LINGUIST List 8.526

Wed Apr 16 1997

Calls: Agent Modeling & Design, Lg Variation

Editor for this issue: Ljuba Veselinova <ljubalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Ecole d'ete, Logical Approaches To Agent Modeling And Design
2. Marty Laforest, NWAVE call for papers

 ++ CALL FOR PAPERS ++


 SYMPOSIUM ON LOGICAL APPROACHES TO AGENT MODELING AND DESIGN

 to be held as part of

 ESSLLI'97:
 Ninth European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information

 Aix-en-Provence, France
 August 18-22, 1997


If you are modeling agents engaged in some activity, whether they be
people, robots, or artificial agents living in computer networks, you
want to be able to reason about their behavior and verify that their
actions will achieve particular goals. Similarly, if you are
designing autonomous agents to operate in some environment, it may be
necessary for them to reason about the state of the world to select
appropriate actions. In recent years, many researchers have worked on
developing logic-based agent theories and programming languages to
address these needs.

To produce adequate logical frameworks for these kinds of
applications, one needs to integrate theories of mental states,
action, and agent interaction. Topics of interest here include how to
model:

- action and change,
- knowledge and perception,
- goals, commitments, and rational choice of action,
- belief revision/update,
- ability of a team of agents to jointly achieve goals,
- agent coordination and communication,
- uncertainty (qualitative and quantitative treatments),
etc.

As well, one needs to find representation and reasoning techniques
that are appropriate for the target applications, which vary in
response-time requirements and opportunities for user intervention.
Techniques in use include logic programming, modal theorem proving,
model generation approaches, etc. We need a better understanding of
the range of possible approaches, how they compare, and which are best
for various applications.

This symposium will provide a forum for researchers in this area to
compare their approaches and discuss ways of addressing open problems.
It should also allow people involved in other areas or applications of
logic and attending ESSLLI'97 to learn more about agent research
and contribute fresh perspectives.


SYMPOSIUM FORMAT:

The symposium will be held as part of ESSLLI'97. There will be five
symposium sessions of 90 minutes each, one on each day of the second
week of the school (Aug 18-22). The symposium will involve invited
presentations, presentations selected from submitted papers, and
discussion sessions. Working notes containing the papers accepted for
presentation will be made available at the workshop. Opportunities
for publishing revised versions of the papers will be explored. The
symposium will be open to attendance by all school registrants.
Symposium speakers need not register for the school.


SUBMISSION:

Papers should be submitted in the form of an extended abstract of NO
MORE THAN 4000 words (8-10 pages) in length, and must include the
e-mail address of all authors and a 200-300 word abstract.
Submissions describing work in progress are welcome.

To make your submission, please send a postscript file to Richard
Scherl (scherlcis.njit.edu) OR send three (3) copies of your paper to
the following address:

 Richard Scherl (tel: (201)596-2657)
 Department of Computer and Information Sciences
 New Jersey Institute of Technology
 323 Martin Luther King Blvd.
 University Heights
 Newark, NJ 07102-1982
 USA

Electronic submission is STRONGLY encouraged.


TIMETABLE:

Due date for submission of extended abstract: June 2, 1997
Notification of acceptance/rejection: June 30, 1997
Final version of accepted papers due: July 31, 1997
Symposium starts: August 18, 1997


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

Wiebe van der Hoek (wiebecs.ruu.nl) Utrecht University
Yves Lesperance (lesperanyorku.ca) York University
Richard Scherl (scherlcis.njit.edu) New Jersey Institute of Technology


FURTHER INFORMATION:

For additional information on the symposium, see the symposium website
at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~wiebe/ESSLI-symposium or contact a member of
the organizing committee.

For additional information on the Ninth European Summer School in Logic,
Language and Information, consult the website
http://www.lpl.univ-aix.fr/~esslli97 or send email to
esslli97lpl.univ-aix.fr.

 CALL FOR PAPERS

NWAVE 26 - Quebec 1997
26th ANNUAL CONFERENCE NEW WAYS OF ANALYZING VARIATION

October 23-26, 1997
Universite Laval, Quebec, Canada


KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
William Labov: The language of life and death

Deborah Shiffrin: Language, text, and interaction

Gillian Sankoff & Pierrette Thibault: The insertion of L2 into the
community repertoire: Anglophone french in Montreal.

WORKSHOP
Shana Poplack: On early black english

DEBATE
Monica Heller: Ebonics, bilingual education, la loi 101 and more: What
do we have to say about the language debates of our time?


Abstracts are invited in all areas of linguistic variation theory for
20-minute presentations and for posters.

Deadline for receipt of abstracts: June 15th, 1997.

For information on abstract specifications and submission, visit our web
Site at:
http://www.fl.ulaval.ca/nwave26/