LINGUIST List 12.1641

Thu Jun 21 2001

Calls: Evolution of Language, Automatic Paraphrasing

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

Directory

1. Simon Kirby, Evolution of Language
2. Teruko Mitamura, Automatic Paraphrasing (NLPRS'2001)

 EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE:
 Fourth International Conference, 2002.

 Harvard University 

 Wednesday March 27th --- Saturday March 30th.

This is the fourth conference in the series, continuing from
Edinburgh/1996, London/1998, and Paris/2000. 

WEBSITE for this conference: http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/evolang2002/

LOCAL ORGANIZER: Tecumseh Fitch (Harvard University)


CONFIRMED PLENARY SPEAKERS:

David Caplan (Harvard University & Massachusetts General Hospital)
Marc Hauser (Harvard University)
Ray Jackendoff (Brandeis University)
Partha Niyogi (University of Chicago)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Papers are solicited on all aspects of the origin and evolution of
language, from any relevant discipline, including Anthropology,
Archaeology, Artificial Intelligence, Biology, Cognitive Science,
Computational or Mathematical Modelling, Ethology, Genetics,
Linguistics, Neuroscience, Palaeontology, and Psychology. It is
anticipated that papers will be presented in 25 minutes, with 5 minutes
for discussion. Papers will be accepted on the basis of submitted
abstracts, refereed by independent assessors. Some papers not accepted
as talks will be accepted as posters. 

SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS (revised from earlier postings)

Deadline: October 31st, 2001.

Length limit: No more than 500 words in total.

Format: A plain text file, modified from the template downloadable from
the website (see above). 

Submission: Electronically --- attach your abstract to an email message
sent to evolangling.ed.ac.uk . Do not attempt to include your abstract
in the body of your message. 


FURTHER INFORMATION

Further information, about added plenary speakers, accommodation,
conference fees, etc. will be forthcoming from time to time. If you
would like to be included in further emailings, please subscribe to the
EvoLang2002 email list. You can do this by sending an email to
majordomoling.ed.ac.uk with the following single-line message (not in
the subject header):

subscribe evolang2002

- ------------------------------------------------
Organizing Committee:
Bernard Comrie (Max Planck Institute, Leipzig)
Jean-Louis Dessalles (Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications, Paris)
Tecumseh Fitch (Harvard University)
James R Hurford (University of Edinburgh)
Chris Knight (University of East London)
Alison Wray (Cardiff University)

			 CALL FOR PAPERS

			 NLPRS'2001 Workshop
	 Automatic Paraphrasing: Theories and Applications

		 Tokyo, JAPAN, November 30, 2001
 http://www.slt.atr.co.jp/~yamamoto/pub/NLPRS2001WS.html

Today, we encounter a lot of electronic texts and documents
everywhere. New NLP technologies that help us use these texts and
documents easily are needed. For example, summarization of a text is
necessary to reduce the text length to fit to small screen of mobile
terminals: simplification of a text is beneficial to help children,
elders, and non-natives understand the text more easily.

The core technology that realizes these examples is automatic
paraphrasing: it changes text parameters such as length, readability,
and style for a specific purpose, without losing the core meaning of
the text. In some sense, automatic paraphrasing can be viewed as
machine translation within a single language.

Paraphrasing ability may be closely connected to the ability to
understand. If we can make a system that paraphrases a text, as human
beings do, we may claim that the system understands the text.

Recently, the number of researchers who are interested in paraphrasing
is increasing in the research community of natural language
processing. This workshop aims to bring together researchers of
(automatic) paraphrasing to promote the exchange of their ideas and
experiences. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

	* what is paraphrasing?
	* relation between paraphrasing and understanding
	* word level paraphrasing, sentence level paraphrasing, discourse 
	 level paraphrasing
	* difference between paraphrasing and summarization
	* words defined by words or sentences
	* how to create knowledge for automatic paraphrasing
	* paraphrasing in text generation
	* paraphrasing for mobile terminal screen
	* paraphrasing for machine translation
	* paraphrasing for Web document summarization 
	* paraphrasing for structured document such as XML

Workshop schedule:

	* Workshop paper submissions August 4, 2001
	* Notification of acceptance September 1, 2001
	* Deadline for camera-ready papers September 20, 2001

Submission details:

Submissions must be in English, no more than 8 pages long, and in the
two-column format prescribed by NLPRS'2001. Please see
	http://www.r.dl.itc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/NLPRS2001.html

Papers should be sent electronically in either Word, pdf, or
postscript format to:

	Satoshi Sato
	satoi.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Program Committee: 

	Satoshi Sato (Kyoto University, JAPAN) co-chair
	Hiroshi Nakagawa (The University of Tokyo, JAPAN) co-chair
	Kazuhide Yamamoto (ATR, JAPAN)
	Kentaro Inui (Kyushu Institute of Technology/PRESTO, JAPAN)
	Sadao Kurohashi (The University of Tokyo/PRESTO, JAPAN)
	Kentaro Torisawa (JAIST/PRESTO, JAPAN)
	Hideki Kashioka (ATR, JAPAN)
	Katashi Nagao (IBM, JAPAN)
	Satoshi Sekine (New York University, USA)
	Toshihiko Watanabe (The University of Tokyo, JAPAN)
	Hidetaka Masuda (Tokyo Denki University, JAPAN)