LINGUIST List 8.1373

Sat Sep 27 1997

Calls: Formal Ling, Text Summarization

Editor for this issue: Anita Huang <anitalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Leora Anne Barel, West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics XVII
2. Dragomir R. Radev, Second CFP: AAAI 1998 Spring Symposium on Intelligent Text Summarization

 
 
 	 		 WCCFL XVII
 	 West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics
 
 		 University of British Columbia
 		 February 20-22, 1998
 
 		 SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS
 
 Abstracts are invited for 20-minute talks in all areas of linguistics from
 any theoretical perspective. There will be two special sessions in
 addition to the main program. Abstracts may be submitted to the main
 program or either of the special sessions.
 
 		 *Special Sessions: Interfaces*
 Invited speakers will be presenting at the following 2 special sessions:
 	 Lisa Selkirk, UMass: Phonology/Syntax Interface
 	 Angelika Kratzer, UMass: Syntax/Semantics Interface
 
 	 Abstract Requirements
 
 Abstracts should be no more than one standard size page in length with the
 option of including an additional page for data and references. Abstracts
 should be in at least 11-point type with 1-inch margins, single-spaced.
 Please mail ten anonymous copies as well as a 3" x 5" index card with the
 following information:
 
 		title
 		name of author(s)
 		mailing address
 		affiliation(s)
 		area (phonology, syntax, semantics...)
 		phone number (optional)
 		e-mail address (optional)
 
 	Please specify on your index card if you are submitting your
 abstract to either of the special sessions. Submissions are limited to 1
 individual and 1 joint abstract per author. Please do not send abstracts
 by e-mail.
 
 *ABSTRACTS MUST BE RECEIVED BY NOVEMBER 14, 1997*
 
 Abstracts should be sent to:
 
 		 WCCFL XVII COMMITTEE
 		 Department of Linguistics
 		University of British Columbia
 		 E270-1866 Main Mall
 		Vancouver, British Columbia
 		 CANADA V6T 1Z1
 
 Information will be made available at the WCCFL web site:
 
 	http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/msr/WCCFL.html
 
 

		 INTELLIGENT TEXT SUMMARIZATION

	 http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~radev/aaai-sss98-its

With the proliferation of online textual resources, it has become very
difficult to find information of interest. Improving access to online
information includes finding relevant documents (Information Retrieval) and
presenting only information that matches the user's interests (Text
Summarization). 

In the recent very successful workshop on Intelligent Scalable Text 
Summarization at the ACL/EACL conference, papers focused largely on 
statistical approaches. In this symposium, we aim to discuss also the 
strengths of other, symbolic/rule-based, techniques. We particularly 
welcome contributions that address some of the fundamental issues 
underlying summarization: what is a summary? What is an abstract? How 
can one evaluate the quality of a summary? The symposium will include 
formal presentations and discussions of existing techniques and open 
problems. Using input from potential participants, the program committee 
will present a series of questions to which attendees will be encouraged 
to suggest approaches and solutions. 

Sample topics:

 - Knowledge Representation Issues
 - AI and Statistical Techniques 
 - Discourse Analysis and Discourse Planning 
 - Concise Text Generation
 - Summarization of Multiple Documents
 - Generation of Updates
 - Architectures for Summarization
 - Multilingual and Multimodal Summarization
 - User Modeling 
 - Scalability 
 - Evaluation of Text Summarization
 

Potential participants should submit one of the following:

o Full technical paper (PostScript, 11-point font, up to 5000 words).

o Statement of interest (up to 1000 words):
 - description of an ongoing research effort,
 - position statement,
 - description of a problem to be discussed,
 - proposal for an activity related to text summarization that can
 take place at the symposium, 
 - description of a completed summarization system, or
 - descriptions of tools, corpora, or other resources, especially if
 they can be shared with others.

o Description of a demonstration or video.

Participants are encouraged to include URLs related to text summarization
(bibliographies, papers, projects, tools, corpora). 

Selection will be made in the following order:

 1. people who present papers (one person per paper)
 2. other presenters
 3. collaborators of the above
 4. people with strong statements of interest
 5. others as space permits.

Submissions for the symposium are due on October 24, 1997. Notification of
acceptance will be given by November 14, 1997. Materials to be included in
the working notes of the symposium must be received by January 17, 1998. 

Send all submissions electronically to radevcs.columbia.edu
If you are unsure whether your file will print at our site, please submit
four days before the deadline in order to receive a confirmation.

Dragomir Radev (co-chair)
 Department of Computer Science
 Columbia University
 1214 Amsterdam Avenue
 New York, NY 10027-7003, USA
 Phone: 1-212-939-7118
 Fax: 1-212-666-0140


			 ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Branimir Boguraev Apple Computer bkbresearch.apple.com
Michael Elhadad Ben-Gurion University elhadadcs.bgu.ac.il
Eduard Hovy USC/ISI hovyisi.edu (co-chair)
Inderjeet Mani MITRE imanimitre.org
Daniel Marcu University of Toronto marcucs.toronto.edu
Kathleen McKeown Columbia University kathycs.columbia.edu 
Dragomir Radev Columbia University radevcs.columbia.edu (co-chair)
Amit Singhal AT&T Research singhalresearch.att.com
Karen Sparck Jones University of Cambridge ksjcl.cam.ac.uk
Stan Szpakowicz University of Ottawa szpakcsi.uottawa.ca