LINGUIST List 12.580

Fri Mar 2 2001

Calls: Human Lang Technology, Arabic Lang Processing

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

Directory

1. Priscilla Rasmussen, Human Language Technology & Knowledge Management (ACL-2001)
2. Priscilla Rasmussen, ARABIC Language Processing: Status & Prospects (ACL-2001)

WORKSHOP ON HUMAN LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY
AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT



ACL/EACL 2001 Conference
Toulouse, France
July 6-7, 2001

Human language technologies promise solutions to challenges in human
computer interaction, information access, and knowledge management.
Advances in technology areas such as indexing, retrieval, transcription,
extraction, translation, and summarization offer new capabilities for
learning, playing and conducting business. This includes enhanced
awareness, creation and dissemination of enterprise expertise and know-how.

This workshop aims to bring together the community of computational
linguists working in a range of areas (e.g., speech and language
processing, translation, summarization, multimedia presentation, content
extraction, dialog tracking) both to report advances in human language
technology, their application to knowledge management and to establish a
road map for the Human Language Technologies for the next decade. The road
map will comprise an analysis of the present situation, a vision of where
we want to be in ten years from now, and a number of intermediate
milestones that would help in setting intermediate goals and in measuring
our progress towards our goals.

The workshop will be structured into two days, the first which will address
new research in human language technology for knowledge management that
addresses problems including but not limited to:

 * Expert Discovery: Modeling, cataloguing and tracking of distributed
 organizations and communities of experts.
 * Knowledge Discovery: Identification and classification of knowledge
 from unstructured multimedia data.
 * Knowledge Sharing: Awareness of and access to enterprise expertise and
 know-how.

Human language technology promises solutions to these challenges through
technologies such as:

 * Automated retrieval, extraction, and enrichment of information and
 knowledge from multimedia, multilingual, and multiparty information
 sources.
 * Translingual or crosslingual retrieval, presentation, and sharing of
 knowledge.
 * Automated detection and tracking of emerging topics from unstructured
 multimedia data (e.g., documents, web, video news broadcasts).
 * Use of knowledge sources to facilitate knowledge mapping and access
 (e.g., lexicosemantic such as Word-Net, semantic such as geospatial
 Gazetteers, semistructured such as thesauri, encyclopedia, fact books)
 * Automated question-answering from heterogeneous source
 * Intelligent tools that support the automated bibliometrics and
 document analysis/understanding in support of discovery of distributed
 experts and communities of expertise
 * Summarization and presentation generation of knowledge (e.g.,
 knowledge maps, lessons learned).
 * Modeling of user knowledge, beliefs, plans, (dis)abilities and
 preferences from queries, created artifacts, and human computer
 interactions.

The second day of the workshop will target the formulation and refinement
of a road map for the Human Language Technologies for the next decade.
Participants will help formulate grand challenge problems, discuss possible
data sets and/or evaluation metrics/methods that could form the basis of
more scientific methods, articulate the role of and necessary advances in
human language technology to solve these challenges, as well as identify
and characterize early innovations and issues (e.g., robustness,
scalability, ontology, privacy).

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

 * Mark Maybury (Chair), The MITRE Corporation, mayburymitre.org
 * Niels Ole Bernsen (Co-chair), University of Southern Denmark,
 nobnis.sdu.dk
 * Steven Krauwer, ELSNET, U. Utrecht, steven.krauwerlet.uu.nl
 * Irma Becerra-Fernandez, Florida International University,
 becferifiu.edu
 * Paul Heisterkamp, Daimler-Chrysler Research Ulm,
 paul.heisterkampdaimlerchrysler.com
 * Arjan van Hessen, IP GLOBALNET / U. Twente, hessencs.utwente.nl
 * Pierre Isabelle, XEROX Grenoble, pierre.isabellexrce.xerox.com
 * Enrico Motta, The Open University, e.mottaopen.ac.uk
 * Jose Pardo, ELSNET, Univ.Politecnica Madrid, pardodie.upm.es
 * Oliviero Stock, IRST Trento, stockitc.it
 * Henry Thompson HCRC LTG, University of Edinburgh, htcogsci.ed.ac.uk
 * Hans Uszkoreit, DFKI Saarbruecken, uszkoreitdfki.de
 * Yorick Wilks, University of Sheffield, yorickdcs.shef.ac.uk
 * Rick Wojcik, Boeing Phantom Works, richard.h.wojcikboeing.com
 * Antonio Zampolli, ELSNET, U. Pisa, pisailc.pi.cnr.it

TARGET AUDIENCE

The target audience of the workshop includes active researchers,
developers, appliers/entrepreneurs and funders of human language technology
in general as well as how it is applied to knowledge management
applications. While we project a high degree of interest in this topic,
we intend to restrict attendance based upon the quality of paper
submissions to foster high quality interchange and progress.

SPONSOR

This workshop is sponsored by the European Network of Excellence in Human
Language Technologies (ELSNET) who will be funding one or two invited
speakers.

SUBMISSION FORMAT AND INSTRUCTIONS

Both papers and demonstration submissions are encouraged, either on HLT in
general or its application to KM systems. Papers targeted at the first day
on HLT for KM should clearly articulate the knowledge management problem
addressed, the technical approach to solving that, the novelty of the
approach, its relation to previous work, the evaluation or performance of
the system or method, and discussion of limitations. Papers targeted at the
second day on human language technology direction should be authored so
they could be integrated into a more general HLT roadmap and so should
include a definition of the HLT area addressed (e.g., information
extraction, translation, speech recognition), a statement of the grand
challenges or problems in the subfield, an articulation/analysis of the
current state of the art, a vision of where the community wants to be in
ten years from now, a set of intermediate milestones that would help to set
intermediate goals and measure/evaluate progress toward these goals.

Submissions must be in English, no more than 8 pages long, and in the
two-column format prescribed by ACL'2001. Please see the ACL Style Guides
for the detailed guidelines. Submissions should be sent electronically in
Word (preferably) or PDF or ASCII text format to arrive no later than April
2, 2001 to Paula MacDonald (pmmmacmitre.org). As soon as possible,
authors are encouraged to send a brief email indicating their intention to
participate to include their contact information and the topic they intend
to address in their submission.

Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of their relevance, innovation,
quality, and presentation according to the schedule below.

SCHEDULE

 o Submission Deadline: 2 April 2001
 o Notification : 30 April 2001
 o Camera Ready Papers Due: 16 May 2001
 o Conference Dates: 6-7 July 2001

WORKSHOP DATE

July 6 and 7, 2001

WEBSITE

A Workshop web site has been set up at 

http://www.elsnet.org/acl2001-hlt+km.html

 ACL/EACL 2001 Workshop

 ARABIC Language Processing: Status and Prospects

 Toulouse, France, Friday 6 July 2001

 Co-organized by:

 ELSNET NAPLUS 

WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES AND DESCRIPTION:

 The objective of the workshop is threefold.
 * First of all we want to bring together people who are actively
 involved in Arabic language and/or speech processing in a mono- or
 multilingual context, and give them an opportunity to report on
 completed and ongoing work as well as on the availability of
 products and core technologies. This should enable the
 participants to develop a common view on where we stand with
 respect to Arabic language processing.
 * Secondly, we want to identify problems of common interest, and
 possible mechanisms to move towards solutions, such as sharing of
 tools and resources, moving towards standards, sharing and
 dissemination of information and expertise, adoption of current
 best practices, setting up joint projects and technology transfer
 mechanisms, etc.
 * Third, we would like to enhance collaboration between the Arabic
 NLP community and the NLP community at large.

 The workshop program will include the following components:
 * Introduction
 * Overview talks
 * Scientific papers
 * Short presentations of projects, core technologies and products
 * A panel session and/or a round table discussion
 * Conclusions

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS FOR SCIENTIFIC PAPERS:

 Papers are solicited that address all aspects of Arabic language
 processing in a mono- or multilingual context, including tools,
 resources and standards. Papers will have to be original and report on
 completed research. Submissions of scientific papers should not exceed
 eight (8) pages. Please provide a list of keywords in the separate
 header page. Further submission details below.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS FOR SHORT PRESENTATIONS OF PROJECTS, CORE
TECHNOLOGIES AND PRODUCTS:

 Short presentations serve to give the audience an impression of
 ongoing activities and projects, and of existing core technologies and
 products, with a view to possible collaboration and synergies (i.e. NO
 commercial product presentations). Submissions of short presentations
 should not exceed two (2) pages. Short presentations will be reviewed
 on the basis of relevance and clarity of presentation.

REQUIREMENTS FOR ALL SUBMISSIONS:

 Electronic submissions only (PostScript, Word, or PDF), following the
 appropriate ACL latex style or Microsoft Word style. Submissions
 should not exceed the length indicated above, including references.
 You can download the appropriate style or template files using the
 following link: http://acl2001.dfki.de/style/. Submission and
 presentation language is English. In case of problems with the
 submission format, please contact steven.krauwerelsnet.org.

 Submissions should be sent to steven.krauwerelsnet.org. All
 submissions will be acknowledged.

DEADLINES FOR ALL SUBMISSIONS:

 * Submission deadline: 6th April 2001
 * Notification date: 27th April 2001
 * Camera-ready papers due: 16th May 2001
 * Workshop date: 6th July 2001

CONFIRMED CORE PROGRAMME/ORGANISATION COMMITTEE:

 * Mustafa Yaseen, Amman University, Jordan (Co-chair,
 myaseencbj.gov.jo)
 * Joseph Dichy, Universite Lumiere-Lyon 2, France (Co-chair,
 dichyuniv-lyon2.fr)
 * Steven Krauwer, Utrecht University / ELSNET, The Netherlands
 (Contact person, steven.krauwerelsnet.org)
 * Adnane Zribi, University of Tunis, Tunisia (adngnet.tn)
 * Salem Ghazali, IRSIT, Tunisia (ghazaliirsit.rnrt.tn)
 * Humoud Al-Sadoun, Ministry of Education, Kuwait (hbhmoe.edu.kw)
 * Jean Senellart, SYSTRAN, France (senellartsystran.fr)
 * Nadia Hegazy, ERI, Egypt (nhegazyidsc.gov.eg)
 * Khalid Choukri, ELRA/ELDA, France (choukrielda.fr)
 * Malek Boualem, FTRD/DMI/LAN, France
 (malek.boualemrd.francetelecom.fr)
 * Everhard Ditters, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands,
 (e.ditterslet.kun.nl)

WORKSHOP URL:

 http://www.elsnet.org/acl2001-arabic.html

CONTACT INFO:

 Steven Krauwer email: steven.krauwerelsnet.org
 ELSNET / UiL OTS www: http://www.elsnet.org
 Trans 10 phone: +31 30 253 6050
 3512 JK Utrecht, NL fax: +31 30 253 6000