LINGUIST List 8.1551

Wed Oct 29 1997

Calls: Text summarization, ITALLC98, CLAW 98

Editor for this issue: Brett Churchill <brettlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Priscilla Rasmussen, (Book)-Advances in Scalable Text Summarization
2. Patrick Blackburn, ITALLC 98
3. Teruko_Mitamura, 2nd International Workshop on Controlled Language Applications

			 CALL FOR PAPERS (BOOK)

	 ADVANCES IN SCALABLE TEXT SUMMARIZATION
	 Inderjeet Mani and Mark Maybury, editors

With the explosion in the quantity of on-line information in recent
years, demand for text summarization technology appears to be
growing. Commercial companies are starting to offer text summarization
capabilities, often bundled with information retrieval tools. Further,
there is considerable interest in mining information from large
databases, many of which have text content. These recent developments
offer opportunities as well as substantial challenges for research in
text summarization. In general, such developments have created a
practical need for summarization systems which scale up when applied
to large volumes of unrestricted text.

In response to this challenge, a number of new approaches have
emerged. Traditionally, shallower techniques have been leveraged to
achieve the desired levels of scalability and domain-independence, but
recent advances in robust information extraction as well as approaches
integrating statistical and symbolic techniques have opened up
possibilities for more powerful yet scalable summarization techniques.

With the renewed interest in text summarization, another challenge is
to develop rigorous criteria to help evaluate different methodologies,
in order to better advise investors and the interested public on
technology choices. This state-of-the-art collection will bring
together research aimed at advancing the scientific frontiers of text
summarization to meet these new practical challenges and
opportunities. **The principal aim of this book is to collect some
of the key results to date and to identify promising research issues
for the benefit of students, corporate researchers, and research
program managers interested in learning more about this field.**

Submissions are invited on original research in all aspects of text
summarization, including, but not limited to:

TECHNIQUES
 * Statistical, linguistic, and knowledge-based techniques in intelligent
 summarization
 * Text summary generation 
 * Capturing cohesion and coherence relations in text
 * Exploiting advances in information extraction in summarization
 * Exploiting domain knowledge in scalable text summarization
 * Combining scalability with abstraction in summarization
 * Tailoring summaries to particular users, tasks, and contexts

NEW PROBLEMS
 * Multilingual summarization
 * Multimodal summarization 
 * Multi-document/multi-source summarization 

FUNDAMENTAL ISSUES in THEORY AND PRACTICE
 * Classification of summarization systems
 * Theoretical foundations, including cognitive models
 * Evaluation methods and metrics
 * Summarization in operational contexts: requirements, architectures,
 lessons learned

Criteria for selection will include clarity, originality, relevance,
and significance of results. The papers will be reviewed by a
committee of experts. In addition, authors will be asked to relate the
content of their papers to other related papers in the book. In
addition to new contributions, the book will also include reprints of
classic papers in the field.

Submission Information

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: December 30, 1997
PAPERS REVIEWED BY: March 15, 1997
DRAFT TO PUBLISHERS: July 15, 1997

Interested authors should submit to the address below three copies of
a previously unpublished paper no more than 20 pages long,
single-spaced, addressing a specific text summarization issue or
reporting novel methods and results. Authors should indicate whether
the paper is being submitted elsewhere. Please include your name and
address on the first page.

For more information, please contact:

Dr. Inderjeet Mani
The MITRE Corporation, W640
11493 Sunset Hills Road
Reston, Virginia 22090, USA
Internet: imanimitre.org
Phone: (703) 883-6149
Fax: (703) 883-1379

 THIRD CALL FOR PAPERS

 !!!! NOTE: SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 15 DECEMBER !!!

 Third International Conference on
 Information-Theoretic Approaches to Logic,
 Language, and Computation

 Hsi-tou, Taiwan

 16-19 June, 1998


This conference aims to bring together researchers who use
information-theoretic tools to address issues in the cognitive
sciences, broadly conceived to include Computer Science, Linguistics,
Logic, Philosophy, Psychology, and Sociology. It will be the third of
a series of conferences on information-theoretic approaches, and the
sixth of a series of conferences on situation theory and its
applications.

1998 is the 50th anniversary of Shannon's pioneering work. The
intervening years have seen classical information theory become a
mature subject, and the birth of other approaches to the study of
information, such as situation theory and dynamic logic. This
conference welcomes submissions from all traditions in the study of
information.

The conference will take place in a lodge in Hsi-tou, a bamboo forest
in the central mountains of Taiwan. The location offers both excellent
facilities and relative isolation. It is one of the most beautiful
parts of Taiwan, close to Sun-Moon lake, one of Taiwan's aboriginal
villages, and the peaks of the Central Mountain Range, which at 14,000
feet are some of the highest mountains in Asia outside the Himalayas.


INVITED SPEAKERS: 

	David Beaver (Linguistics, Stanford) 
 Nick Chater (Psychology, Warwick)
 David Israel (AI Center, SRI and CSLI, Stanford)
 Michiel van Lambalgen (Mathematics and Computer Science, Amsterdam)
	Greg Mulhauser (British Telecom Laboratories)

 (Further invited speakers are expected to be announced.)

TOPICS:

 We solicit papers on the following topics:

 * Foundations and applications of various approaches
 to the study of information, for example: 
 -Shannon-Weaver communication theory 
 -Barwise-Seligman Channel theory
 -Situation Theory
 -Dynamic Semantics
 -Dretske's semantic theory of information
 * Information-based approaches to the syntax, semantics and
 pragmatics of natural language
 * Information-based approaches to philosophy of mind, consciousness
 studies, and epistemology
 * Information-theoretic approaches to cognitive psychology
 * Information-theoretic approaches to induction and learning
 * Probabilistic methods in epistemology and logic
 * Theory change, including Belief Revision and Bayesian approaches

 Papers on related subjects will also be considered. Papers of
interest to an interdisciplinary audience are particularly welcome.

SUBMISSIONS: 

Authors are invited to submit a detailed abstract of a full paper of
at most 10 pages by e-mail to

 ITALLC98coli.uni-sb.de

(using `ITALLC98 Submission' as the subject line). The cover page
should include title, authors and contact details of the corresponding
author. Submission of postscript files is strongly encouraged.

Although we prefer email submissions, we will also accept abstracts
sent by regular mail. Please send such 6 copies of such submissions to:
 Patrick Blackburn
 Computerlinguistik
 University of Saarland
 D-66041 Saarbruecken
 Germany

The DEADLINE for submissions is

 December 15, 1997.

The date of NOTIFICATION OF ACCEPTANCE is

 February 15, 1998. 

The accepted abstracts will appear on a World Wide Web server. The
revised proceedings of previous meetings have been published as
volumes in CSLI's Lecture Notes series. We anticipate publishing a
similar volume from the proceedings of this conference.

The ITALLC98 website is

 http://www.phil.ccu.edu.tw/~itallc98/home.html

This site is mirrored at:

 http://www.lgu.ac.uk/itallc98/home.html
 http://www.mic.atr.co.jp/~ashimoji/ITALLC98/home.html



PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Patrick Blackburn (Chair), Nick Braisby,
 Lawrence Cavedon, Sheila Glasbey, Atsushi Shimojima.


ORGANISING COMMITTEE: Jerry Seligman (Chair), Allen Houng, Kuo-Wei Lee, 
		 Cheng-Houng Lin, Jim Tai, Ovid Zheng, 
 Patrick Blackburn (Program Liaison)

	 CLAW '98: 2nd International Workshop on
		 Controlled Language Applications

		 Language Technologies Institute
		 Carnegie Mellon University

			 21-22 May 1998

		 ** FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS **

		 http://www.lti.cs.cmu.edu/CLAW98/


CONTEXT

The 2nd International Workshop on Controlled Language Applications
will be held May 21-22 at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA,
USA. Since the first CLAW workshop, held at University of Leuven in
1996, there has been continued strong interest in the research and
development of controlled language applications. Initial industrial
development and deployment of Controlled English systems (AECMA,
Caterpillar's CTE) are now being followed by developments in other
languages.

On the research front, we are grappling with issues like
standardization, design, and evaluation of controlled language
systems. We are particularly interested in studies regarding author
productivity and document usability. The workshop will give equal
emphasis to the academic and industrial perspectives, while bringing
together researchers, developers, users, and potential users of
controlled language systems from around the world.

WORKSHOP FORMAT

The Language Technologies Institute at CMU (home of the Center for
Machine Translation) is pleased to sponsor CLAW '98. The two-day
workshop will feature invited speakers, paper presentations, panel
discussions, and a poster/demonstration session. Evolving information
regarding the workshop format and content can be found at the workshop
web site.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Of interest are papers on all topics relating to the design,
implementation and application of controlled languages, including but
not limited to: human communication protocols; controlled text
authoring; conformance checking systems; machine translation.

In addition to papers of general interest regarding controlled
language, we especially encourage papers focused on two special
topics:

 * Issues in Controlled Language Design

 * Industrial Experience and Evolving Requirements

Also welcomed are demonstrations of controlled language systems or
applications, via the Web or on machines set up at the workshop. If
you wish to propose a demonstration, please contact Eric Nyberg
(ehncs.cmu.edu).

REQUIREMENTS FOR SUBMISSION

Papers accepted for the workshop will be published in a proceedings
volume available to all attendees. Papers should describe unique work
not published before. Papers that are being submitted to other
conferences should include this information on the first page.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Paper submissions should follow these conventions:

 * 5-15 pages in length

 * 8.5" x 11" page size

 * Single-column, single-spaced, 1" margins

 * 12 point font

 * Include title, authors, and contact info centered at the top of
 the first page

 * Include an abstract of about 100 words

Electronic submission is encouraged. We prefer PostScript files, sent
as EMail attachments. Electronic submissions should be sent to Eric
Nyberg (ehncs.cmu.edu)

IMPORTANT DATES

 * Deadline For Submission: February 16, 1998

 * Notification To Authors: March 20, 1998

 * Final Camera-Ready Due: April 20, 1998

WORKSHOP COMMITTEE

 Teruko Mitamura (CMU)
 Geert Adriens (Novell & University of Leuven, Belgium)
 Peggy Andersen (Carnegie Group)
 Eric Nyberg (CMU)


FOR MORE INFORMATION

 CLAW98
 Language Technologies Institute
 Carnegie Mellon University
 5000 Forbes Avenue
 Pittsburgh, PA 15213

 FAX: (412) 268-6298 (attn CLAW98)

 Email: terukocs.cmu.edu

 WWW: http://www.lti.cs.cmu.edu/CLAW98/