LINGUIST List 14.1602

Thu Jun 5 2003

Calls: Forensic Ling/France; Computational Ling/USA

Editor for this issue: Marie Klopfenstein <marielinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. wap1, International Roundtables for the Semiotics of Law
2. shelmrei, 6th Workshop on Interlinguas

International Roundtables for the Semiotics of Law 
Date: 07-JUL-04 - 12-JUL-04
Location: LYON, France
Contact: WILLIAM PENCAK
Contact Email: wap1psu.edu 

Linguistic Sub-field: Forensic Linguistics 
Call Deadline: 30-Apr-2004

Meeting Description:

FIRST CALL /// FIRST CALL /// FIRST CALL /// FIRST CALL

deadline for submission: APRIL 2004

We will organize the panels for the Association which will meet in
conjunction with the International Association of Semiotic Societies
that will meet in Lyon from July 7-12, 2004. We will hold our meeting
concurrently with theirs, with the possibility of people going to
sessions at the main meeting, and their members sitting in with us and
perhaps schedule a small reception where those who are interested can
find out about us.

The theme of the international conference is Signs of the World:
Interculturality and Globalization, and while papers directed toward
that very broad topic are welcome, in the spirit of Bobbie Kevelson we
are of course open to all varieties of legal semiotics.

If you are interested in participating, please send me a short
(paragraph length abstract) your name, title, and contact
information. Thanks so much.

William Pencak
Professor of History
The Pennsylvania State University
Senior Editor: Early American Studies
e-mail: wap1psu.edu

6th Workshop on Interlinguas 

Date: 23-Sep-2003 - 23-Sep-2003
Location: New Orleans, Louisiana, United States of America
Contact: Stephen Helmreich
Contact Email: shelmreicrl.nmsu.edu 
Meeting URL: http://crl.nmsu.edu/Events/FWOI/SixthWorkshop/call.html

Linguistic Sub-field: Computational Linguistics 
Call Deadline: 23-Jun-2003

This is a session of the following conference: 9th Machine Translation
Summit

Meeting Description:

This workshop will be devoted to marking up a multi-lingual set of
texts and translations for events, objects, and states. 

 SIXTH WORKSHOP ON INTERLINGUAS
 to be held 
 Tuesday, September 23, 2003
 in conjunction with
 MT SUMMIT IX
 New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

 CALL FOR PARTICIPATION/PAPERS

Background

At the Fifth Workshop, held in October 2002, the focus was on
inter-coder reliability in coding thematic roles. Participants were
provided with a dependency structure for each of 11 sentences. Each
word was then to be assigned a thematic role from a list of thematic
roles previously provided and defined by the workshop organizers.

As a result of that workshop, a multi-site proposal was prepared for
the development of a large-scale, multi-lingual, IL-tagged resource.
The tagging of predicate-argument structure and thematic roles was
suggested as the initial task.

This workshop is intended to be a first step towards that
resource. Before a set of thematic roles can be selected and
guidelines for coding developed, there needs to be general agreement
at a more basic level of determining the events, objects, and states
that are represented in the text. Only if there is general agreement
among coders and across languages will it be possible to begin looking
at what roles these events have and how objects or other events fill
those roles.

Individuals and groups are invited to participate in this workshop.

The Task

Although participants will write a short paper for the workshop, the
primary aim of the workshop is to see if there is general agreement on
identifying and categorizing events and objects in a multi-lingual
text.

The multi-lingual corpus (at
http://crl.nmsu.edu/Events/FWOI/SecondWorkshop/text.html) to be
annotated consists of an article from the UNESCO Courier and its
translation from English into fifteen other languages: English,
French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, German, Russian, Persian, Italian,
Catalan, Vietnamese, Malay, Greek, Bulgarian, Tamil, and Portuguese.

Participants will select one non-English version and will be
responsible for providing an independent translation of that text into
English. Participants may choose a language other than those listed
above, but, if so, they will have to provide a translation of the
English text into that language. The English translation (and the
additional non-English translation) should be made available to other
workshop participants.

The task is to mark up this non-English version and the two English
versions of the text. Texts will be marked up to identify objects,
events, and states. Objects are the concrete (or abstract) entities
that the text is about. Events are the actual activities or actions in
which these objects take part. States of affairs describe
characteristics of objects. Together, objects, events, and states form
the story told by the text.

Portions of the text will refer to these events, states, and
objects. It is the coders task to identified these sections. Not every
lexical item in the text will be marked up. (In particular, relations
and manners will also not be marked. Coders will be responsible both
for partitioning and marking up their texts.

Each identified object and event will receive a concept-type label and
these labels should be coindexed if the same event or object is
referred to in more than one location in the text (see example below).
In addition, if time and interest permit, participants may indicate
which other objects or events participate in events. If there are
unspecified participants, these may also be indicated by an
appropriate role label.

Finally, after the text has been marked up, the participants will
gather the events, objects, and states into three lists for comparison
purposes.

Participants will provide a (joint) written report for the workshop on
the process and results of their markup/tagging. These reports will
presented during the morning session of the workshop. The afternoon
will be devoted to a general discussion of the task and examination of
inter-participant reliability, cross-linguistic variation, and
variation across multiple English versions of the same text.

Important Dates:
23 May, 2003 -- Initial notification to participate<
23 June, 2003 -- Final notification of intent to participate in the
workshop and provision of English translation and target language
translation (if needed)
23 July, 2003 -- Submission date for event/object/state coding
23 August, 2003 -- Submission of site report

As an example, here are the first two paragraphs of and English text.

Hoarding Caused by Earthquake Predictions in Chile

The population of the Chilean port city of Antofagasta increased sharply
its purchases of provisions and essential articles, alarmed by
announcements regarding an earthquake accompanied by tidal wave which may
affect northern Chile and the south of neighboring Peru at any moment,
admitted the government Office of Emergencies (ONEMI).

Here is how we envision the markup to look:

Hoarding / HOARDING-EVENT (AGENT / THEME)
Caused by / CAUSE-EVENT (PREDICTING / HOARDING)
Earthquake / EARTHQUAKE1-EVENT (EXPERIENCER)
Predictions / PREDICTING1-EVENT (AGENT / EARTHQUAKE)
in
Chile / CHILE1-OBJECT
The population / POPULATION1-OBJECT
of
the Chilean port city of Antofagasta / ANTOFAGASTA1-OBJECT
increased sharply / INCREASING1-EVENT (POPULATION1 / PURCHASING1)
its / ANTOFAGASTA1-OBJECT
purchases / PURCHASING1-EVENT (POPULATION1 / PROVISIONS1 & ARTICLES1)
of
provisions / PROVISIONS1-OBJECT
and
essential articles, / ARTICLES1-OBJECT
alarmed / ALARMING-EVENT (ANNOUNCING1 / POPULATION1)
by
announcements / ANNOUNCING1-EVENT (AGENT / EARTHQUAKE1 & TIDAL WAVE1)
regarding
an earthquake / EARTHQUAKE1-EVENT (EXPERIENCER)
accompanied / ACCOMPANY-STATE (EARTHQUAKE1 / TIDALWAVE1)
by
tidal wave / TIDAL WAVE1-OBJECT
which
may affect / AFFECTING-EVENT (EARTHQUAKE1 & TIDAL WAVE1 / CHILE1 &
PERU1)
northern Chile / CHILE1-OBJECT
and
the south of neighboring Peru / PERU1-OBJECT
at any moment, / MOMENT-OBJECT
admitted / ADMITTING-EVENT (OFFICE OF EMERGENCIES1 / INCREASING1)
the government Office of Emergencies / OFFICE OF EMERGENCIES1-OBJECT
(ONEMI). / OFFICE OF EMERGENCIES1-OBJECT

Objects: {CHILE1, POPULATION1, ANTOFAGASTA1, PROVISIONS1, ARTICLES1,
TIDAL WAVE1, PERU1, MOMENT, OFFICE OF EMERGENCIES1}

Events: {HOARDING, CAUSE, EARTHQUAKE, PREDICTING1, INCREASING1,
PURCHASING1, ALARMING, ANNOUCING1, AFFECTING, ADMITTING}

States: {ACCOMPANY} 

Contact:

Steve Helmreich
Computing Research Laboratory
New Mexico State University
Box 30001/3CRL
Las Cruces, New Mexico
USA
Tel: 505 646 2141
Fax: 505 646 6218
e-mail: shelmreicrl.nmsu.edu

Comments/questions may be mailed to Steve Helmreich at:
shelmreicrl.nmsu.edu