LINGUIST List 19.724

Tue Mar 04 2008

Calls: General Ling/UK; Computational Ling/UK

Editor for this issue: F. Okki Kurniawan <okkilinguistlist.org>

        1.    Miriam Bouzouita, Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue
         2.    Manny Rayner, Speech Translation for Medical Applications
Message 1: Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue
Date: 04-Mar-2008
From: Miriam Bouzouita <miriam.bouzouitakcl.ac.uk>
Subject: Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue
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Full Title: Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue Short Title: SEMDIAL: LONDIAL 2008
Date: 02-Jun-2008 - 04-Jun-2008 Location: London, United Kingdom Contact Person: Eleni Gregoromichelaki
Meeting Email: < click here to access email >
Web Site: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/groups/ds/events/londial/
Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics

Call Deadline: 21-Mar-2008

Meeting Description:

The SEMDIAL series of workshops aim to bring together researchers working on the semantics and pragmatics of dialogue in fields such as artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, formal semantics/pragmatics, philosophy, psychology, and neural science. In 2008 we will celebrate eleven years of the SEMDIAL series with the LONDIAL workshop, to be organized at King’s College London (KCL) in conjunction with the Interaction, Media and Communication Group at Queen Mary London (QMUL). The SEMDIAL workshops are always stimulating and fun, and with KCL being in the heart of London, just across from the South Bank Centre, there will be no shortage of evening entertainment.

Last Call for Papers:

Londial: 2008 Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue

King's College London, June 2nd - June 4th, 2008

in conjunction with:

Final workshop of Dialogue Matters: Foundations for Technology Development (Leverhulme International Network Project). This workshop is now to be held with the first day at King's College London on June 2nd immediately preceding LONDIAL, the second day at Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL) on June 5th (note: change of dates of this workshop).

LONDIAL 2008 will be held in conjunction with the closing workshop of the Leverhulme-funded network Dialogue Matters: Foundations for Technology Development, initially set up between London (KCL, QMUL), Edinburgh/Glasgow, Stanford, Stony Brook, Gothenburg, Essex, with additional collaborators now also participating. This two-day workshop will feature invited presentations by members of this group and other leaders of the computational linguistics and human language technology community, and demonstration of the Augmented Human Interaction Laboratory at QMUL (June 5th). This series of workshops has provided an extremely fruitful synergy of theoretical, historical, computational and psycho-linguists, with overlapping interests in dialogue modeling. Confirmed speakers include Susan Brennan, Amanda Stent, Robin Cooper and Staffan Larsson.

There is also a planned session on dialogue situated in joint action.

Dates and Deadlines:Submissions due: 21st March 2008(Please specify if you are submitting to the DSiJA or not)Notification: 16th April 2008Final version due: 30th April 2008Dialogue Matters opening workshop: 2nd June 2008 (Monday)LONDIAL 2008: 2nd - 4th June 2008 (Monday - Wednesday)Dialogue Matters workshop meeting at QMUL: 5th June 2008 (Thursday)

Scope (expanded from first call):We invite papers on all topics related to the semantics and pragmatics of dialogues, including, but not limited to:- models of common ground/mutual belief in communication- modeling agents' information states and how they get updated- multi-agent models and turn-taking- goals, intentions and commitments in communication- semantic interpretation in dialogue- reference in dialogue- ellipsis resolution in dialogue- alignment and misalignment in dialogue- dialogue and discourse structure- dialogue situated in joint action- interpretation of questions and answers- incremental, context-dependent processing- nonlinguistic interaction in communication- natural language understanding and reasoning in spoken dialogue systems- multimodal dialogue systems- dialogue management in practical implementations- categorization of dialogue moves or speech acts in corpora- designing and evaluating dialogue systems

There is also a planned session on dialogue situated in joint action (DSiJA). Submissions of papers are invited for this session.

Submission:Deadline for receipt of papers is 21st March 2008, 23:59 UTC.Submit your paper via the web at:http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=londial2008

Before submitting you must register with the website and receive a password by email; please do this well ahead of your submission, since email is sometimes unreliable. You will also need to fill out a web form with the author details and type in (or paste) a plain-text version of your abstract (200 words), in addition to uploading your paper.

The actual paper should be an anonymous PDF file, 8 pages long (including data, tables, figures, and references), A4 paper size, 11pt Times font, 2.5 cm (1 inch) margins, 2-column format. Include a one-paragraph abstract of the entire work (about 200 words). You may find it convenient to use the style files provided by ACL 2007. Please specify whether your paper is for the DSiJA. Multiple submissions by the same author or group of authors are allowed, but each person may only give one oral presentation at the workshop.

We will have a separate submission of late-breaking system demonstrations and ongoing project descriptions, to be presented in a poster session during the workshop. Late-breaking submissions will be two pages long; they will not be refereed, but evaluated for relevance only by the program committee chairs. Submission of late-breaking abstracts will be allowed only after review of the main session papers has concluded. The deadline for late-breaking submissions is 30th April 2008.

Invited Speakers:David Traum, University of Southern CaliforniaAndrzej Wisniewski, Adam Mickiewicz UniversitySusan Fussell, Carnegie Mellon University(one more to be confirmed)

Proceedings:Final, 8-page versions of the accepted papers, together with the 2-page accepted late-breaking abstracts, will be distributed in a proceedings volume at the workshop. In order to ensure publication in the proceedings, at least one author of each paper must have registered to attend the meeting by 30th April 2008, the deadline of submission of the revised paper.

Organization:Pat Healey (program co-chair)Jonathan Ginzburg (program co-chair)Ruth Kempson, Miriam Bouzouita, Eleni Gregoromichelaki (local arrangements)

Previous Semdial Events:Previous workshops in the SEMDIAL series include:MUNDIAL '97 (Munich)http://www.cis.uni-muenchen.de/sil/workshop/dialogwsh.htmlTWENDIAL '98 (Twente)http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/Conferences/twlt13.htmlAMSTELOGUE '99 (Amsterdam)http://cf.hum.uva.nl/computerlinguistiek/amstelog/GOTALOG 2000 (Gothenburg)http://www.ling.gu.se/konferenser/gotalog2000/BI-DIALOG 2001 (Bielefeld)http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/BIDIALOG/EDILOG 2002 (Edinburgh)http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/edilog/DIABRUCK 2003 (Saarbruecken)http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/diabruck/CATALOG 2004 (Barcelona)http://www.upf.edu/dtf/personal/enricvallduvi/catalog04/DIALOR 2005 (Nancy)http://dialor05.loria.fr/BRANDIAL 2006 (Potsdam)http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/brandial/DECALOG 2007 (Rovereto)http://www.cimec.unitn.it/events/decalog/index.htm

(see also http://cswww.essex.ac.uk/semdial/ )

Londial Program Committee:Maria Aloni, University of AmsterdamNicholas Asher, CNRS, Toulouse & Univ. of TexasRaffaella Bernardi, Free University of BolzanoPatrick Blackburn, INRIA, NancyJohan Bos, University La SapienzaMiriam Bouzouita, King's College LondonSusan Brennan, Stony BrookJustine Cassell, Northwestern UniversityEve Clark, Stanford UniversityPaul Dekker, University of AmsterdamRaquel Fernández, CSLI, Stanford UniversityRuth Filik, University of GlasgowSimon Garrod, University of GlasgowJonathan Ginzburg, King's College LondonEleni Gregoromichelaki, King's College LondonPat Healey, Queen Mary LondonElsi Kaiser, University of Southern CaliforniaRuth Kempson, King's College LondonStaffan Larsson, Göteborg UniversityAlex Lascarides, University of EdinburghIan Lewin, University of CambridgeColin Matheson, University of EdinburghGregory Mills, Queen Mary LondonFabio Pianesi, ITC-IRST, TrentoMartin Pickering, University of EdinburghManfred Pinkal, University of SaarlandPaul Piwek, Open UniversityMassimo Poesio, University of EssexDavid Schlangen, University of PotsdamMark Steedman, University of EdinburghAmanda Stent, Stony Brook UniversityMatthew Stone, Rutgers UniversityHannes Rieser, University of Bielefeld

DSiJA Program Committe:Ellen Gurman Bard, University of EdinburghStefan Kopp, University of BielefeldAlex Lascarides, University of EdinburghMassimo Poesio, University of EssexHannes Rieser, University of BielefeldJan-Peter de Ruiter, MPI for Psychoinguistics, NijmegenMark Steedman, University of EdinburghIpke Wachsmuth, University of Bielefeld

For further information see the website:

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/groups/ds/events/londial/


Message 2: Speech Translation for Medical Applications
Date: 03-Mar-2008
From: Manny Rayner <Emmanuel.Raynerissco.unige.ch>
Subject: Speech Translation for Medical Applications
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Full Title: Speech Translation for Medical Applications Short Title: SLT4MED08
Date: 23-Aug-2008 - 23-Aug-2008 Location: Manchester, United Kingdom Contact Person: Manny Rayner
Meeting Email: < click here to access email >
Web Site: http://www.issco.unige.ch/slt4med08/
Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics

Call Deadline: 05-May-2008

Meeting Description:

Speech Translation for Medical and Other Safety-Critical Applications

Call for Papers

Speech Translation for Medical and Other Safety-Critical Applications

COLING conference workshop

Manchester, EnglandSaturday, August 23, 2008

Deadline: 5 May

http://www.issco.unige.ch/slt4med08/

Medical applications have emerged as one of the most popular domainsfor speech translation. At the first workshop on medical speech translation, held at HLT 2006, several advanced prototype systems were demonstrated, and a measure of consensus emerged on at least some points:- The key issue that differentiates the medical domain from most other application areas for speech translation is its safety-critical nature. For this reason, we are broadening the scope of the second workshop to include other safety-critical tasks, such as emergency response.- The technology is mature enough that useful systems can realistically be field-deployed now or in the very near future.- Systems targeted on these kinds of applications are often more useful if they can be made available on mobile or wearable hardware platforms.- The basic communication model should be collaborative, and allow the client users (patients in the case of medical applications) to play an active role.

Despite this, there is so far little agreement on many central questions, including choices of architectures, component technologies, and evaluation methodologies. In this second workshop, we would again like to create a forum where people interested in these types of systems can meet, exchange ideas and demo live systems. We hope that the concrete result of the meeting will be the definition of at least one shared task for the emerging medical/safety-critical speech translation community, which will include shared data sets and an agreed-on evaluation methodology appropriate to the special characteristics of the domain.

Submission:Submissions may be of the following kinds:- Long papers (up to 8 pages) describing substantial work on speech translation for medical and other safety-critical applications. We particularly encourage papers describing user-centered system evaluations.- System demonstrations, accompanied by short papers (up to 4 pages). Submission of a long paper does not preclude submission of an accompanying demo paper.- Short papers (up to 4 pages) describing component systems, including ASR, MT and TTS, which are particularly relevant to medical and safety critical speech translation.- Position statements (up to 4 pages) suggesting definitions of a shared task.

All submissions should use the style files available on the main COLING conference web site. Author information should be included in the papers, since reviewing will NOT be blind. The main workshop page will soon include a link for submissions.

Important Dates:Workshop paper submission deadline: 5 MayNotification of acceptance of workshop papers: 6 JuneCamera-ready copy of papers due: 1 July

Program Committee:Laurent Besacier, U Grenoble, FrancePierrette Bouillon (co-chair), U Geneva, SwitzerlandMike Dillinger, SpokenTranslation, USFarzad Ehsani (co-chair), Fluential, USGlenn Flores, U Texas, USRobert Frederking (co-chair), CMU, USHitoshi Isahara, NICT, JapanShri Narayanan, USC, USAarne Ranta, U Gothenburg, SwedenManny Rayner (co-chair), U Geneva, SwitzerlandTanja Schultz, U Karlsruhe, GermanyHarold Somers, U Manchester, UKBowen Zhou, IBM, US

Queries:Please address queries to Manny Rayner (Emmanuel.Raynerissco.unige.ch)