LINGUIST List 14.1879

Mon Jul 7 2003

Calls: Syntax/Uralic; Computational Ling/USA

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

Directory

1. katrinhiietam, Workshop: Finnic Arguments
2. push, Distributed and Collaborative Knowledge Capture Workshop

Workshop: Finnic Arguments

Date: 07-Jan-2004 - 09-Jan-2004
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Contact: Katrin Hiietam
Contact Email: finnic_argumentshotmail.com 

Linguistic Sub-field: Typology, Syntax, Morphology, Linguistic
Theories, General Linguistics 
Subject Language Family: Uralic
Call Deadline: 31-Aug-2003

Meeting Description:

The workshop will concentrate on verbal arguments in Finnic
languages. The main attention will be on the morphosyntactic
properties of these arguments and on operations which they participate
in. 

Workshop Finnic Arguments

As a continuation to the workshop ISSUES IN FINNIC SYNTAX (19th SCL),
the workshop FINNIC ARGUMENTS, to be held at 20th Scandinavian
Conference of Linguistics (Helsinki 7-9 January 2004), invites
abstracts on issues related to verbal arguments in Finnic and Saami
languages.

The focus of the workshop is the syntax and semantics of the core
arguments of a clause, as well as valency changing operations in which
verbal arguments participate (e.g. causativisation, impersonalisation
etc.). The workshop especially welcomes papers which present new data
and discuss the implications for any theoretical framework. The
workshop is open to papers from all frameworks, including descriptive
typology.

A few of the questions that the workshop aims to seek answers to are
listed below:

- How are grammatical relations defined in Finnic and Saami languages?
Are GRs a construction-specific phenomena rather than definable within
a language or a language family?
- What kind of valency changing operations do core arguments
participate in? Do these constructions possess any particular areal
characteristics?
- When the core arguments undergo a valency changing operation, does
their grammatical status change?
- What is the best way to characterise impersonal constructions, along
with their morphosyntax and semantics?

Abstracts should be no longer than one A4 page. A separate page may be
used for data, tables, figures and references. Abstracts should be
sent as attachments to the workshop email address either in Word or
rtf format.

Please include name, affiliation and email address at the top of the
page.

Abstracts and any informal enquiries should be sent to: 
finnic_argumentshotmail.com

Deadline for submissions: 31 August 2003

Notification of acceptance: 25 September 2003

Workshop organisers: 
Katrin Hiietam, (formerly University of Manchester)
(katrinhiietamhotmail.com)
Elsi Kaiser, University of Pennsylvania (ekaiserbabel.ling.upenn.edu)
Satu Manninen, University of Lund (satu.manninenenglund.lu.se)
Diane Nelson, University of Leeds (d.c.nelsonleeds.ac.uk)
Virve-Anneli Vihman, University of Edinburgh (virveling.ed.ac.uk)

Distributed and Collaborative Knowledge Capture Workshop 
Short Title: DC-KCAP

Date: 26-Oct-2003 - 26-Oct-2003
Location: Sanibel, Florida, United States of America
Contact: Timothy Chklovski
Contact Email: timcisi.edu 
Meeting URL: http://www.isi.edu/~timc/dc-kcap/index.html

Linguistic Sub-field: Computational Linguistics 
Call Deadline: 15-Aug-2003

Meeting Description:

Distributed and Collaborative Knowledge Capture Workshop (DC-KCAP)
Held in conjunction with K-CAP 2003
Call For Papers: DC-KCAP Workshop

URL: http://www.isi.edu/~timc/dc-kcap/index.html

********************************************************************
 
 Deadline for Paper Submission: August 15, 2003

******************************************************************** 


Many AI problems depend on having large amounts of knowledge. While
such resources are critical to our success, building them can be
difficult and time-consuming. What if we could farm out most of that
work out to thousands of volunteers on the internet?

This workshop is centered around the idea of collecting knowledge from
large groups of volunteer contributors in a distributed environment.
As an example, consider the Open Mind family of projects
(http://www.openmind.org), which over the past several years have been
exploring the idea of collecting knowledge from the general public
over the Web.

There are many challenges in turning to the general public for help.
We cannot expect them to take the time to learn formal languages or
understand how to program or debug complex systems. Our systems need
to interact with users in familiar languages, decompose hard problems
into ''bite-sized'' chunks that the average person could solve
quickly, and be fun and engaging to attract enough volunteers.

In addition, the wide deployment of systems which turn to na�ve
contributors for their knowledge is likely to have the positive side
effect of bringing AI out of the laboratory and into the everyday
world, familiarizing the general public with the work that we are
doing, and perhaps in the long run helping build public support for AI
research.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- What kinds of knowledge can and cannot be gathered with such an
approach?
- What are the design principles of interfaces friendly enough for
beginners to use?
- How can we evaluate the quality of knowledge collected with such an
approach?
- How does the quality of knowledge collected from volunteer
contributors compare to knowledge collected from experts using
traditional approaches?
- How can we deal with the varying quality of the volunteer
contributions?
- How to keep the volunteers interested in the teaching task, how to
attract new contributors, and how to increase retention?
- Can we develop knowledge representations that are easy enough for
beginners to use?
- Can active learning techniques help focus knowledge gathering on the
most relevant knowledge?

Important dates:

- Submission deadline: August 15, 2003 
- Notification of acceptance: August 31, 2003 
- Deadline for camera-ready papers: September 20, 2003
- Workshop: October 26, 2003

Submission instructions:

Submissions should consist of papers of max. 7 pages formatted
according to K-CAP requirements. Further instructions are available
at the workshop website at http://www.isi.edu/~timc/dc-kcap/index.html

Programme committee:

- Push Singh (MIT) (co-chair)
- Timothy Chklovski (USC/ISI) (co-chair) 
- Yolanda Gil (ISI)
- Jerry Hobbs (ISI)
- Eduard Hovy (ISI)
- Rada Mihalcea (U. of North Texas)
- Bruce Porter (U. Texas)

Additional Information:

For additional information, please contact Tim Chklovski
(timcisi.edu) or Push Singh (pushmit.edu) with questions.