data to facilitate
empirical assessment and comparison of the efficiency of large-scale
parsing systems.

Organisers

 John Carroll, University of Sussex
 Robert C. Moore, Microsoft Research
 Stephan Oepen, Saarland University


Programme

 9:00 Registration
 9:30 Efficient Large-Scale Parsing - a Survey
 John Carroll
 9:45 Invited Talk: Why not Cubic?
 Ronald M. Kaplan
 10:45 Discussion

 11.00 Coffee Break

 11:30 Large Scale Parsing of Czech
 Pavel Smrz, Ales Horak
 12:05 Precompilation of HPSG in ALE into a CFG for Fast Parsing
 John C. Brown, Suresh Manandhar
 12:40 Demo: Cross-Platform, Cross-Grammar Comparison - Can it be Done?
 Ulrich Callmeier, Stephan Oepen

 13:00 Lunch

 14:30 Demo: Tools used in creating Microsoft's Large-Scale Parsers
 Hisami Suzuki, Jessie Pinkham
 14:50 Measuring Efficiency in High-accuracy, Broad-coverage Statistical Parsing
 Brian Roark, Eugene Charniak
 15:25 Time as a Measure of Parsing Efficiency
 Robert C. Moore

 16:00 Coffee Break

 16:30 Some Experiments on Indicators of Parsing Complexity for Lexicalized 
 Grammars
 Anoop Sarkar, Fei Xia, Aravind Joshi
 17:05 Discussion
 18:00 Close


Workshop Scope and Aims

 Interest in large-scale, grammar-based parsing has recently seen a 
 large increase, in response to the complexities of language-based
 application tasks such as speech-to-speech translation, and enabled by
 the availability of more powerful computational resources and by
 efforts in large-scale and collaborative grammar engineering.

 There are two main paradigms in the evaluation and comparison of the
 performance of parsing algorithms and implemented systems: (i) the
 formal, complexity-theoretic analysis of how an algorithm behaves,
 typically focussing on worst-case time and space complexity bounds;
 and (ii) the empirical study of how properties of the parser and input
 (possibly including the grammar used) affect actual, observed run-time
 efficiency.

 It has often been noted that the theoretical study of algorithms alone
 does not (yet) suffice to provide an accurate prediction about how a
 specific algorithm will perform in practice, when used in conjunction
 with a specific grammar (or type of grammar), and when applied to a
 particular domain and task. Therefore, empirical assessment of
 practical parser performance has become an established technique and
 continues to be the primary means of comparison among algorithms. At
 the same time, system competence (i.e. coverage and overgeneration
 with respect to a particular grammar and test set) cannot be decoupled
 from the evaluation of parser performance, because two algorithms can
 only be compared meaningfully when they really solve the same problem,
 i.e. either directly use the same grammar, or at least achieve
 demonstrably similar competence on the same test set.

 The focus of the workshop is on large-scale parsing systems and
 precise, comparable empirical assessment. We envisage discussion at
 the workshop will centre on methods, reference grammars, and test data
 that will facilitate improved comparability. The workshop is intended
 to bring together representatives from sites working on grammar-based 
 parsing (both in academic and corporate environments) to help the
 field focus and converge on a common, pre-standard practice in
 empirical assessment of parsing systems.


Workshop Fees

 DM 100 (regular participants), DM 50 (students); registration includes 
 one copy of the workshop proceedings and refreshments. Please register
 on-line at http://www.coling.org/registration3.php3 (secure form).


Programme Committee

 John Carroll, University of Sussex, UK
 Gregor Erbach, Telecommunications Research Centre Vienna, Austria
 Bernd Kiefer, DFKI Saarbruecken, Germany
 Rob Malouf, Rijkuniversitet Groningen, The Netherlands
 Robert Moore, Microsoft Research, USA
 Gertjan van Noord, Rijkuniversitet Groningen, The Netherlands
 Stephan Oepen, Saarland University, Germany
 Gerald Penn, Bell Labs Research, USA
 Hadar Shemtov, Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre, USA
 Kentaro Torisawa, Tokyo University, Japan


Conference Information

 General information about Coling 2000 is at http://www.coling.org/ .
 See http://www.coling.org/workshops.html for information about this
 and other Coling workshops.