LINGUIST List 15.84

Wed Jan 14 2004

Calls: Text/Corpus Ling/Portugal; Semantics/France

Editor for this issue: Andrea Berez <andrealinguistlist.org>

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Directory

  • p, Workshop on Multimodal Corpora
  • Manfred Krifka, ESSLLI Workshop on Questions

    Message 1: Workshop on Multimodal Corpora

     Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 05:59:59 -0500 (EST)
    From: p <puni-bielefeld.de>
    Subject: Workshop on Multimodal Corpora


    Workshop on Multimodal Corpora Short Title: MMCORPORA

    Date: 25-May-2004 - 25-May-2004 Location: Lisbon, Portugal Contact: Peter Kuehnlein Contact Email: mmorganizerslubitsch.lili.uni-bielefeld.de Meeting URL: http://lubitsch.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/MMCORPORA

    Linguistic Sub-field: Text/Corpus Linguistics Call Deadline: 24-Jan-2004 This is a session of the following conference: 4th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation

    Meeting Description:

    The primary purpose of this one day workshop is to share information and engage in the collective planning for the future creation of usable pluridisciplinary multimodal resources. It will focus on the following issues regarding multimodal corpora: how researchers build models of human behaviour out of the annotations of video corpora, how they use such knowledge for the specification of multimodal input (e.g. merging users gestures and speech) and output (e.g. specification of believable and emotional behaviour in Embodied Conversational Agents) in human computer interfaces, and finally how they evaluate multimodal systems (e.g. full system evaluation and glass box evaluation of individual system components).

    SECOND AND FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS

    Workshop on

    MULTIMODAL CORPORA:

    MODELS OF HUMAN BEHAVIOUR FOR THE SPECIFICATION AND EVALUATION OF MULTIMODAL INPUT AND OUTPUT INTERFACES

    http://lubitsch.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/MMCORPORA/

    Centro Cultural de Belem, LISBON, Portugal, 25th may 2004



    In Association with 4th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE RESOURCES AND EVALUATION LREC2004 http://www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2004/index.php Main conference 26-27-28 May 2004

    MOTIVATIONS

    The primary purpose of this one day workshop is to share information and engage in the collective planning for the future creation of usable pluridisciplinary multimodal resources. It will focus on the following issues regarding multimodal corpora: how researchers build models of human behaviour out of the annotations of video corpora, how they use such knowledge for the specification of multimodal input (e.g. merging users' gestures and speech ) and output (e.g. specification of believable and emotional behaviour in Embodied Conversational Agents) in human computer interfaces, and finally how they evaluate multimodal systems (e.g. full system evaluation and glass box evaluation of individual system components).

    Topics to be addressed in the workshop include, but are not limited to: * Models of human multimodal behaviour in various disciplines * Integrating different sources of knowledge (literature in socio-linguistics, corpora annotation) * Specifications of coding schemes for annotation of multimodal video corpora * Parallel multimodal corpora for different languages * Methods, tools, and best practice procedures for the acquisition, creation, management, access, distribution, and use of multimedia and multimodal corpora * Methods for the extraction and acquisition of knowledge (e.g. lexical information, modality modelling) from multimedia and multimodal corpora * Ontological aspects of the creation and use of multimodal corpora * Machine learning for and from multimedia (i.e., text, audio, video), multimodal (visual, auditory, tactile), and multicodal (language, graphics, gesture) communication * Exploitation of multimodal corpora in different types of applications (information extraction, information retrieval, meeting transcription, multisensorial interfaces, translation, summarisation, www services, etc.) * Multimedia and multimodal metadata descriptions of corpora * Applications enabled by multimedia and multimodal corpora * Benchmarking of systems and products; use of multimodal corpora for the evaluation of real systems * Processing and evaluation of mixed spoken, typed, and cursive (e.g., pen) language processing * Automated multimodal fusion and/or generation (e.g., coordinated speech, gaze, gesture, facial expressions) * Techniques for combining objective and subjective evaluations, and for making evaluations cost-effective, predictive and fast

    The output of the workshop will be the following: * Better knowledge of the potential of major models of human multimodal behaviour * Challenging issues in the usability of multimodal corpora * Fostering of a pluridisciplinary community of multimodal researchers and multimodal interface developers

    RATIONALE

    Multimodal resources feature the recording and annotation of several communication modalities such as speech, hand gesture, facial expression, body posture, graphics.

    Several researchers have been developing such multimodal resources for several years, often with a focus on a limited set of modalities or on a given application domain. A number of projects, initiatives and organisations have addressed multimodal resources with a federative approach: * At LREC2002, a workshop had addressed the issue of ''Multimodal Resources and Multimodal Systems Evaluation'' http://www.limsi.fr/Individu/martin/wslrec2002/MMWorkshopReport.doc * At LREC2000, a 1st workshop had addressed the issue of multimodal corpora, focussing on meta-descriptions and large corpora http://www.mpi.nl/world/ISLE/events/LREC%202000/LREC2000.htm * The European 6th Framework program (FP6), started in 2003, includes multilingual and multisensorial communication as one of the major R&D issue, and the evaluation of technologies appears as a specific item in the Integrated Project instrument presentation http://www.cordis.lu/ist/so/interfaces/home.html * NIMM was a work group on Natural Interaction and MultiModality which ran under the IST-ISLE project (http://isle.nis.sdu.dk/). In 2001, NIMM compiled a survey of existing multimodal resources (more than 60 corpora are described in the survey), coding schemes and annotation tools. The ISLE project was developed both in Europe and in the USA (http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/sb/isle.html) * EcorporaA (European Language Resources Association) launched in November 2001 a survey about multimodal corpora including marketing aspects (http://www.icp.inpg.fr/EcorporaA/). * A Working Group at the Dagstuhl Seminar on Multimodality recorded, in November 2001, 28 questionnaires from researchers on multimodality, from which 21 have been announcing their attention to record other multimodal corpora in the future. (http://www.dfki.de/~wahlster/Dagstuhl_Multi_Modality/) * Other surveys have been recently made about multimodal annotation coding schemes and tools (COCOSDA, LDC, MITRE).

    Yet, existing annotation of multimodal corpora until now have been made mostly on an individual basis, each researcher or team focusing on its own needs and knowledge about modality specific coding schemes or application examples. Thus, there is a lack of real common knowledge and understanding of how to proceed from annotations to usable models of human multimodal behaviour and how to use such knowledge for the design and evaluation of multimodal input and embodied conversational agent interfaces.

    Furthermore, the evaluation of multimodal interaction poses different (and very complex) problems than the evaluation of monomodal speech interfaces or WYSIWYG direct interaction interfaces. There are a number of recently finished and ongoing projects in the field of multimodal interaction in which attempts have been made to evaluate the quality of the interfaces in all meanings that can be attached to the term 'quality'. There is a widely felt need in the field for exchanging information on multimodal interaction evaluation with researchers in other projects. One of the major outcomes of this workshop should be better understanding of the extent to which evaluation procedures developed in one project generalise to other, somewhat related projects.

    IMPORTANT DATES

    * 24 January 2004: Deadline for paper submission * 29 February 2004: Acceptance notifications and preliminary program * 21 March 2004: Deadline final version of accepted papers * 25 May 2004: Workshop

    SUBMISSIONS

    The workshop will consist primarily of paper presentations and discussion/working sessions. Submissions should be 4 pages long, must be in English, and follow the submission guidelines at http://lubitsch.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/MMCORPORA

    Demonstrations of multimodal corpora and related tools are encouraged as well (a demonstration outline of 2 pages can be submitted). As soon as possible, authors are encouraged to send to lreclimsi.u-psud.fr a brief email indicating their intention to participate, including their contact information and the topic they intend to address in their submissions. Proceedings of the workshop will be printed by the LREC Local Organising Committee. The organisers might consider a special issue of a suitable Journal for selected publications from the workshop.

    TIME SCHEDULE AND REGISTRATION FEE

    The workshop will consist of a morning session and an afternoon session, with a focus on the use of multimodal corpora for building models of human behaviour and specifying/evaluating multimodal input and output Human-Computer Interfaces. There will also be time slots for collective discussion and one coffee break in the morning and in the afternoon. For this full-day Workshop, the registration fee is 100 EURO for LREC Conference participants and 170 EURO for other participants. These fees will include coffee breaks and the Proceedings of the Workshop.

    ORGANISING COMMITEE

    Jean-Claude MARTIN, LIMSI-CNRS, martinlimsi.u-psud.fr Elisabeth Den OS, MPI, Els.denOsmpi.nl Peter KoeHNLEIN, Univ. Bielefeld, puni-bielefeld.de Lou BOVES, L.Boveslet.kun.nl Patrizia PAGGIO, CST, patriziacst.dk Roberta CATIZONE, Sheffield, robertadcs.shef.ac.uk

    PRELIMINARY PROGRAM COMMITEE

    Elisabeth AHLS%N Jens ALLWOOD Elisabeth ANDRE Niels Ole BERNSEN Lou BOVES Stephanie BUISINE Roberta CATIZONE Loredana CERRATO Piero COSI Elisabeth Den OS Jan Peter DE RUITER Laila DYBKJR David HOROWITZ Bart JONGEJAN Alfred KRANSTEDT Steven KRAUWER Peter KoeHNLEIN Knut KVALE Myriam LAMOLLE Jean-Claude MARTIN Joseph MARIANI Jan-Torsten MILDE Sharon OVIATT Patrizia PAGGIO Catherine PELACHAUD Janienke STURM



    Message 2: ESSLLI Workshop on Questions

     Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 10:00:24 +0100
    From: Manfred Krifka <krifkarz.hu-berlin.de>
    Subject: ESSLLI Workshop on Questions


    Call for papers

    Workshop: Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics of Questions August 9-13, 2004

    Organized as part of the European Summer School on Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI), August 9-20, 2004 in Nancy, France.

    Website of the summer school: http://esslli2004.loria.fr Website of the workshop: http://amor.rz.hu-berlin.de/~h2816i3x/ESSLLI_Questions.html

    Workshop organizers: - Ileana Comorovski, Universit Nancy 2 - Manfred Krifka, Humboldt-Universitt & Zentrum fr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS), Berlin

    Workshop Purpose: The investigation of questions has deepened our understanding of syntax (e.g. the constraints on syntactic dependencies), of semantics (e.g., the representation of non-declarative information) and of pragmatics (e.g., the nature of speech acts). However, researchers often took little notice of research on questions (and answers) in adjacent fields. For example, syntacticians interested in multiple constituent questions were unaware of the interpretation of different types of multiple questions, and semanticists disregarded important pragmatic factors like speaker bias. This workshop tries to bring together researchers that transcend such boundaries. The goal is to gain not only a more profound understanding of questions, but of the interaction of syntax, semantics and pragmatics in general.

    Workshop Topics: We invite contributions on typologically diverse languages, on phenomena that draw on insights across sub-disciplines; a non-exhaustive list of relevant phenomena is given below: - multiple questions - alternative questions - embedded questions - quantification into questions - exhaustive and non-exhaustive questions - biased questions - questions and information structure: discourse-linking, topic, focus. - echo questions - intonation in sentences with interrogative interpretation - theoretically relevant diachronic changes

    Analyses of questions in context and of question-answer pairs are particularly welcome.

    Submission details: We invite the submission of two-page anonymous abstracts for 20-minute presentations (followed by ten minutes of discussion) to the following adress: esslliuniv-nancy2.fr

    Please write "ESSLLI questions workshop" in the subject heading and the following information in the body of the message: title of paper, author's name, affiliation, e-mail address, telephone number, and postal address. Abstracts may be sent as attached files in PDF format (preferred), in RTF format, as plain text, or in MS Word format. The accepted papers will appear in the workshop proceedings published by ESSLLI.

    Invited speakers: - Chris Barker (San Diego) - Joachim Sabel (Brussels) - Robert van Rooy (Amsterdam)

    Workshop program committee: The workshop organizers and the invited speakers.

    Important dates: - Submission deadline: March 5, 2004 - Notification: April 19, 2004 - ESSLLI early registration: May 1, 2004 - Preliminary program: April 23, 2004 - Final papers for proceedings: May 15, 2004

    Local arrangements/Financial aid: All workshop partipants will be required to register for ESSLLI. The registration fee for authors presenting a paper will correspond to the early student/workshop speaker registration fee, if done before May 1, 2004. Otherwise, it will correspond to the student/workshop speaker registration fee. A number of fee waiver grants will be made available by the ESSLLI Organizing Committee on a competitive basis and workshop participants are eligible to apply for those. Workshop speakers who have difficulty in finding funding should contact the local organizing committee to ask for the possibility for a grant. ESSLLI offers no reimbursement for travel costs and accommodation.

    The workshop organizers are likely to be able to (partially) reimburse the ESSLLI fee and/or to (partially) fund the travel expenses of a limited number of workshop speakers.

    This workshop is partly sponsored by the Universit Nancy 2, ATILF (Analyse et traitement informatique de la langue franaise), and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through the project "Syntax and Semantics of Questions and Answers", at the ZAS, Berlin.