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csli.stanford.edu>FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING FOR COMMUNICATION AIDS ACL/EACL'97 Workshop Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED) Madrid, Spain July 11th or 12th, 1997 Many people have some sort of disability which impairs their ability to communicate. Work in alternative and augmentative communication (AAC) devices attempts to address this need. For example, people who have speech impairments may use a text-to-speech generator, or a system which synthesises speech based on input using an alternative symbol system. Prosthetic devices of this sort must be usable in a great variety of settings. They should enable the user to be a full participant in ordinary conversations, to lead transactional encounters and to prepare speech for more formal occasions. The extent to which this is possible depends on a number of factors, both physical and cognitive. The speech impairment may be due to a physical disability which has no effect on the person's linguistic ability, or it may be due to a cognitive, language impairment. Often, some combination of physical and cognitive disabilities is involved. Other communication aids include systems designed for deaf users and text-to-speech devices for people with vision impairments. NLP techniques are currently in use in such devices but substantial improvement in performance is clearly possible. AAC provides the NLP researcher with relatively tractable applications of potential utility to millions of people worldwide. The aim of the workshop is to provide a forum in which researchers in communication aids for people with disabilities can discuss the problems involved in these applications and the solutions being investigated in current research. We also hope that researchers in all areas of CL/NLP will participate, to discuss ways in which their own work could contribute, even if they are not currently working on these applications. We seek papers which describe the utilisation of NLP in communication aids, including AAC devices for the speech and language-impaired, sign language interpretation and translation, and intelligent text-readers for blind people. We would also welcome contributions which describe the use of NLP techniques in aids for rehabilitation and training for language impairment. Participation by NLP researchers whose work might be applied in these areas is encouraged, possibly including: - statistical or symbolic techniques for word prediction (for speeding input to text-to-speech devices) - lexical resources which can be utilised for communication aids (e.g. for text retrieval of fixed messages) - language generation from partial input (e.g. icons, templates, telegraphic text) - aids for text comprehension - speech synthesis geared to the needs of the blind or language impaired These topics are intended as suggestions only: contributions would be welcome from any researchers with an interest in applying CL/NLP techniques to aid people with disabilities. SUBMISSION OF PAPERS Papers should be previously unpublished: a paper accepted for presentation at this workshop cannot be presented or have been presented at any other meeting with published proceedings. Parallel submission is allowed; however if your paper is accepted for this workshop and you decide to present it here, we will ask you to withdraw it from any other events. Papers will be reviewed by the program committee, with additional reviewers being recruited if necessary. Papers must not exceed 3200 words (excluding references). Electronic submission is strongly preferred, either as a self-contained LaTeX file or PostScript. Hard copy submissions should include eight copies of the paper. Final versions of accepted papers will be required in LaTeX using a standard submission style (to be made available via WWW/ftp). Papers will be published in the workshop proceedings: if the papers submitted are of a sufficiently high quality, a book may subsequently be produced by CSLI Publications. We welcome presentations which include system demonstrations or video - audio-visual requirements should be described when the paper is submitted. Since attendance at the workshop will be limited to a total of about 40 people, potential participants who do not wish to present a paper should send a brief (max 100 word) description of interest to the address below by April 28th. Potential participants who would like an overview of AAC before the workshop might want to consult: McCoy et al, 1990: `Applying Natural Language Processing techniques to Augmentative communication systems' in proceedings of Coling-90 and Edwards (editor), 1995: `Extra-ordinary human-computer interaction' Cambridge University Press which contains several relevant papers. Also see http://alpha.mic.dundee.ac.uk/~slanger/workshop.html for abstracts of the recent workshop on NLP and communication aids for non-speaking people. DEADLINES Submissions due March 28th 1997 Statements of interest due April 28th 1997 Authors notified (by email) April 28th 1997 Final versions due May 30th 1997 ADDRESS FOR PAPERS AND STATEMENTS OF INTEREST Ann Copestake CSLI Ventura Hall Stanford University Stanford CA 94305-4115 USA aacMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
syd.dit.csiro.au>Call For Papers: ESSLLI97 PhD Workshop on Natural Language Generation A workshop held as part of the 9th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI97) August 11-22, 1997, Aix-en-Provence, France ORGANISERS: Cecile Paris (CSIRO, Sydney) and Robert Dale (MRI, Sydney) Web Page: http://www.mri.mq.edu.au/conf/esslli-nlg/ WORKSHOP THEME: Natural Language Generation BACKGROUND: Natural Language Generation (NLG) is coming of age: historically, natural language analysis has received substantially more attention from computational linguists and those working in natural language processing, but recent years have seen the development of a robust NLG community, with an international NLG workshop being organised every two years, and a European workshop in the alternate years; and many new research projects in NLP and CL include work on natural language generation. As a consequence, there are now a significant number of researchers working in the field, both in Europe and internationally. One effect of this growing interest is that there is considerable competition for limited space in the fora available for students undertaking their PhDs to report on their progress and results, and discuss their work with colleagues and more senior researchers. The purpose of this workshop is to provide a forum for students undertaking PhD research in NLG to present their results. WORKSHOP AIMS: This workshops aims to: * provide a setting for PhD Students to present and discuss their work, in a small, friendly and constructive environment; * provide guidance for future research directions; * develop spirit of collaborative research. CALL FOR PAPERS: We invite PhD students to submit a description of their thesis topic, approach and results. Papers should be 5--8 pages long. Authors are also welcome to submit a list of topics they would like to see discussed. This will be used by the organisers to identify issues for discussions and debates. Finally, PhD students are invited to provide additional information about their background and relevant experience. DEADLINE: Papers for submission shold be received by April 30th 1997. They should be sent to Dr Cecile Paris CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences Locked Bag 17, North Ryde, NSW 2113 Australia Use the above address for paper submission. Electronic submission is also acceptable: send your submission, in PostScript form, to cecile.parisMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue