LINGUIST List 2.290

Thursday, 13 June 1991

FYI: Volunteers, E-lists, Special issue in NLP

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. "Edwin S. Segal", Volunteer Opportunity
2. , Interest Groups
3. Arnold D J, Special Issue on Evaluation of NLP Systems

The Center for Applied Research in African Languages, a nonprofit
organization dedicated to African development, seeks VOLUNTEERS to help
develop electronic materials in orthography, text analysis, database
compilation and linguistic geography. Contact: Stanley Lewis
Cushingham, Director, 162 West Rock Avenue, New Haven, CT 06515-2223;
(203) 389-8650.

from: Ken Willing
 Macquarie University
 Sydney, Australia
 June 15, 1991

The following excellent Interest Groups now exist, in the area of Applied
Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Linguistics, and Communication:

TESL-L (Teaching English as a Second Language)

SLART-L (Second Language Acquisition Research and Teaching)

MULTI-L (Language and Education in Multicultural Settings)

LTEST-L (Language Testing Research and Practice)

LINGUIST (The Linguist Discussion List)

COMSERVE (Communication. Includes: "Intercultural" and "Ethnomethodology")

===============================================================================
To find out more about any one of these, from Internet or Bitnet send an
e-mail letter to:

 Internet Bitnet
 --------------------- ----------------
for TESL-L listservcunyvm.bitnet listservcunyvm
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
for SLART-L listservpsuvm.bitnet listservpsuvm
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
for MULTI-L listservvm.biu.ac.il listservbarilvm
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
for LTEST-L listservuclacn1.oac.ucla.edu listservuclacn1
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
for LINGUIST listservtamvm1.tamu.edu listservtamvm1
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
for COMSERVE supportvm.ecs.rpi.edu supportrpiecs


++Note: The text of your letter should consist only of the words:

 subscribe XXXXXX John Doe

where XXXXXX is the list-name (e.g. TESL-L), and John Doe is your name.

===============================================================================
You'll be sent an introductory help-file. If the Interest Group ("List")
turns out not to be your cup of tea, then simply go through the above
procedure again, except say "unsubscribe XXXXXX" instead of "subscribe" (no
need to give your name this time).
===============================================================================

Names of other participants in a particular "List" are publicly available by
saying only review XXXXXX in a letter to the relevant Listserv.

[This doesn't work for the "Comserve" group.]
===============================================================================

P.S.: I have made up, for my own reference, an "addressbook" file of
participants in all the above Interest Groups [except Comserve], put together
into one integrated alphabetical listing, by surname. It is current to June
1991, and shows only:

 last_name first_name e-mail_address

The file in its present state contains some 1500 Applied-Linguistics-related
names, world-wide. I am finding it very useful, for locating the e-mail
address of someone whom I know, or know of, or have read something by, and
whom I would like to contact. I'm sure others would find it useful too, for
that purpose. So I would in principle be happy to make the file available as
an e-mail message (60K) by request to me (or by anonymous ftp..). ... The
problem is, I'm a little bit concerned -- naturally I wouldn't want the file
to be mis-used... say, for quasi-commercial purposes or any other nuisance.
On the other hand, all the names-and-addresses are in fact already a matter
of public record (it's just that my list is integrated and alphabetical). Do
you think I could safely offer it on the net? Any comments?

 Cheers,

 Ken Willing
 Macquarie University
 Sydney, Australia

		 SPECIAL ISSUE ON EVALUATION

The journal APPLIED COMPUTER TRANSLATION is dedicating a special
issue to the topic of Evaluation of Natural Language Processing
(NLP) systems, under our editorship. Contributions which deal
with any facet of the topic are invited. (It is intended that
the issue should focus on, but NOT BE RESTRICTED TO, Evaluation
of Machine Translation Systems).

The evaluation of systems is an essential, but still relatively
undeveloped area of NLP. Its importance to potential end-users of
systems is obvious, but it is just as important to those who
develop systems, and to the field as a whole, since without
sensible measures of evaluation the whole idea of `progress' is
problematic. Some important issues for evaluation include:

 - the purposes of evaluation
 - identification of capabilities to be evaluated
 - function and design of test suites
 - metrics for (translation) quality and their computation
 - the role and principles of error analysis in development
 - design and standardisation of evaluation metrics interpretable
	by potential system users
 - identification of text types
 - studies in corpus linguistics and construction frequency

Contributions dealing with other aspects of evaluation are also
welcome.

Contributions should be in English, and will be reviewed in the
normal way (by two independent referees; the Journal aims to give
a decision about publication within six weeks).

The timescale for this issue is somewhat open, but we
would hope for publication by the end of this year.

Potential contributors should contact one of the editors of the
special issue, at the address below. More information about the
journal itself can be obtained from the same address, or from the
general editor: Tony McEnery (mcenerycomp.lancs.ac.uk).

 Doug Arnold (dougessex.ac.uk; +44 206 872084)
 Lee Humphreys (leeessex.ac.uk; +44 206 872086)
 Louisa Sadler (louisaessex.ac.uk; +44 206 872082)

		 Department of Language
			and Linguistics,
		 UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX
			 Wivenhoe Park,
			 Colchester, UK
			 CO4 3SQ
		 Telex 98440 (UNILIB G)
		 Fax: +44 206 873598
		 Tel +44 206 872083

Email from different networks: The following addresses are for
Arnold. Changes to the individual name (doug/lee/louisa) will
give the addresses of the other editors:
	 doug%essex.ac.ukean-relay.ac.uk (ean);
	 doug%essex.ac.ukcunyvm.cuny.edu (arpa);
	 doug%essex.ac.ukac.uk (earn);
	 ...!ukc!essex.ac.uk!doug (uucp).

[End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0290]