LINGUIST List 8.139

Thu Jan 30 1997

Calls: Cogsci97, ACL/EACL-97 Workshops, CLIC

Editor for this issue: Susan Robinson <suelinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Pat Langley, extended deadline for Cognitive Science Conference
2. Priscilla Rasmussen, TWO ACL/EACL-97 Workshop CFPs
3. Jennifer Zaheer, Fw: CLIC call for papers (fwd)

The original deadline for submitting full papers to the 1997 Cognitive
Science Conference was Tuesday, February 4, less than a week away.

Following the tradition of previous years, we have decided to extend
this deadline. Full (six-page) papers are now due on

 Tuesday, February 11, 1997

or seven days later than first planned. Papers must reach us by this
date or we will not consider them for publication. Note that the
deadline for one-page abstracts will remain Tuesday, March 4, 1997.

The updated web pages (http://www-csli.stanford.edu/cogsci97) for the
conference now include detailed instructions for authors, words about
the distinction between full papers and abstracts, and clarification
about submissions to invited symposia.

Also, the ftp site (ftp://ftp-csli.stanford.edu/pub/cogsci97/formats)
contains updated templates for LaTeX, Framemaker, and Word. If you
downloaded these files before January 29, please get them again and
follow the updated formatting directions. The Word Perfect and MacWrite
templates, from earlier years, will still have outdated instructions.

If you have already sent off your paper and feel a need to resumbit
by the new deadline, please send email to cogsci97csli.stanford.edu.

Below are to Calls for Papers for ACL-97/EACL-97 associated workshops:

_____________________________________________________________________
1)
 CALL FOR PAPERS
 ACL'97 / EACL'97 Workshop
 11 July, 1997
 Madrid, Spain

 OPERATIONAL FACTORS IN PRACTICAL, ROBUST,
 ANAPHORA RESOLUTION FOR UNRESTRICTED TEXTS

_____________________________________________________________________


After considerable initial research in algorithmic approaches to
anaphora resolution in the seventies and after years of relative silence
in the early eighties, this problem has again attracted the attention of
many researchers in the last 10 years, with much new and promising work
reported recently. Inspired by the increasing volume of such work, this
workshop calls for submissions describing recent advances in the field
and focusing on "robust", "parser-free", "corpus-driven",
"empirically-based", and/or other practical approaches to resolving
anaphora in unrestricted texts.

Strategies for algorithmic anaphora resolution---arguably among the
toughest problems in Computational Linguistics and Natural Language
Processing---so far have exploited predominantly traditional linguistic
approaches. A disadvantage, however, of implementing such approaches
stems from the need for representation and manipulation of the
variegated types of linguistic and domain knowledge, with the
concomitant expense of human input and computational processing. Even
so, effectiveness still tends to depend on imposing suitable
restrictions to the domain.

While various new alternatives have been proposed, e.g. making use of a
situation semantics framework or principles of reasoning with
uncertainty, there is still a strong need for the development of robust
and effective methods to meet the demand of practical NLP systems (with
tasks ranging from content analysis to machine translation to discourse
and dialogue processing), and to enhance further the automatic
processing of growing language resources (e.g. by automatically
annotating corpora with anaphor-antecedent links). This need for
inexpensive, practical and, possibly, corpus-related approaches suitable
for unrestricted texts has fuelled renewed research efforts in the
field. Several proposals have already addressed the anaphora resolution
problem by deliberately limiting the extent to which they rely on domain
and/or linguistic knowledge, and by moving away from the traditional
domain/sublanguage restriction. Observing a very clear trend towards
inexpensive, knowledge-poor, corpus-based methods---which remain robust
and scale well---it is clear that there is scope for much more to be
done in this direction.

A core issue here is that of optimal use of a set of contributing
factors: these include, for instance, gender and number agreement,
c-command constraints, semantic consistency, syntactic parallelism,
semantic parallelism, salience, proximity and so forth. It is possible
to impose an ordering on such factors, with respect to both their
overall utility to the resolution process, and the expense associated
with their computation in a particular linguistic framework and
processing environment. The computational linguistics literature uses
diverse terminology for these, reflecting their different operational
status and, hence, contributing weight in the resolution process: for
instance, "constraints" tend to be absolute, and therefore
"eliminating"; "preferences", on the other hand, tend to be relative,
and therefore require the use of additional criteria. One of the major
difficulties with scaling up the strong, linguistically derived
procedures to real data stems from the lack of systematic understanding
of the interactions between, and limitations of, the plethora of factors
posited by the different methods under names such as "constraints",
"preferences", "attributes", "symptoms", and so forth.

This workshop, therefore, has a dual focus. It solicits submissions
describing work which addresses the practical requirements of
operational and robust anaphora resolution components. It also seeks to
investigate the role of, and interactions among, the various factors in
anaphora resolution: in particular those that scale well, or that
translate easily to knowledge-poor environments. The following
questions are for illustrative purposes only:

 = Is it possible to propose a core set of factors used in anaphora
 resolution? Are there factors that we are not fully aware of? Which
 of these are better suited for robust approaches, and what is their
 dependence upon strategies?
 = When dealing with real data, is it at all possible to posit
 "constraints", or should all factors be regarded as "preferences"?
 What is the case for languages other than English?
 = What degree of preference (weight) should be given to "preferential"
 factors? How should weights best be determined? What empirical data
 can be brought to bear on this?
 = What would be an optimal order for the application of multiple
 factors? Would this affect the scoring strategies used in selecting
 the antecedent?
 = Is it realistic to expect high precision over unrestricted texts?
 = Is it realistic to determine anaphoric links in corpora automatically?
 = Are all CL applications 'equal' with respect to their requirements
 from an anaphora resolution module? What kind(s) of compromises
 might be possible, depending on the NLP task, and how would
 awareness of these affect the tuning of a resolution algorithm for
 particular type(s) of input text?


WORKSHOP ORGANISERS

Dr. Ruslan Mitkov Dr. Branimir K. Boguraev,
School of Languages and European Studies Apple Research Laboratories
University of Wolverhampton Apple Computer, Inc.
Stafford St. One Infinite Loop, MS: 301-3S
Wolverhampton WV1 1SB Cupertino, CA 95014
United Kingdom USA
Tel (44-1902) 322471 Tel: (1-408) 974 1048
Email r.mitkovwlv.ac.uk Email: bkbresearch.apple.com


WORKSHOP PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

Breck Baldwin (University of Pennsylvania)
Branimir Boguraev (Apple Computer, Cupertino)
David Carter (SRI, Cambridge)
Megumi Kameyama (SRI, Menlo Park)
Christopher Kennedy (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Shalom Lappin (University of London)
Susan LuperFoy (MITRE Corporation, McLean)
Tony McEnery (Lancaster University)
Ruslan Mitkov (University of Wolverhampton)
Celia Rico Perez (Universidad Europea de Madrid)
Frederique Segond (Rank Xerox Research Centre, Grenoble)
Sandra Williams (BT Research Labs, Ipswich)


SUBMISSIONS

Authors are asked to submit previously unpublished papers; all
submissions should be sent to Ruslan Mitkov. A limited number of
position papers could also be considered. Each submission will undergo
multiple reviews. The papers should be full length (not exceeding 3200
words, exclusive of references), also including a descriptive abstract
of about 200 words. Electronic submissions are strongly preferred,
either in self-contained LaTeX format (using the ACL-97 submission
style; see: ftp://ftp.cs.columbia.edu/acl-l/, as well as the submission
guidelines for the main conference, at http://www.ieec.uned.es/cl97/),
or as a PostScript file. In exceptional circumstances, Microsoft Word
files will also be accepted as electronic submissions, provided they
follow the same formating guidelines. Hard copy submissions should
include eight copies of the paper. A separate title page should include
the title of the paper, names, addresses (postal and e-mail), telephone
and fax number of all authors. Any correspondence will be addressed to
the first author (unless otherwise specified). Authors will be
responsible for preparation of camera-ready copies of final versions of
accepted papers, conforming to a uniform format, with guidelines and a
style file to be supplied by the organisers.


ORGANISATION OF SESSIONS

Presentations will be allocated 30 minutes slots each, distributed over
a morning and an afternoon sessions, including an invited talk and a
(closing) general discussion.


WORKSHOP PARTICIPATION

Due to space constraints, workshop attendance will be limited to about
40 participants. Priority will be given to authors of submissions; the
rest of the participants will be registered on a first-come, first-serve
basis. Details about registration will be included in the second
announcement. Please note that according to the ACL/EACL workshop
guidelines, all workshop participants must register for the ACL/EACL
main conference as well.


SCHEDULE

Submission deadline: 14 March 1997
Notification of acceptance: 14 April 1997
Camera-ready versions of accepted papers due: 05 May 1997
Workshop: 11 July 1997


FURTHER INFORMATION

For further information concerning the workshop, please contact the
organisers. For information about the main ACL'97/EACL'97 conference,
see http://horacio.ieec.uned.es/cl97/.

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2)

 Call for ACL/EACL Workshop Submissions/Participation

Automatic Information Extraction and Building of Lexical Semantic Resources
 for NLP Applications

 Organized under the auspices of the Language Engineering section

 of the European Commission, Directorale General XIII Luxembourg,

 by three recently launched projects:

 EuroWordNet(LE2 4003), Sparkle (LE1 2111) and Ecran

 Madrid, July 12th 1997

 (in conjunction with ACL-97/EACL-97)

- -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Workshop Information

 * What the Workshop is About
 * Submission Details
 * Workshop Participation
 * Important Dates
 * Organizing Committee
 * Program Committee

- -------------------------------------------------------------------------

What the Workshop is About

In the past years the development of high-quality and overall language
resources has been the focus of many research groups. More recently also
the corpus-based extraction of such resources has gained a wider interest.
EuroWordNet, Sparkle and Ecran try to package some of this know-how and
expertise into state- of-the-art tools and resources that can directly be
applied in NLP-based services. In the EuroWordNet project a multilingual
database is developed with wordnets for four European Languages linked to
the existing Princeton WordNet (version 1.5). Such a database can be used
in multilingual retrieval applications but it can also be seen as a
starting point for automatic-translation aids, inferencing systems, and
information extraction systems. Sparkle and Ecran both address the creation
of language resources and technologies for real-world NLP applications in
parallel. This objective is carried out through the development of software
tools in the areas of shallow parsing and lexical acquisition. These tools
are used to induce linguistic knowledge from text corpora and are
progressively enriched by the information acquired.

In all three projects the current limits of Linguistic Technology are being
explored for their practical benefits. Whereas EuroWordNet aims at the
broadening and extension of the Princeton WordNet to a generic multilingual
resource which is the first in its kind, Sparkle and Ecran aim at the
dynamic anchoring of resources and information to the data and corpora that
are of a user=92s interest. The availability of these resources and tools is
essential for the new generation of applications and products dealing with
information in electronic form. The projects have finished their
specification phase and are in the process of generating the results. In
this workshop we want to discuss the scope and formats of semantic
resources and information acquisition tools with scholars in the field and
researchers from commercial R&D departments who have experience in
developing and using them. We therefore specifically welcome papers on the
following topics:

 1. compatibility and standards of multilingual semantic resources and
 lexical acquisition tools.
 2. the validation of multilingual semantic resources and lexical
 acquisition tools.
 3. performances of semantic resources and lexical acquisition tools in
 NLP tasks.
 4. partial or phrasal parsing of text.
 5. linking text with lexical databases: sense-differentiation,
 sense-tagging and sense-disambiguation tasks, domain-differentiation
 of text and lexical resources.

The workshop will be a full-day event that provides a forum for individual
presentations (about 30 minutes each) and discussions. At the end of day
there will be room for demos.

- -------------------------------------------------------------------------

SUBMISSION DETAILS:

Full papers should be submitted in electronic format: either RTF or
postscript. Papers should not exceed 8 pages or 4000 words. The deadline
for submission is the 17th of March. The formatting should be as follows:

Subject: EWN/SPARKLE/ECRAN 97-WORKSHOP Submission
- text follows this line--
title: <title of submission>
authors: <authors as they appear on the title page>
word count: <n>
email: <email address of author to whom correspondence should be directed>
- -----------------
<Body of submission>

Submissions should be sent to:

Piek Vossen
Computer Centrum Letteren
University of Amsterdam
Spuistraat 134
1012 VB Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 20 525 4669
Fax: +31 20 525 4429
Email: Piek.Vossenlet.uva.nl.
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------

WORKSHOP PARTICIPATION:

The number of participants is limited and is restricted on a first come
basis.. As the workshop takes place in conjunction with the ACL/EACL-97
conference, presenters and participants of the workshop are obliged to
register for the main conference as well. Conference registration details
can be obtained via WWW from the ACL/EACL-97 home page
http://horacio.ieec.uned.es:80/cl97/

- -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Important Dates:

17th of March 1997:
 Deadline for receipt of submissions
4th of April 1997:
 Notification of acceptance/rejection
1st of May 1997:
 Final versions due for proceedings
12th July 1997:
 1-Day Workshop

- -------------------------------------------------------------------------

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

 * Piek Vossen, The Netherlands, email: Piek.Vossenlet.uva.nl
 * Cintha Harjadi, The Netherlands, email: Cintha.Harjadilet.uva.nl
 * Horacio Rodriquez, Spain, email: Horaciolsi.upc.es

PROGAM COMMITTEE:

 * Piek Vossen, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
 * Nicoletta Calzolari, Istituto Linguistics del Computazionella del CNR,
 Italy, glottolovm.cnuce.cnr.it
 * Antonio Sanfilippo, Sharp Laboratories, UK,
 Antonio.Sanfilipposharp.co.uk
 * Geert Adriaens, Novell Linguistic Development, Belgium,
 Geert_Adriaensnovell.com
 * Yorick Wilks, University of Sheffield, UK, yorickdcs.shef.ac.uk

The Center for Language, Interaction, and Culture Graduate Student
Association Issues its call for papers for the third annual student
conference on language, interaction, and culture to be held May 16,
1997, at Sunset Commons, at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The theme of this year's conference is:
 
 Embodiment in Social Interaction
 
Example topics include (a) non-vocal practices of social action, (b)
the interaction between vocal and non-vocal practices of social
action, and (c) practices for, and consequences of, making social
identities relevant in interaction.
 
The Center for Language, Interaction, and Culture (CLIC) is located at
the University of California, Los Angeles. The purpose of CLIC is to
promote cross-disciplinary discussion about issues regarding language
as a complex resource for thinking and acting in the world. CLIC is
composed of faculty and graduate students from anthropology, applied
linguistics, education, psychology, and sociology.
 
Submissions must be hard copy and should include (1) a detachable
title page that includes (a) the title of the paper, (b) the author's
name, affiliation, postal address, and e-mail address, and (c) a list
of equipment needed for the presentation; and (2) a 250-500 word
abstract of the paper. No information identifying the author may
appear in the abstract. Three copies of submitted abstracts must be
received no later than Friday, February 14, 1997. Late submissions
will not be accepted. Accepted papers will, with the permission of
the author, be published in the journal of Issues in Applied
Linguistics. Further questions can be addressed via e-mail to
<clicucla.edu.
 
 All submissions should be sent to:
 
 CLIC Graduate Student Association
 University of California Los Angeles
 Department of Applied Linguistics
 P.O. BOX 951531
 3300 Rolfe Hall
 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1531