LINGUIST List 17.949

Wed Mar 29 2006

Calls: Computational Ling/Australia;General Ling/Spain

Editor for this issue: Kevin Burrows <kevinlinguistlist.org>

Directory         1.    Michael Oakes, How Can Computational Linguistics Improve Information Retrieval?
         2.    Rebeka Campos, 2006 BIDE (Bilbao-Deusto) Student Conference in Linguistics
Message 1: How Can Computational Linguistics Improve Information Retrieval?
Date: 27-Mar-2006
From: Michael Oakes <Michael.Oakessunderland.ac.uk>
Subject: How Can Computational Linguistics Improve Information Retrieval?



Full Title: How Can Computational Linguistics Improve Information Retrieval? Short Title: CLIIR
Date: 23-Jul-2006 - 23-Jul-2006 Location: Sydney, Australia Contact Person: John Tait
Meeting Email: < click here to access email >
Web Site: http://www.cet.sunderland.ac.uk/cliir
Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics

Call Deadline: 31-Mar-2006

Meeting Description:

How can Computational Linguistics improve Information Retrieval?

It is striking how rarely techniques from computational linguistics have been demonstrated to be helpful in performing the conventional information retrieval (IR) task. By the conventional IR task we mean a search in which a short query, often in the form a list of keywords, is provided with the desired result being a list of documents, ranked in terms of their relevance to the need underlying the query. This, of course, is the information retrieval task as encapsulated by internet search engines.

IR techniques using ever more sophisticated statistical models (which have demonstrated a 40% improvement in effectivenesss since TREC began in 1992) have almost always outperformed approaches which are more linguistically motivated. Of course in some more specialised tasks, especially question answering and summarising, techniques from computational linguistics have proven their worth: but even here the best performing systems frequently combine statistical techniques with more linguistically motivated ones.

The workshop will explore why this is the case, and to what extent more appropriate and better performing computational linguistic techniques can improve the performance of text information retrieval systems.


Message 2: 2006 BIDE (Bilbao-Deusto) Student Conference in Linguistics
Date: 27-Mar-2006
From: Rebeka Campos <rebekacausc.edu>
Subject: 2006 BIDE (Bilbao-Deusto) Student Conference in Linguistics



Full Title: 2006 BIDE (Bilbao-Deusto) Student Conference in Linguistics Short Title: BIDE'06
Date: 15-Jun-2006 - 17-Jun-2006 Location: Bilbao, Spain Contact Person: Rebeka Campos
Meeting Email: < click here to access email >
Web Site: http://littera.deusto.es/bide
Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics

Call Deadline: 08-Apr-2006

Meeting Description:

Theoretical, Experimental, Applied, and Computational Linguistics

Summer Linguistics in the Basque Country:

Course: Movement, Minimalism and UG with Norbert Hornstein (June 12-16 at the University of the Basque Country-Vitoria, Facultad de Filología y Geografía e Historia Paseo de la Universidad, 5 01006 - Vitoria-Gasteiz)

Conference: BIDE'06 International Student Conference in Linguistics (June 15-17, 2006) littera.deusto.es/bide

Mini-Course: Of Minds and Language: an encounter with Noam Chomsky (June 19-22, 2006) http://www.sc.ehu.es/scrwwwsu/programas/b1.html