LINGUIST List 3.875

Sun 08 Nov 1992

Confs: Systemic; Text Analysis

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1. , ISFC 1993 Conference Announcement
2. "David M. W. Powers", ecml.nll: workshop on Machine Learning and Text Analysis

 ISFC93

 20th International Systemic Functional Congress
 19-23 July 1993

 Call for Papers
 & Registration Information

 Victoria University
 Victoria, British Columbia
 Canada

ISFC 93: Call for Papers & Registration Information

The 20th International Systemic Functional Congress will be held
from 19-23 July 1993 at Victoria University, Victoria, British
Columbia, Canada.

Daytime sessions will include section papers, with allowance made
for workshops, where possible. If feasible and appropriate, papers
will be grouped under themes. Evening sessions will include panels
and other interactive activities.

Call for Papers: Abstracts

Please send your abstracts to:
Bernard Mohan, ISFC93,
Department of Language Education, University of British Columbia,
2125 Main Mall, Vancouver B.C., Canada V6T 1Z5
Fax Number (Canada)(604 natl.) 822-3154
E-mail: usermohaubcmtsg.bitnet

*** Abstract deadline: To arrive by DECEMBER 1, 1992 ***

+ Abstracts should be camera ready and include a heading with: the
title of the paper; the name(s) of the author(s); and the authors'
institution(s).
+ Abstracts should not exceed one page (21.75cm x 28cm). This
includes references.
+ Please use wide margins - minimally 3 cm left and right, and
minimally 4 cm at top and bottom.

All papers will be given a 40 minute time slot.

With your abstract, please send us also a separate sheet with the
following information:

a) Your name, the title of your paper, and the address to which we
should send out our reply. If possible, please add your fax number
and your e-mail address.
b) Whether your paper is "General" or falls under one of the
following themes: 1)Computational Linguistics 2)Educational and
Clinical Linguistics 3)Lexicogrammar and Semantics 4)Text and
Discourse 5)Other (specify).
c) Whether or not you require early acceptance for funding
purposes.
d) The title and brief description of any workshop you would like
to offer.
e) Any equipment (projectors, audio or video facilities, etc. you
will need for your paper and workshop. Specify the two separately).
f) the type of workshop you would like to participate in (to help
us decide which workshops might be viable).
g) any helpful biographical information, if you have not presented
at an International Systemics Congress before.

Pre-conference courses.

Pre-conference courses reviewing systemic approaches are planned
July 5-16, 1993 at University of British Columbia, Vancouver B.C.,
CANADA. Details are given below.

Registration

To register, complete the form below and send it to:
Gordon Fulton, ISFC93,
Dept. of English, University of Victoria, Box 3045
Victoria, B.C., Canada V8W 3P4
Fax No: (Canada) (604 natl.) 721-7212
E-mail: FULTONUVVM.bitnet

Name _________________________________
Address_______________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
____________fax & e-mail______________

Payment should be made in Canadian or US dollars. Please make your
cheque payable to ISFC93 and show below what you are paying for.

Registration Can$120 [ ] $..........

Accommodation at Univ. of Victoria
 bed & breakfast Can$40 per person/night
 Arrival date July _____ 1993
 Departure date July _____ 1993
 ____ persons for ____ nights $..........

Conference Dinner (Thursday July 22)
 Can$35 [ ] $..........

 TOTAL Can$..........

***********************
Pre-conference courses in Systemic-Functional Linguistics
July 5 - 16, 1993
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia,
Canada.

 An Outline of Systemic Functional Grammar (Time: mornings)
 M. A. K. Halliday & Ruqaiya Hasan

Description: Historical introduction: origins in European
functional linguistics; other sources; developments 1960-1990;
interplay between theory and application. General principles:
strata, metafunctions, context; paradigmatic base; system and
structure, rank, delicacy; realisation and instantiation.
Theoretical orientation: grammar as construing experience, enacting
social process; comprehensiveness and depth; language as dynamic
open system. Descriptive principles: lexicogrammar, discourse
semantics, context, phonology. Motives and methods of text
analysis. Examples of systemic research on language in its socio-
historical context.

Michael Halliday is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, University
of Sydney, Australia. Ruqaiya Hasan holds a personal chair in
Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney.

 Register/genre theory in the classroom (Time: afternoons)
 Jim Martin & Robert Veel

Description: This course will give teachers a thorough introduction
to the theory and practice of register/genre theory, which has had
a dramatic impact on language teaching in Australia. The course
consists of lectures and workshops in the following areas: an
introduction to register/genre theory and its use in the classroom;
an examination of school programs based on register/genre theory;
introduction to and discussion of teaching strategies for reading
and writing based on functional grammar and register/genre theory;
practical sessions in the diagnostic analysis of student writing,
text books etc. using functional grammar and register/genre theory;
the use of functional grammar in assessing student writing
competence and performance; the Disadvantaged Schools Program and
the development of student literacy, particularly for socio-
economically disadvantaged students and students from language
backgrounds other than English. Note: No prior knowledge of
functional grammar or register theory is assumed. The course is
designed to complement the "Outline of Systemic Functional Grammar"
course. Participants and encouraged to enrol in both courses in
order to gain the most from the program.

Jim Martin is Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of
Sydney. Robert Veel is Senior Research Officer, Disadvantaged
Schools Program, Sydney.

 Registration information

Fees: Canadian students - Canadian$200 approx. per course
 International students - Canadian$500 approx. per course
Registration: Early registration is advised. You should COMPLETE
your registration BEFORE THE END OF MAY 1993.

Credit and University Admission: If you wish to take these courses
for credit (each course is worth 3 credits), you must be admitted
to the University of British Columbia, for a fee of $35 approx.
Begin this process no later than MARCH 1993. The process takes
about 2 months and needs to be completed before course
registration.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Dr. Kelvin Beckett, Distance Education,
Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, 2125 Main
Mall, Vancouver , B.C. Canada V6T 1Z4.
Tel: 604-822-2031 Fax: 604-822-6501

 CALL FOR PAPERS

 ECML'93 Workshop on ML techniques and Text Analysis
 (European Conference on Machine Learning)

 Vienna - 8th April 1993

Keywords: Machine Learning, Natural Language, Text Analysis

Focus of the workshop

Although the ideal of a completely transparent natural language
interface to a computer is still way out of reach, there is an
abundance of interesting applications of ML techniques to text
analysis. Note that people are producing more and more texts at
increasing speed. It is impossible to read everything. Therefore the
need for automatic text analysis is growing rapidly. One of the
reasons interesting NL applications are still out of reach is the
knowledge acquisition bottleneck in the definition of grammars and
lexicons. ML techniques are beginning to be used to alleviate this
problem. Examples of interesting projects are:

 Semantic and syntactic disambiguation of texts
 Text Search algorithms for free text databases
 Automated document classification
 Automatic creation of dictionaries
 Automatic creation of indexes
 Self-learning parsers

Therefore we are organizing a workshop devoted to syntactic and semantic
analysis of natural languages using machine learning techniques. The
workshop will focus on the analysis of textual information, either
supervised or unsupervised.

Motivation

The field of machine learning of language has witnessed substantial
growth in interest and results in the past few years. Machine Learning
techniques are in principle very useful in the context of language
learning. Yet language learning has special problems of its own, that
are not in the focus of interest of most researchers in the ML
community, e.g.:

 - The special algebraic structure of linguistic samples
 - The highly structured and complex nature of language,
 and in particular the supposed irregularities, synonyms,
 metaphors etc.
 - The complex interplay between the partial information about
 syntax and the lack of definition in the semantics of the samples.
 - Special biases concerning the `cooperativeness' of the author
 or speaker

These aspects call for another approach incorporating different
algorithms, different complexity measures and different sampling
techniques. At the moment contributions to this field tend to be
scattered over various conferences (ML, AI, linguistics, psychology
etc.). It is the aim of this workshop to bring researchers in this area
together.

Contributions

Particularly welcome are contributions that describe practical
solutions to existing problems. Topics of interest include but are
not limited to:

 Syntactic Learning
 Semantic Learning
 Lexical Disambiguation
 Linguistic Pattern Matching
 Statistical Techniques applied to NL
 Lexical Acquisition
 Automatic analysis of bi-lingual corpora
 Complexity measures for texts
 New ML techniques geared to NL
 Information theoretic results and measures
 Text analysis and existing ML techniques
 Connectionism
 Genetic Algorithms
 Explanation based Learning
 Statistical inference
 Inductive Logic Programming
 Case-based and Memory-based Learning

Form of the workshop

1 day, Presentations, Discussion, workshop proceedings. A position
paper in the conference proceedings of ECML-93. The workshop will
be held after the ECML-93 main conference, on 8 April 1993.

Submitted papers should be 10-20 pages in length in the format for the ECML
conference. People wishing to attend the workshop but not present a paper need
only send a short research description. Submissions by electronic mail
are preferred, and should be sent to the chair and one other committee member
(either in plain ASCII or standard LaTeX article format). Hardcopy
submissions must be sent in triplicate to the chair at the address below.
Submissions must ARRIVE by 18 January 1992.

Committee:

 Walter Daelemans walterkub.nl
 David Powers powersdfki.uni-kl.de
 Von-Wun Soo soocs.nthu.edu.tw
 Larry Reeker reekerida.org
 Pieter Adriaans (chair) pietersyllogic.nl

Coordinator's Address:

Pieter Adriaans
Syllogic B.V.
Houten
The Netherlands

SUMMARY OF DATES:
 January 18 - Papers and research dscriptions due
 February 1 - Acceptance notification
 February 22 - Final version of papers due

--
Dr David M. W. Powers +49-631-13786 (GMT+1) E xtraction
Auf der Vogelweide 1 +49-631-205-3210 (FAX) O f SHOE
W-6750 KAISERSLAUTERN FRG powersdfki.uni-kl.de H ierarchical
 S tructure
for Machine Learning of Natural Language and Ontology