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2005
Issue 1
SIGGEN Newsletter
www.siggen.org
Date: 05 June 2005
TOPICS:
1. INF: Recent SIGGEN updates; board election, state of SIGGEN
2. CfB: Call for Bids for INLG'06
3. CfP: EWNLG'05 in Aberdeen [Early Registration by June 17]
4. CfP: Symposium on Dialog Modeling and Generation [July 7]
5. CfP: Using Corpora for Natural Language Generation [July 14]
6. TUT: Statistical Machine Translation and Generation [Aug. 11]
7. JOB: Postdoctoral Position in Adaptive Spoken Language, NY
8. JOB: Research Fellow/PostDoc, Aberdeen
9. Stu: Funded Studentship, Aberdeen
10. ANN: Surge 2.3 now available
| SIGGEN Board Members: | |
| Tilman Becker | Tilman.Becker(at)dfki(dot)de |
| Charles Callaway | ccallawa(at)inf(dot)ed(dot)ac(dot)uk |
| Irene Langkilde-Geary | irenelg(at)cs(dot)byu(dot)edu |
| David McDonald | dmcdonald(at)bbn(dot)com |
| David Reitter | dreitter(at)inf(dot)ed(dot)ac(dot)uk |
TOPIC 1: Recent SIGGEN updates; board election, state of SIGGEN
Dear SIGGEN members,
Tilman Becker, the last remaining member from the previous SIGGEN board, has been joined by the 4 new board members from this winter's election: Charles Callaway, Irene Langkilde-Geary, David McDonald, and student representative Dave Reitter.
As mentioned before, the website has been moved to www.siggen.org, (change your bookmarks!) hosted at DFKI, and has been updated, most significantly in regards to the membership on the Who's who page. This page, which now lists 145 members, has been revamped to ensure that all links are valid. If you, or someone you know, would like to be added to this list, please don't hesitate to email us. The mailing list has been similarly checked to ensure valid email addresses, and now contains 209 members. This means that those who do not receive copies of this newsletter are not currently on the email list, not considered to be members, and thus cannot vote in future elections. (A copy of the current SIGGEN constitution is located at: http://www.siggen.org/discussion/constitution/constitution_v2.html)
Your board members will be attending a wide array of conferences this summer, so if you see us, please don't hesitate to talk to us, or of course send us email. We will quickly respond to any suggestions or comments you may have.
-- The SIGGEN Board
TOPIC 2: SIGGEN: Call for Bids to Host INLG-2006
http://www.siggen.org/event/bidinlg06.html
SIGGEN (Special Interest Group in Generation of the Association for Computational Linguistics) invites proposals to host the International Natural Language Generation (INLG) Conference in 2006. INLG conferences are usually held in the summer, and sometimes co-located with other NLP events, such as ACL. INLG attendance is usually on the order of 80 people (that is, more than 50 and less than 120).
As INLG-2004 was in the ACL European region, we especially welcome and will prefer proposals for holding INLG-2006 in the ACL Americas or Asia/Pacific regions.
Draft proposals should be emailed to ccallawa(at)inf(dot)ed(dot)ac(dot)uk by 30 Sept 2005.
These proposals should outline:
* conference location and practicalities (venue, accomodation, meals). Note that INLG's have traditionally been held in places which are secluded but easily accessible (within a few hours drive of a major international airport), such as Brighton, UK (2004); mid-State New York (2002); Mitzpe Ramon, Israel (2000); Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada (1998); Hertsmonceux Castle, UK (1996); and Kennebunkport, USA (1994).
* approximate conference date. Will it be possible for INLG attendees to combine attendance at INLG with attendance at other conferences of interest to the NLG community (for example, INLG-02 immediately preceded ACL-02, INLG-98 immediately preceded ACL-98, and INLG-92 immediately followed ANLP-92).
* rough budget and expected sponsorship. Approximately how much will participants need to pay to attend, including accomodation and meals as well as conference registration? Note that attendance cost for previous INLG's has generally been US$500 or less.
* local arrangements. Who will be in charge of organising the conference, and how will finances be handled (eg, can participants pay by credit card)?
Draft proposals will be considered by a committee that includes some SIGGEN board members and previous INLG chairs. This committee may contact proposers and request additional information.
For more information, see:
* http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/inlg04/ for information about INLG-2004.
* http://inlg02.cs.columbia.edu/ for information about INLG-2002.
* http://www.dfki.de/~wahlster/bids/ for draft bids for ACL-01 (a bit different from INLG draft bids, but useful as examples).
TOPIC 3: EWNLG'05 in Aberdeen [Early Registration by June 17]
Call for Participation
8-10 August 2005 Aberdeen, Scotland (following IJCAI-2005 in Edinburgh) http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~gwilcock/ENLG-05/
Natural language generation (NLG) is a subfield of natural language processing that focuses on the generation of written texts in natural languages from some underlying non-linguistic representation of information, generally from databases or knowledge sources. Accomplishing this goal may be envisioned for a number of different purposes, including standardized and/or multi-lingual reports, summaries, machine translation, dialogue applications, and embedding in multi-media and hypertext environments. Consequently, the automated production of language is associated with a large number of highly diverse tasks whose appropriate orchestration in high quality poses a variety of theoretical and practical problems. Relevant issues include content selection, text organization, production of referring expressions, aggregation, lexicalization, and surface realization, as well as coordination with other media.
The workshop continues a biennial series of workshops on natural language generation that has been running since 1987. Previous European workshops have been held at Royaumont, Edinburgh, Judenstein, Pisa, Leiden, Duisburg, Toulouse (2001) and Budapest (2003). The series provides a regular forum for presentation of research in this area, both for NLG specialists and for researchers who may not think of themselves as part of the NLG community.
The 2005 workshop will span the interest areas of natural language generation and Artificial Intelligence, with a special focus on research that integrates NLG with AI, including vision, robotics, intelligent agents, and knowledge discovery. We also encourage papers that investigate the use of state-of-the-art generation technology in real world applications to handle both spoken and text output, and apply language generation techniques to interactive AI systems like communicating robots, to allow the user to enter into short conversations with the system in search for information. There will be demonstrations of working NLG systems, and special sessions for posters describing real-world applications and advanced language technology systems.
Papers will be presented on formal, corpus-based, implementational and analytical work on conventional NLG topics (realisation, microplanning, etc), and especially papers with a focus on the following themes:
* Embodied agents and robot communication (special track)
* NLG for real-world applications
* Use of ontologies in NLG
* Statistical methods for NLG
* Information organization for planning and NLG
* Robust methods and techniques for NLG
* Evaluation of NLG systems
Invited Speaker:
Kevin Knight (Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California) will give an invited talk on Tree Transducers for Machine Translation and Generation
TOPIC 4: Symposium on Dialogue Modelling and Generation
Call for Participation
July 7, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
http://lubitsch.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/DMG/
This symposium is intended to tackle issues in the semantics and pragmatics of dialogue and dialogue generation. It aims at bringing together the dialogue modelling and language generation/production communities and will provide an opportunity for researchers from a variety of disciplines, including linguistics, computer science and psycholinguistics, to exchange ideas.
We invited talks elaborating on important theoretical notions in dialogue modelling -such as constraints (Asher & Lascarides, 2003, and many other recent papers), the role of domain knowledge (e.g., Ludwig, 2003, and, again, many more) and the influence of social relations between interlocutors on dialogue behaviour (going back to the seminal work by Brown and Levinson, 1978)- and asked presenters to shed light on these or other theoretically fruitful notions in dialogue modelling by:
* relating them to issues in language generation/production or
* drawing out similarities and differences between applications of such notions in discourse generation versus interpretation or
* describing computational/implemented models, in particular, for generation/production or
* comparing psycholinguistic with linguistic or engineering approaches to dialogue modelling.
The symposium will thus be a natural complement to ones that deal with natural language interpretation or structural properties of discourse.
TOPIC 5: Using Corpora for Natural Language Generation
Call for Participation
July 14, Birmingham, England (preceding Corpus Linguistics 2005) http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/ucnlg/
We aim to bring together researchers who use corpora for NLG research either in the traditional, manual way, or automatically, involving machine learning and statistical methods. The goal of the workshop is to present and discuss current research, to compare manual and automatic corpus exploitation, to evaluate achievements, and to identify challenges for the future.
Registration is open at the Corpus Linguistics 2005 website. Please note that Using Corpora for NLG is a full-day workshop, and that you do not need to register for the main conference. Simply select the appropriate options in the registration form. The workshop registration fee is 70 Pounds.
Papers will be presented on all aspects of using corpora for natural language generation, including, but not limited to:
* (Partial) automation of traditional corpus analysis for NLG
* Issues in annotating corpora for NLG
* Statistical approaches to deep and/or surface generation
* Machine learning methods for deep and/or surface generation
* Role of corpora in the evaluation of NLG systems
* Reuse of resources developed for NLU (e.g. treebanks) in NLG
* Domain-specific vs. general purpose corpora for NLG
We would like to emphasise that where we say `NLG' we mean to include the language generation components of machine translation and dialogue systems.
Invited Speaker:
Irene Langkilde-Geary (Brigham Young University, Provo, USA) will give an invited talk with the provisional title: Constraint programming as a Whiteboard Architecture for Probabilistic NLG.
Panel on Exploiting Corpora for NLG:
We will hold a panel discussion on the topics of the workshop. The panel members are:
Chris Brew, Linguistics, Ohio State University, USA
Irene Langkilde-Geary, Brigham Young University, USA
Ehud Reiter, Computing Science, University of Aberdeen, UK
Donia Scott, CRC, Open University, UK
Bonnie Webber, Informatics, University of Edinburgh, UK
TOPIC 6: Tutorial: Statistical Machine Translation and Generation
August 11, Aberdeen, Scotland (Immediately following EWNLG'05)
http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~cmellish/knight.html
Kevin Knight, USC/Information Sciences Institute, USA
The statistical approach to machine translation provides a set of techniques for (1) automatically learning translation knowledge from bilingual data, and (2) applying that knowledge to translate previously-unseen sentences. When it was first introduced, statistical MT was far too slow and inaccurate to be useful -- it was an interesting lab experiment. In 2005, we see statistical MT significantly outperforming other methods in many language pairs and domains, at speeds permitting commercial applications like foreign news broadcast translation. What made this possible? This tutorial will cover the basic theory and the major technical advances of the past few years. Of course, there is a long way to go! The tutorial will also cover known limitations of current MT models and describe current research trends. We will also discuss problems in natural language generation, where the input is typically more abstract than foreign text, and describe how statistical MT research is currently exploiting linguistic categories.
This tutorial is free of charge. It is hosted by the Natural Language Generation group at the University of Aberdeen. We are grateful for the support of EPSRC grant EP/C523156/1 which has made this tutorial possible.
If you are interested in attending this tutorial, please send an email to ccameron(at)csd(dot)abdn(dot)ac(dot)uk so that you can be allocated a place and informed of any further developments. For more information, contact Chris Mellish (cmellish(at)csd(dot)abdn(dot)ac(dot)uk).
TOPIC 7: Postdoctoral Position in Adaptive Spoken Language
StonyBrook, NY
The Psychology, Linguistics, and Computer Science Departments at Stony Brook University are collaborating on an innovative project, funded by the National Science Foundation: "Adaptive Spoken Dialog with Human and Computer Partners." We seek a postdoctoral associate to collaborate with us. The successful applicant will have a Ph.D. in Psychology, Linguistics, or Computer Science, or a relevant interdisciplinary field.
Preferred Qualifications: Experience in one or more of the following: experiment design, statistics, linguistic phonetics, computational linguistics, speech processing, psycholinguistics techniques such as eyetracking.
Depending on the candidate's background and qualifications, duties will include:
1) Contributing to empirical (laboratory and corpus-based) studies of language use (both comprehension and production). This involves working with human subjects, designing experiments, collecting data, and conducting detailed analyses of text and spoken corpora
2) Contributing to our efforts to model human language behavior and test computational models using data.
3) Generating independent sub-projects relevant to project's research questions.
4) Supervising graduate and undergraduate student researchers in day-to-day activities across one or more projects conducted within the PI's laboratories
5) Assisting with management of laboratory resources, such as ordering equipment, software installation, etc.
6) Writing up results for publication
7) Traveling to conferences and workshops as appropriate
8) Developing expertise in relevant techniques and procedures that span Psychology, Linguistics, and Computer Science
This is a full time position. The Research Foundation of SUNY is a private educational corporation. Employment is subject to the Research Foundation policies and procedures, sponsor guidelines, and availability of funding. Projected start date: January 1, 2006 (flexible)
Application Procedure: Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. More details about the project can be found at http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~adaptation/. Applications for the may be submitted on-line at http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/Admin/CampusJob.nsf via the "Postdoctoral positions" link, or else submit a cover letter and resume to:
Prof. Susan E. Brennan
Department of Psychology
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, New York 11794-2500
Fax: 631-632-7876
Stony Brook University, flagship campus of the S.U.N.Y. system, is a world-class, student-centered research university located 60 miles from New York City.
TOPIC 8: Research Fellow/PostDoc: Towards a Unified Algorithm for the generation of referring expressions
University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Applications due: July 15, 2005
Contact: Dr Kees van Deemter
kvdeemte(at)csd(dot)abdn(dot)ac(dot)uk
Background:
Natural Language Generation programs generate text from an underlying Knowledge Base. It can be difficult to find a mapping from the information in the Knowledge Base to the words in a sentence. Difficulties arise, for example, when the Knowledge Base uses `names' (i.e., databases keys) that a hearer/reader does not understand. This can happen, for instance, if the Knowledge Base contains an artificial name like `#Jones083', because `Jones' alone is not uniquely distinguishing; it is also true if the Knowledge Base deals with entities for which no names at all are in common usage (e.g., a specific tree or a chair). In all such cases, the program has to "invent" a description that enables the reader to identify the referent. In the case of Mr. Jones, for example, the program could give his name and address; in the case of a tree, some longer description may be necessary (e.g., `the green oak on the corner of ... and ...'. The technical term for this set of problems is Generation of Referring Expressions (GRE). GRE is a key aspect of almost any Natural Language Generation system.
Aims:
Existing GRE algorithms tend to focus on one particular class of referring expressions, for example conjunctions of atomic or relational properties (e.g., `the black dog', `the book on the table'). Our research is aimed at designing and implementing a new algorithm for the generation of referring expressions that generates appropriate descriptions in a far greater variety of situations than any of its predecessors. The algorithm will be more complete than its predecessors because it is able to construct a greater variety of descriptions (involving negations, disjunctions, relations, vagueness, etc.). The descriptions generated should also be more appropriate (i.e., more natural in the eyes of a human hearer/reader), because the algorithm will be based on empirical studies involving corpora and controlled experiments. Among other things, these empirical studies will address the question under what circumstances the descriptions should be logically under- or overspecific; they will also allow us to prune the search space (i.e., the space of all descriptions) which would otherwise threaten to make the problem intractible. The project combines (psycho)linguistic, computational and logical challenges and should be of interest to people whose intellectual home is in either of these areas.
General Info:
http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/projects/tuna/TUNA-index.html
TOPIC 9: Funded Studentship: Managing Ambiguity in Generated Text
University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Applications due: July 15, 2005
| Contact: | Dr Kees van Deemter |
| kvdeemte(at)csd(dot)abdn(dot)ac(dot)uk |
General Info for prospective students at Aberdeen:
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/sras/postgraduate/apply5
TOPIC 10: Surge 2.3 now available for download
| Contact: | Charles Callaway |
| ccallawa(at)inf(dot)ed(dot)ac(dot)uk |
Surge 2.3, the latest version of the SURGE English grammar, has been packaged for download at the following location. Improvements have been made for written and spoken dialogue, XML and LATEX formatting, punctuation, and additional coverage rules derived from the Penn TreeBank. For use with FUF5.3.
http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/ccallawa/index-c.html
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1999
Issue 2 (lost)
Issue 1 (lost)
1998
Issue 1
Date: 25 Mar 1998
TOPICS:
1. A: INLG Registration & Program [Act by May 1st 1998]
2. CFP: TAG+ Workshop [Philadelphia - Deadline Apr 15th 1998]
3. A: CSLU Spring Short Courses [Portland, OR - May 5 - May 18]
4. JOB: ITRI Brighton PhD Studentship [Apply by Apr 30, 1998]
5. CFP: COLING/ACL98 Discourse Relations Workshop [Deadline Apr 6]
6. CFP: Special issue NRHM Adaptivity and User Modeling [Deadline Jun 1]
7. CFP: Computational Treatment of Portuguese - Brazil [Deadline May 4]
8. A: KPML Mailing List
9. P: Diana McKinnie [Generating reports from dictated X-ray reports]
TOPIC 1:
A: INLG Registration & Program [Act by May 1st 1998]
From: Graeme Hirst <gh(at)cs(dot)toronto(dot)edu>
9th International Workshop on
NATURAL LANGUAGE GENERATION
5-7 August 1998
Prince of Wales Hotel
Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada
REGISTRATION INFORMATION
Preliminary details of the program and registration information and forms are now available for the 9th biennial Workshop on Natural Language Generation.
This message gives basic information on participation. For full information, please visit the INLG-98 Website:
http://logos.uwaterloo.ca/~inlg98
PROGRAM AND SCHEDULE:
The workshop will begin with an opening reception on the evening of Tuesday 4 August, and end with lunch on Friday 7 August.
The program includes approximately 30 papers, demonstrations, and a panel session to be presented over 2 1/2 days. (The complete list of accepted papers is on the conference Web site.)
In addition, the social program includes an outing to Niagara Falls with dinner at the top of the Skylon Tower.
LOCATION AND TRANSPORTATION:
The workshop will be held at the Prince of Wales Hotel, in the scenic town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, which is easily accessible from Toronto International Airport. See our Web page on transportation for details of transfers to Niagara-on-the-Lake from Toronto International Airport, on Buffalo Airport as an alternative, and for directions to Niagara-on-the-Lake by car, bus, and train.
REGISTRATION AND ACCOMMODATION:
A discount accommodation-and-meal package has been negotiated with the Prince of Wales Hotel for the workshop. To get the discount, you must book your accommodation on the conference registration form, which is available from our Web site.
Registration paid by credit card will be accepted by e-mail and fax.
NOTE!!! Space at the workshop is limited. We will allocate space in the order that registrations are received, except that a space will be held for one author of each submitted paper (whether accepted or not) until **1 May 1998**. If the workshop is oversubscribed before the final June deadline, we will endeavour to find additional space, but cannot promise to succeed nor that any space found will be as cheap as the reserved space. Workshop registration and hotel reservations must be received by **1 June 1998**. Any unassigned hotel rooms will be released after this date. Late registrants will be accommodated only if space is available, and will have to pay the hotel's full rack rates.
FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE:
We anticipate having funds to subsidize attendance at the workshop by graduate students and unfunded researchers. Details should be known by mid-April.
TOURISM:
See the INLG Web pages for links to information on tourism in the Niagara region, Toronto, and Montreal.
TRANSPORTATION TO MONTREAL FOR COLING:
The workshop is to be held in the week immediately prior to the joint conference of COLING and ACL, in Montreal, Canada (10-14 August 1998). After the workshop, a bus will take participants who wish to attend COLING / ACL directly to the Toronto train station for an express train to Montreal.
WORKSHOP SPONSOR AND ORGANIZERS:
The workshop is sponsored by the Association for Computational Linguistics and ACL SIGGEN (Special Interest Group on Natural Language Generation).
The workshop is organized by Chrysanne DiMarco of the University of Waterloo, with the assistance of Graeme Hirst of the University of Toronto. The Program Chair is Eduard Hovy of USC/ISI.
General enquiries concerning registration and accommodation:
Jean Webster, University of Waterloo
jrwebster(at)icr(dot)uwaterloo(dot)ca
phone +1 519-888-4567 extension 5076.
General workshop questions:
Chrysanne DiMarco, University of Waterloo
cdimarco(at)logos(dot)uwaterloo(dot)ca
phone +1 519 888 4443
For more information, program, and registration forms, visit the
INLG-98 Website:
http://logos.uwaterloo.ca/~inlg98
TOPIC 2:
CFP: TAG+ Workshop [Philadelphia - Deadline Apr 15th 1998]
From: Jennifer MacDougall <jmacdoug(at)central(dot)cis(dot)upenn(dot)edu>
August 1 to August 3, 1998
TAG TUTORIALS -- PRELIMINARY ANNOUNCEMENT
July 28 to July 31, 1998
Philadelphia, PA, USA
URL: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~ircs/mol/tag98.html
The fourth workshop on tree-adjoining grammars and related frameworks (hence the + after TAG) will be held at the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science at the University of Pennsylvania in August 1998, from August 1 to August 3. Previous workshops were held at Dagstuhl (1990), UPenn (1992), and Univ. Paris 7 (1994).
Papers on all aspects of TAG (linguistic, mathematical, computational, and applicational), as well as papers relating TAGs to other frameworks, are invited. As in the past there will be some invited talks on other grammar formalisms which have interesting relationships to TAGs (for example, Categorial Grammars and HPSG).
GUIDELINES FOR ABSTRACTS:
Abstracts should be at most two pages (exclusive of references), and should be submitted in ASCII format, as a .ps file, or as SELF-CONTAINED latex file to jmacdoug (at) central (dot) cis (dot) upenn (dot) edu. (If email is not available, please send the abstract to the address given below.) Please indicate on the abstract if you would prefer to give a short presentation (10 minutes) or a long one (30 minutes). The abstract should contain your name, address, and email address. Proceedings including extended versions (4 pages) of accepted abstracts will be available at the workshop.
| Deadline for submission for abstracts: | April 15 |
| Notification of acceptance: | May 15 |
| Deadline for submission of camera-ready | |
| extended abstract: | July 6 |
| Workshop Dates: | August 1 to August 3 |
If you do not want to submit an abstract, but would like to attend, we would appreciate it if you could inform us by email by July 6 (unless you have already done so). If you would like to present a demo, please let us know as soon as possible, including information about required hard and software.
PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
Anne Abeille (Universit'e Paris 7)
Tilman Becker (DFKI)
Christy Doran (University of Pennsylvania)
Robert Frank (Johns Hopkins University)
Klaus Netter (DFKI)
Richard Oehrle (University of Arizona)
Owen Rambow (CoGenTex, Inc.)
Giorgio Satta (Universita di Padova)
Yuka Tateisi (University of Tokyo)
K. Vijayshanker (University of Delaware)
David Weir (University of Sussex)
CONTACT ADDRESS:
Jennifer MacDougall
553 Moore Building
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6389
USA
Telephone: (215) 898-3191
FAX: (215) 898-0587
Email: jmacdoug (at) central (dot) cis (dot) upenn (dot) edu
TUTORIAL:
Prior to the workshop there will be a tutorial (including labs and demos) from July 28 to July 31 1998. Details about the tutorial will be sent out soon. We are trying to get some partial support for some of the students attending the tutorials. If you may be interested in attending this tutorial, please contact Jennifer MacDougall at the address above (preferably by email) and we will send you more information.
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
Anne Abeille (Paris 7)
Tilman Becker (DFKI)
Owen Rambow (CoGenTex, Inc.)
Giorgio Satta (Universita di Padova)
K. Vijayshanker (University of Delaware)
TOPIC 3:
A: CSLU Spring Short Courses [Portland, OR - May 5 - May 18]
From: "Terri Durham" <durham(at)cse(dot)ogi(dot)edu>
Institute in Portland, Oregon will be giving two spring short courses in May to coincide with the ICASSP '98 Conference in Seattle Washington.
Please visit our web page for a full description of each course and to fill out your registration form. http://www.cse.ogi.edu/CSLU/shortcourse2/
If you have any questions please don't hesitate to give me a call.
Thank You,
Terri Durham
CSLU Center Administrator
PO Box 91000 Portland, OR. 97291
20000 NW Walker Rd., Beaverton, OR. 97006
Phone: 503-690-1630 // Fax: 503-690-1306
May 5-8th Text-to-Speech Synthesis
Instructors:
Paul Taylor
Center for Speech Technology Research, University of Edinburgh
Alan Black
Center for Speech Technology Research, University of Edinburgh
Michael Macon
Center for Spoken Language Understanding, Oregon Graduate Institute
May 18-22 Building Spoken Dialogue Systems
Instructors:
Stephen Sutton
Center for Spoken Language Understanding, Oregon Graduate Institute
Teaching Assistants:
Andrew Cronk
Center for Spoken Language Understanding, Oregon Graduate Institute
Ed Kaiser
Center for Spoken Language Understanding, Oregon Graduate Institute
TOPIC 4: JOB: ITRI Brighton PhD Studentship [Apply by Apr 30, 1998]
From: postgrad-admissions(at)itri(dot)brighton(dot)ac(dot)uk
University of Brighton
PhD Studentship for October 1998Application deadline: 30 April 1998
The Information Technology Research Institute (ITRI) invites applications for a three-year EPSRC studentship award to commence in October 1998. The studentship will be awarded in one (or more) of the following topics in Computational Linguistics:
DOCUMENT GENERATION (including TEXT GENERATION): architectures; corpus analysis; diagrammatic reasoning; discourse; evaluation; hybrid generation; implementation; layout; multilinguality; multimodality; representation languages; pragmatics; tools
LEXICONS: corpus analysis; evaluation; lexical statistics; lexicalized grammars; lexicography; lexicon induction from text; multilinguality; representation; tools; tuning; word sense disambiguation
NATURAL LANGUAGE INTERFACES: dialogue; interface design
Applicants should have a good honours degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics or Linguistics.
EPSRC studentships are restricted to UK or EU residents. Residents of the UK are eligible for fees and a maintenance allowance; other EU residents are only eligible for fees (and so would need to be able to support themselves during their studies).
The EPSRC baseline rate of maintenance allowance is currently approx 5,295 pounds sterling per annum. For further general information on EPSRC studentships, please consult http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/in-depth/indpfram.htm.
Further information on the Institute's research programme can be found on the ITRI home page (http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk) and information about students and how to apply on our research students page (http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/students).
If we already have your application on file for consideration this year, you do not need to apply again.
Deadline for applications: 30 April 1998
For additional advice and information, please contact:
Ms. Vivienne Wicks, Research Administrator
Information Technology Research Institute
University of Brighton
Lewes Rd.
Brighton
BN2 4GJ, UK
Email: postgrad-admissions (at) itri (dot) brighton (dot) ac (dot) uk
Tel: +44 1273 642900
Fax: +44 1273 642908
TOPIC 5:
CFP: COLING/ACL98 Discourse Relations Workshop [Deadline Apr 6]
From: <stede(at)cs(dot)tu-berlin(dot)de>
(See also: http://flp.cs.tu-berlin.de/~marker/aclcolingws.html)
The notion of discourse relation has received many different interpretations, some of which are hardly compatible with one another. Nonetheless, there is a consensus among researchers that intersegment relations hold between adjacent portions of a text and that these relations may be signalled by linguistic means, including so-called cue phrases, aspect and mood shifts, theme inversions, and other markers.
The workshop intends to bring together researchers working on discourse relations and discourse markers in different linguistic traditions and different NLP applications. The particular focus of the workshop is the issue of discourse relations from the viewpoint of linguistic realization. Specifically, contributions should address one or more of the following questions:
o What are sound methodologies for comparing similar discourse markers (contrastive studies, distribution analyses, etc.)?
o What are sound methodologies for relating discourse relations with potential realizations?
o Are there discourse relations that are always lexically signalled? Are there any that are never lexically signalled?
o What non-lexical (i.e., syntactic or prosodic) means are used to signal a relation?
o In production, how does one decide whether to signal a relation at all?
o In production, how does one motivate a choice among candidate signals for a given relation?
o In production, how does the choice of signal interact with other decisions (in particular, those of linearizing some tree or graph structure)?
o In analysis, is it possible to reliably infer discourse relations from surface cues?
o In analysis, how can one disambiguate polysemous signals such as "and", "since" (temporal or causal) etc.?
o What are useful lexical representations of discourse markers, for both analysis and production?
o What are useful representations of discourse relations (and the entities they relate), such that they facilitate the realization decision? What features would one like to have handy in a representation so that choices can be made easily?
o Are there significant differences between realizations in spoken and written language?
o How do individual languages differ in terms of any of the above issues?
Organizing committee
The workshop is organized by
Manfred Stede (TU Berlin)
Leo Wanner (University of Stuttgart)
Eduard Hovy (ISI/USC, Marina del Rey)
Requirements for submission
Papers are invited that address any of the topics listed above. Maximum length is 8 pages including figures and references. Please use A4 or US letter format and set margins so that the text lies within a rectangle of 6.5 x 9 inches (16.5 x 23 cm). Use classical fonts such as Times Roman or Computer Modern, 11 to 12 points for text, 14 to 16 points for headings and title. LaTeX users are encouraged to use the style file provided by ACL: http://coling-acl98.iro.umontreal.ca/colaclsub.sty Papers can be submitted either electronically in PostScript format, or as hardcopies.
Submissions from North America should be sent to:
Eduard Hovy
Information Sciences Institute
4676 Admiralty Way Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695
U.S.A.
hovy (at) isi (dot) edu
Submissions from elsewhere should be sent to either of the following:
| Manfred Stede | Leo Wanner |
| TU Berlin | Computer Science Department |
| KIT Project Group | Intelligent Systems Group |
| Sekr. FR 6-10 | University of Stuttgart |
| Franklinstr. 28/29 | Breitwiesenstr. 20-22 |
| D-10587 Berlin | D-70565 Stuttgart |
| Germany | Germany |
| stede(at)cs(dot)tu-berlin(dot)de | wannerlo(at)informatik(dot)uni-stuttgart(dot)de |
Timetable
Deadline for electronic submissions: April 6, 1998
Deadline for hardcopy submissions: April 9 (arrival date)
Notification of acceptance: May 25, 1998
Final manuscripts due: June 15, 1998
Program committee
| Sandra Carberry (U Delaware) | |
| Barbara DiEugenio (U Pittsburgh) | |
| Eduard Hovy (USC/ISI) | |
| Alistair Knott (U Edinburgh) | |
| Alex Lascarides (U Edinburgh) | |
| Owen Rambow (Cogentex Inc.) | |
| Ted Sanders (U Utrecht) | |
| Donia Scott (U Brighton) | |
| Wilbert Spooren (U Tilburg) | |
| Manfred Stede (TU Berlin) | |
| Keith Vander Linden (Calvin College) | |
| Marilyn Walker (ATT Labs) | |
| Leo Wanner (U Stuttgart) |
TOPIC 6:
CFP: Special issue NRHM Adaptivity and User Modeling [Deadline Jun 1]
From: Maria Milosavljevic <mariam(at)alba.nsw.cmis.CSIRO.AU>
The New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia
1998 call for submissions on the themes of 'adaptivity and user modeling in hypertext/hypermedia systems', and 'hypermedia for museums and cultural heritage’.
NRHM (previously Hypermedia, one of the original journals on the subject) is a refereed annual review journal covering research on practical and theoretical developments in hypermedia, interactive multimedia and related technologies. The new editorial team has introduced themed issues, each issue (normally 10-12 papers) will review and explore one or two topical themes from a variety of perspectives. The main theme of the 1997 issue was the evaluation of hypermedia and multimedia systems.
The themes for the 1998 issue of the New Review will be:
- hypermedia for museums and cultural heritage Theme editors Douglas Tudhope and Daniel Cunliffe
- adaptivity and user modeling in hypertext/hypermedia systems: Guest editors Peter Brusilovsky and Maria Milosavljevic (also see Adaptive Hypertext and Hypermedia Home Page http://www.education.uts.edu.au/projects/ah/index.html)
Papers should be submitted to the appropriate theme editors no later than June 1st 1998. For Instructions to Authors, see http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/~NRHM/ or contact the Editor.
Submissions are welcomed on all aspects of the two themes, including but not restricted to:
Adaptive hypermedia
| user modeling in adaptive hypermedia | |
| adaptive educational hypermedia systems | |
| adaptive information systems | |
| adaptive museum hypermedia | |
| adaptive navigation support | |
| natural language techniques for dynamic hypertext generation | |
| adaptive WWW navigation aids | |
| adaptive visualization of hypertext structure | |
| empirical studies of adaptive hypermedia | |
| content adaptation in hypertext and hypermedia | |
| personalized information spaces | |
| adaptivity and adaptability in a hypermedia context | |
| adaptive information retrieval |
Guest editors
Peter Brusilovsky - plb (at) cs (dot) cmu (dot) edu
School of Computer Science,
Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, PA 15213,
USA.
Maria Milosavljevic - mariam (at) mpce (dot) mq (dot) edu (dot) au
MRI Language Technology Group,
Macquarie University,
Sydney, NSW 2109,
Australia.
Hypermedia for Museums and Cultural heritage
| hypermedia link services | |
| networked access | |
| time-varying interactive presentations | |
| image, audio and video databases | |
| navigation design | |
| intelligent hypermedia and agents | |
| web-based museum hypermedia | |
| spatial and temporal models | |
| evaluation and studies of use | |
| metadata and intellectual access | |
| thesauri and semantic representations | |
| copyright /IPR for digital multimedia standards |
Editor
Douglas Tudhope - dstudhope (at) glamorgan (dot) ac (dot) uk
Department of Computer Studies
University of Glamorgan
Pontypridd, Mid-Glamorgan CF37 1DL
Wales, UK
fax +1443-482715
tel +1443-482271
Associate Editor (US) Andrew Dillon - adillon (at) ucs (dot) indiana (dot) edu
Associate Editor (UK) Daniel Cunliffe - djcunlif (at) glamorgan (dot) ac (dot) uk
For subscription information, contact
Taylor Graham Publishing, 500 Chesham House,
150 Regent Street, London W1R 5FA, UK.
TOPIC 7:
CFP: Computational Treatment of Portuguese - Brazil [Deadline May 4]
From: lucia (at) dc(dot) ufscar(dot) br (Lucia Rino)
III PROPOR
WORKSHOP ON THE COMPUTATIONAL TREATMENT OF THE
WRITTEN AND SPOKEN PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE
November 3-4, 1998
PUCRS Campus
Porto Alegre - RS
BRAZIL
Sponsored by the Brazilian Computer Society (SBC)
Organized by the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS)
CALL FOR PAPERS
Along with the XIV SBIA'98 (Artificial Inteligence Brazilian Symposium), to be held in Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil, in the PUCRS Campus between 04 and 06 of November, 1998, there will be carried out the III PROPOR - III WORKSHOP ON THE COMPUTATIONAL TREATMENT OF THE WRITTEN AND SPOKEN PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE - on the 3rd and 4th of November, 1998.
The former two PROPOR workshops occurred in Portugal and in Brazil, respectively in Feb/1993 and Oct/1996. The third one intends to bring together researchers working on Computational Linguistics, specially those whose work is in any sense related to the processing of the Portuguese language. The main goals of the workshop are to provide the means for the researchers to exchange information and to explore and discuss the availability of resources to solve problems related to Natural Language, having Portuguese as the central language. Contributions should address one or more of the following topics:
- The automatic interpretation of the Portuguese language
- The automatic generation of the Portuguese language
Verbal discourse processing: problems and resources of the Portuguese language
Differences and similarities between the treatment of spoken and written Portuguese
The above topics naturally include a broader discussion on Natural Language Processing as such, and other issues in the Computational Linguistics spectrum. Researchers are invited to submit articles or demoes, in order to integrate, and exchange, experiences with the participants during the event.
Workshop organization
The workshop will consist of technical pannels, conference and discussion sessions. Participants are also invited to present demoes and systems resulting from project and development of software.
Requirements for submission
Papers and software are invited that address any of the topics listed above, preference given to conclusive work. Work reporting ongoing MsC or PhD research can be submitted to the Workshop of Unconcluded Dissertations and Theses, which is held along with SBIA'98. In this case, submission requirements can be found in the following address:
http://www.inf.pucrs.br/~flavio/sbia98/sbia98.html.
IMPORTANT DEADLINES
Technical papers and software descriptions: May 04, 1998 (mailing date)
Notification of acceptance: July 01, 1998 (by email)
=46inal manuscripts due: August 15, 1998 (mailing date)
No electronic submission will be accepted.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMISSION
Manuscripts must be written either in Portuguese or in English. Please use A4 letter format, doubleline spacing, classical fonts such as Times Roman or Computer Modern, 12 points for text, 14 to 16 points for headings and title. Maximum length is 15 pages including figures and references. Small caps or figures must be avoided, since the manuscripts may be reduced for the proceedings. The content of the first page must include the title of the article, the author(s) fullname(s), institution of origin, address, and a summary of the work. Faxed or emailed work will not be accepted for revision. Software descriptions must contain title, goals and a short characterization, besides the names of the authors, their institution of origin and address, and the specification of software/hardware needs for demoes.
=46our hardcopy copies of both, technical papers or software descriptions, must be accompanied by a letter of submission containing the title of the work, authors, and the name of the contact person. Submissions should be sent to:
Organizing committee
| Vera L=FAcia Strube de Lima (PUCRS) | |
| Flavio Moreira de Oliveira (PUCRS) | |
| Rosa Maria Viccari (UFRGS) |
Program committee
| Ariadne M. B. R. Carvalho (IC-UNICAMP) | |
| Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza (DI-PUCRJ) | |
| Elisabete Ranchhod (FL-UL) | |
| Isabel Trancoso (INESC) | |
| Jacques Robin (DI-UFPe) | |
| Jos=E9 Gabriel Pereira Lopes (FCT-UNL) | |
| Laura S. Garcia (CEFET-PR) | |
| L=FAcia Machado Rino (DC-UFSCar) | |
| Mike Dillinger (IL-UFMG) | |
| Raul S. Wazlawick (DI-UFSC) | |
| Rosa Maria Viccari (II-UFRGS) | |
| Vera L=FAcia Strube de Lima(II-PUCRS) |
TOPIC 8:
A: KPML Mailing List
From: Elke Teich <elke(at)dude(dot)uni-sb(dot)de>
KPML (Komet-Penman MultiLingual) is a grammar development environment for Systemic Functional Grammars and a sentence generator for English, German, Dutch and a few other languages. The system was developed at the Institute for Integrated Publication and Information Systems (IPSI) of the German National Research Center for Information Technology (GMD), Darmstadt, Germany (http://www.darmstadt.gmd.de/IPSI/index.html) and is now being further developed at the Center for Language and Communication research at the University of Stirling, UK (http://www.stir.ac.uk/english/communication).
KPML is based on the Penman system for generation of English sentences originally developed at the Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California.
Added functionalities include
- multilinguality
- facilities for versioning and back-up for large-scale grammar resources
- graphic-based grammar writing tools
- graphic-based grammar exploration tools
- tools for preparing teaching materials
- specialized example and test suite management tools.
KPML has been used in a number of projects and is currently one of the most popular platforms for developing grammars for generation. Users of the system currently develop generation grammars for languages as diverse as English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Finnish, Greek, Czech, Russian and Bulgarian. More information about KPML can be found at http://www.stir.ac.uk/english/communication/Computational-tools/ including the requirements for installing the system, downloading the system, documentation etc.
You might also want to have a look at a sample generated document where the text parts are generated with KPML:
http://www.darmstadt.gmd.de/publish/komet/kometpave-pics-96.html
Other relevant pages:
KPML basic:
http://www.stir.ac.uk/english/communication/Computational-tools/kpml.html
KPML documentation (online):
http://www.darmstadt.gmd.de/publish/komet/kpml-1-doc/kpml.html
KPML documentation (downloadable hardcopy):
file://ftp.darmstadt.gmd.de/pub/komet/KPML-1.0/
The Grammar Exploration Tool:
http://www.stir.ac.uk/english/communication/Computational-tools/Grexplorer/grexplorer.html
The generation grammar bank:
http://www.stir.ac.uk/english/communication/Computational-tools/generation-bank.html
This mailing list offers users of KPML the opportunity of exchanging information, seeking and giving advice in issues of linguistic specification and computational implementation, announcing and making available add-on functionalities and new resources etc. The list is managed by the department of English Linguistics, Institute of Applied Linguistics, Translation and Interpreting of the University of the Saarland, Saarbruecken, Germany (http://www.uni-sb.de/~sl16eset/elke.html).
Subscribe NOW and keep in touch!
To subscribe send e-mail to
elke(at)dude(dot)uni-sb(dot)de
by putting 'subscribe MY-E-MAIL-ADDRESS' in the subject field.
TOPIC 9:
P: Diana McKinnie [Generating reports from dictated X-ray reports]
From: Diana McKinnie <LDDMCKIN(at)ihc(dot)com>
I am a PhD student in the Medical Informatics program at the University of Utah. My project deals with generating natural language reports from parsed, dictated X-ray reports. I find the field of natural language generation fascinating and frustrating. I look forward to talking to others with the same fascinations and frustrations.
My e-mail address at the University is: d.mckinnie(at)m(dot)cc(dot)utah(dot)edu.
Thanks- Diana McKinnie
eof
1997
Issue 3
Date: 07 Dec 1997
TOPICS: 1. Q: Evaluation of NL dialogue systems?
2. CFP: COLING-ACL 98 -- Call for Workshop and tutorial proposals -- Deadline: 31 Dec 97
3. CFP: Book -- Advances in Scalable Text Summarization Deadline: 30 Dec 97
4. CFP: ETAI -- Electronic Transactions on AI
5. CFP: TAPD'98 -- Tabulation in Parsing and Deduction Deadline: 12 Dec 97
6. CFP: SIGDAT'98 -- Very Large Corpora Deadline: 20 Apr 98
7. CFP: FOIS'98 -- Formal Ontology in Information Systems Deadline: 15 Dec 97
8. CFP: Discourse Relations and Discourse Markers -- Coling/ACL'98 Deadline: 10 Mar 98
9. CFP: INLG'98 -- International Workshop on NL Generation Deadline: 28 Jan 98
10.JOB: ITRI, Brighton -- Research opportunities
11.JOB: ELRA/ELDA
Topic 1: Q: Evaluation of NL dialogue systems?
From: "gas0" <GAS0(at)elvira(dot)ugr(dot)es>
Ramon Lopez-Cozar Delgado
Electronics and Computer Technology Dept.
University of Granada
18071 Granada, Spain
e-mail: gas0(at)elvira(dot)ugr(dot)es
Fax: +34-58-243230
Dear SIGGEN colleagues:
I am a PhD student and a researcher in the Department of
Electronics and Computer Technology at the University of
Granada. I am working on a natural language dialogue system
that aims to answer product orders and questions of clients
in fast-food restaurants. It may be considered a rule-based
expert system whose behaviour is decided from a recorded
dialogue corpus obtained at a real restaurant. The system is
quite developed at the moment, though it needs some improvement
to enhance the level of understanding and naturalness.
I would like to get information about the available evaluation
methods of such a system, as well as information about the
evaluation of natural language dialogue systems in general (used
techniques, bibliography, web sites, etc.).
In order to provide more information, I enclose a short abstract
about the system I am working on.
--- Abstract ----
The system goal is to simulate the restaurant-clerk behaviour. It
must be able to provide information and ask client questions
similarly to how a human clerk does. In addition we
want it to process spontaneous voiced-speech, which at a
linguistic level means to consider phenomena such as unnecessary
word repetition, grammatical order change, anaphora, discordances,
context information, grammatical mistakes, etc. We also expect a
learning ability for the system to allow new information (foods,
drinks, ingredients, etc.) acquisition from client interaction.
The basis for the system development is as follows:
- Unnecessary information in client utterance: Usually,
not all words in a sentence are necessary to obtain its semantic
interpretation, which can be achieved from meaning words only
(keywords). To obtain such interpretation, the system uses
keywords and a keyword lattice analysis. This analysis is carried
out by means of syntactic and semantic rules. From dialogue corpus
we found out that clients usually use a small number of words in
their utterances (communication client-clerk tends to be
telegram-like), therefore a system dictionary can be size-reduced.
- Use of a small number of patterns: Clients tend to communicate
using a small number of patterns to order products, ask questions,
or modify previous product orders. Using these patterns the system
can extract most semantic meanings from clients' utterances. In case
the meaning cannot be obtained, clients are asked to help the system
understanding process or to repeat the utterance input differently.
The system is a compound of several modules: Input Interface, Control
Module, Memory Module, Restaurant-product Knowledge Base, Lexicon, and
Output Interface.
At the moment the system takes about 30.000 C++ code lines. Its inputs
and outputs are natural language text sentences.
Its Input interface is well developed but still needs to define some
syntactic and semantic rules, since now only product orders and
questions are carried out.
We are about to start the Modification Module set up. This module
will be activated when the desire of modification of previous orders
is detected in client input.
Also, the Learning Module needs to be started. This module will be
activated when "possible" unknown foods, ingredients, drinks, etc.
are detected in client input. These new products will be learnt, so
they could be recognized the next time they appear in client
sentences.
The Natural Language Generator needs improvement to enhance the
expression power, though at the moment, the system can build
both syntactically and semantically right sentences, in a very
natural fashion, by using pronouns and context information available
at the moment of the natural language generation.
The system uses a graphic interface that now is useful but simple. In
future we would like to improve it by including product-pictures and
graphics of the "artificial" restaurant-clerk face, in order to
improve a friendly communication.
We think the integration of the system in a voice-controlled
response system represents its best application. To
do so, it would need a speech-to-text interface that
provides a text-word sequence from client voice. A text-to-speech
interface should transform the system output into synthesized voice.
Theoretically the whole system could be part of an
automatic front-end dialogue system for clients in restaurants,
or for those at home who use telephone for ordering.
--- End of Abstract ---
I do not know if this short abstract would be enough for you to
get an idea of the system, so in case you need any further
information, or in case you have any comment or remark, please
let me know.
I look forward to hearing from you soon. Thanks again.
Sincerely,
Ramon Lopez-Cozar Delgado
Electronics and Computer Technology Dept.
University of Granada
18071 Granada
Spain.
Topic 2: CFP: COLING-ACL 98 -- Call for Workshop and tutorial proposals
From: pete(at)sharp(dot)co(dot)uk (Pete Whitelock)
The Programme Commitee would like to receive proposals for tutorials
and workshops to be held in conjunction with the Joint COLING-ACL
Conference.
TUTORIALS
Tutorials will be held on Sunday 9th August, the day preceeding the
conference proper. Tutorials may address any topic of current or
possible future relevance to the field. The duration of each tutorial
should be approximately 3 hours. Those interested in presenting a
tutorial should send a 300-500 word proposal to Pete Whitelock,
pete(at)sharp(dot)co(dot)uk, describing the relevance of the subject matter to
the conference participants, an outline of the tutorial's content, and
a short statement of the proposer's relevant experience.
WORKSHOPS
Workshops will be held on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th of August,
immediately following the conference proper. Workshops will normally
be one day in length, but may extend to a second day if
required. Those interested in organising a workshop should send a
brief proposal to Pete Whitelock, pete(at)sharp(dot)co(dot)uk, describing the
topic of the workshop and its relevance to Coling, the approximate
number of participants expected and the likely duration of the
workshop, and a short statement of the proposer's relevant experience.
It is hoped that it will be possible to accomodate all proposals for
tutorials and workshops, but the room space available will place an
upper limit on the number. Since proposals will be accepted primarily
on a first-come first-served basis, proposers are encouraged to submit
as early as possible. Early submission is particularly important if
workshop presentations are to be refereed. In any event, no proposals
will be accepted after the final deadline of Dec 31st.
Topic 3: CFP: Book -- Advances in Scalable Text Summarization
From: Inderjeet Mani <mani(at)azrael(dot)mitre(dot)org>
With the explosion in the quantity of on-line information in recent
years, demand for text summarization technology appears to be
growing. Commercial companies are starting to offer text summarization
capabilities, often bundled with information retrieval tools. Further,
there is considerable interest in mining information from large
databases, many of which have text content. These recent developments
offer opportunities as well as substantial challenges for research in
text summarization. In general, such developments have created a
practical need for summarization systems which scale up when applied
to large volumes of unrestricted text.
In response to this challenge, a number of new approaches have
emerged. Traditionally, shallower techniques have been leveraged to
achieve the desired levels of scalability and domain-independence, but
recent advances in robust information extraction as well as approaches
integrating statistical and symbolic techniques have opened up
possibilities for more powerful yet scalable summarization techniques.
With the renewed interest in text summarization, another challenge is
to develop rigorous criteria to help evaluate different methodologies,
in order to better advise investors and the interested public on
technology choices. This state-of-the-art collection will bring
together research aimed at advancing the scientific frontiers of text
summarization to meet these new practical challenges and
opportunities. **The principal aim of this book is to collect some
of the key results to date and to identify promising research issues
for the benefit of students, corporate researchers, and research
program managers interested in learning more about this field.**
Submissions are invited on original research in all aspects of text
summarization, including, but not limited to:
TECHNIQUES
* Statistical, linguistic, and knowledge-based techniques in intelligent summarization
* Text summary generation
* Capturing cohesion and coherence relations in text
* Exploiting advances in information extraction in summarization
* Exploiting domain knowledge in scalable text summarization
* Combining scalability with abstraction in summarization
* Tailoring summaries to particular users, tasks, and contexts
NEW PROBLEMS
* Multilingual summarization
* Multimodal summarization
* Multi-document/multi-source summarization
FUNDAMENTAL ISSUES in THEORY AND PRACTICE
* Classification of summarization systems
* Theoretical foundations, including cognitive models
* Evaluation methods and metrics
* Summarization in operational contexts: requirements, architectures, lessons learned
Criteria for selection will include clarity, originality, relevance,
and significance of results. The papers will be reviewed by a
committee of experts. In addition, authors will be asked to relate the
content of their papers to other related papers in the book. In
addition to new contributions, the book will also include reprints of
classic papers in the field.
Submission Information
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: December 30, 1997
PAPERS REVIEWED BY: March 15, 1997
DRAFT TO PUBLISHERS: July 15, 1997
Interested authors should submit to the address below three copies of
a previously unpublished paper no more than 20 pages long,
single-spaced, addressing a specific text summarization issue or
reporting novel methods and results. Authors should indicate whether
the paper is being submitted elsewhere. Please include your name and
address on the first page.
For more information, please contact:
Dr. Inderjeet Mani
The MITRE Corporation, W640
11493 Sunset Hills Road
Reston, Virginia 22090, USA
Internet: imani(at)mitre(dot)org
Phone: (703) 883-6149
Fax: (703) 883-1379
Topic 4: CFP: ETAI -- Electronic Transactions on AI
From: Elisabeth Andre <Elisabeth.Andre(at)dfki(dot)de>
AREA: Intelligent User Interfaces
SCOPE:
The ETAI is organized into several specialized areas. The area of Intelligent User Interfaces focuses on design principles, methodologies and tools that make man-machine communication easier and more effective. For ETAI, papers are invited from the whole spectrum of Intelligent User Interfaces research. Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to:
- knowledge-based tools and environments for user interface design and development
- adaptive and customizable user interfaces
- user modeling
- intelligent interface agents and agent-based interaction
- knowledge-based presentation of information
- intelligent interfaces to the internet, for tasks such as design, presentation, access and navigation
- natural-language and multimodal interfaces
- intelligent front-ends to multimedia, hypermedia and virtual environments
- architectures for intelligent user interfaces
- evaluation and analysis of intelligent user interfaces applications, such as tutoring and advisory systems, computer-supported collaborative work, computer-aided design, decision-support systems, information kiosks
CONTRIBUTIONS:
The ETAI welcomes contributions for the first issues of the area:
Intelligent User Interfaces. Beside high-quality papers, we seek
conference and workshop reports, book reviews and links to software
that is available and can be run over the net. Submission guidelines
can be found under http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/etai/submission.html
For more details contact the area editor (address see below).
AREA EDITOR: Elisabeth Andre, DFKI, Germany
AREA EDITORIAL COMMITTEE (as of September 1997):
Niels Ole Bernsen, Odense University, Denmark
Peter Brusilovsky, CMU, USA
Lynda Hardmann, CWI, NL
James Lester, North Carolina State University, USA
Joe Marks, MERL, USA
Chris Mellish, University of Edinburgh, UK
Ehud Reiter, University of Aberdeen, UK
Constantine Stephanidis, FORTH, Greece
Oliviero Stock, IRST, Italy
Annika Waern, SICS, Sweden
WHAT IS THE ETAI?
The ETAI represents a novel approach to electronic publishing. We do
not simply inherit the patterns from the older technology, but instead
we have rethought the structure of scientific communication in order
to make the best possible use of international computer networks as
well as electronic document and database technologies.
Articles submitted to the ETAI are reviewed in a 2-phase process.
After submission, an article is open to public online discussion in
the area's News Journal. After the discussion period of three months,
and after the authors have had a chance to revise it, the article is
reviewed for acceptance by the ETAI, using confidential peer review
and journal level quality criteria. This second phase is expected to
be rather short because of the preceding discussion and possible
revision. During the entire reviewing process, the article is already
published in a "First Publication Archive", which compares to
publication as a departmental tech report.
Compared to mailgroups, the News Journals offer a more persistent and
reputable forum of discussion. Discussion contributions are preserved
in such a way that they are accessible and referencable for the
future. In other words, they also are to be considered as "published".
One additional type of contributions in News Journals is for links to
software that is available and can be run over the net. This is
particularly valuable for software which can be run directly from a
web page.
The creation of bibliographies, finally, is a traditional activity in
research, but it is impractical in paper-based media since by their
very nature, bibliographies ought to be updated as new articles
arrive. The on-line maintenance of specialized bibliographies within
each of its topic areas is a natural function in the ETAI.
For more details see: http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/etai/
ADDRESS FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
Elisabeth Andre
DFKI GmbH
Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3
D-66123 Saarbruecken
Germany
Phone: +49 681 302 5267
Fax: +49 681 302 5341
email: andre(at)dfki(dot)de
Topic 5: CFP: TAPD'98 -- Tabulation in Parsing and Deduction
From: Eric Villemonte de la Clergerie <Eric.Clergerie(at)inria(dot)fr>
MOTIVATIONS
Tabulation techniques are becoming a common way to deal with highly
redundant computations occurring, for instance, in Natural Language
Processing, Logic Programming, Deductive Databases, or Abstract
Interpretation, and related to phenomena such as ambiguity,
non-determinism or domain ordering.
Different approaches, including for example Chart Parsing, Magic-Set
rewriting, Memoization, and Dynamic Programming, have been proposed
whose key idea is to keep traces of computations to achieve
computation sharing and loop detection. In addition, tabulation also
offers more flexibility to investigate new parsing or proof strategies
and to represent ambiguity by shared structures (Shared Proof or Parse
Forest).
The first objective of this workshop is to compare and discuss these
different approaches. The second objective is to present tabulation
and tabular systems to potential users in different application
areas. One major area of application is Natural Language Processing,
where tabulation has been known for a long time (CKY, Earley, chart
parsing). However, sophisticated tabulation techniques are required
for the more and more complex grammatical formalisms now used in NLP
(unification, constraints, structural complexity). Contributions in
other areas, such as picture parsing, genome analysis, or complete
deduction techniques, are also encouraged.
TOPICS (not exclusive)
-- Tabulation Techniques:
Chart Parsing, Tabling, Memoization, Dynamic Programming, Magic Set, Generic Fix-Point Algorithms
-- Applications:
Parsing, Generation, Logic Programming, Deductive Databases,Abstract Interpretation, Deduction in Knowledge Bases, Theorem Proving
-- Static Analysis:
Improving tabular evaluation
-- Parsing or resolution strategies.
-- Efficiency issues:
Dealing with large tables (structure sharing, term indexing), Execution models, Exploiting the domain ordering (subsumption).
-- Shared structures (parse or proof forest):
Formal analysis, representation and processing.
WORKSHOP FORMAT: The workshop will be a 2-day event that provides a
forum for individual presentations of the accepted contributions as
well as group discussions.
SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Authors are invited to submit before December
12, 1997 a 4-page position paper or abstract concerning a theoretical
contribution or a system to be presented. Due to tight time
constraints, submissions will be handled exclusively electronically
(LaTeX, PostScript, dvi or ascii format). Submissions should include
the title, authors' names, affiliations, addresses, and e-mail.
Submissions must be sent to Eric.Clergerie(at)inria(dot)fr
The collection of selected papers will be available at the
workshop. After the workshop, authors are invited to submit a full
paper for publication in a special issue of the Journal of Logic
Programming oriented towards Natural Language Processing. The authors
should note that this second submission will be treated according to
the standards of the Journal of Logic Programming.
SCHEDULE:
| Submission of contributions: | 12 December 1997 |
| Notification of acceptance: | 26 January 1998 |
| Final versions due: | 20 February 1998 |
PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
| Bernard Lang (chairman) | -- INRIA, France |
| Francois Bry | -- University of Munich, Germany |
| Eric de la Clergerie | -- INRIA, France |
| Marc Dymetman | -- Xerox, France |
| Mark Johnson | -- Brown University, USA |
| Baudouin Le Charlier | -- University of Namur, Belgium |
| Mark Jan Nederhof | -- University of Groningen, NL |
| David Rosenblueth | -- University of Mexico, Mexico |
| Manuel Vilares | -- University of La Coruna, Spain |
| David S. Warren | -- University of New York at Stony Brook, USA |
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
| Francois Barthelemy | -- CNAM, Paris, France |
| Eric de la Clergerie | -- INRIA, Rocquencourt, France |
| Bernard Lang | -- INRIA, Rocquencourt, France |
| Manuel Vilares | -- University of La Coruna, Spain |
LOCAL ORGANIZATION:
| Claudie Thenault | --INRIA, Relations Exterieures, France |
ORGANIZATION: Up-to-date information will be available at
For request, please contact:
| Eric de la Clergerie | |
| INRIA Rocquencourt | Tel: +33 1 39 63 54 10 |
| Domaine de Voluceau - BP 105 | Fax: +33 1 39 63 53 30 |
| 78153 Le Chesnay Cedex | E-mail: Eric.Clergerie(at)inria(dot)fr |
Topic 6: CFP: SIGDAT'98 -- Very Large Corpora
From: Eugene Charniak <ec(at)cs(dot)brown(dot)edu>
WHEN: August 15-16, 1998 (immediately following ACL/COLING-98)
WHERE: University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION:
As in past years, the workshop will offer a general forum for new research in
corpus-based and statistical natural language processing. Areas of interest
include (but are not limited to):
- robust parsing, phrase structure analysis
- part of speech tagging
- term and name identification
- word sense disambiguation
- morphological analysis
- anaphora resolution
- event categorization
- discourse structure identification
- alignment of parallel texts and bilingual terminology
- language modelling
- lexicography
- machine translation
- spelling and grammar correction
PROGRAM CHAIR:
| Eugene Charniak | Brown University |
SPONSOR: SIGDAT (ACL's special interest group for linguistic data and corpus-based approaches to NLP)
FORMAT FOR SUBMISSION:
Only hard-copy submissions will be accepted. Authors should submit
six (6) copies of their full-length paper (3500-8000 words) to Eugene
Charniak at the Johns Hopkins University address below. Authors
should consult the primary call for papers in February for updated
specifications.
SCHEDULE:
| Submission Deadline: | April 20, 1998 |
| Notification Date: | June 1, 1998 |
| Camera ready copy due: | June 22, 1998 |
CONTACT:
Eugene Charniak
e-mail ec(at)cs(dot)brown(dot)edu
Address: Before February 1, 1998 and After June 1, 1998
Department of Computer Science
Brown University
Providence RI 02912-1910
Address: From February 1, 1998 until June 1, 1998
Department of Computer Science
Johns Hopkins University
NEB 224, 3400 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218-2694
Topic 7: CFP: FOIS'98 -- Formal Ontology in Information Systems
From: Alessandro Artale <artale(at)irst(dot)itc(dot)it>
Research on ontology is becoming increasingly widespread in the computer
science community. Its importance has been recognized in fields as diverse
as qualitative modelling of physical systems, natural language processing,
knowledge engineering, information integration, database design, geographic
information science, and intelligent information access. Various workshops
addressing the engineering aspects of ontology have been held in the past
few years. However, ontology - by its very nature - ought to be a unifying
discipline. Insights in this field have potential impacts on the whole area
of information systems. In order to provide a solid general foundation for
this work, it is therefore important to focus on the common scientific
principles and open problems arising from current tools, methodologies, and
applications of ontology. The purpose of this conference is to take a first
step in this direction.
As the heterogeneity of the program committee indicates, the conference will have a strongly interdisciplinary character. Expected participants include computer science practitioners as well as linguists, logicians, and philosophers. Although the primary focus of the conference is on theoretical issues, methodological proposals as well as papers addressing concrete applications from a well-founded theoretical perspective are welcome.
TOPICS
Examples of problem areas that may be addressed at the conference include:
THEORETICAL ISSUES
* Foundations:
parthood, constitution, identity, integrity, dependence, causality
* Kinds of entity:
particulars vs. universals, continuants vs. occurrents,
abstracta vs. concreta, attributes, relations, qualities,
quantities, tropes or moments, states, situations, environments
* Matter, space, time, motion, change
* Natural kinds, organisms, artifacts
* The ontology of social reality:
legal and administrative entities, artistic expressions
* The ontology of information and information processing:
representations, signs, software products, virtual reality, cyberspace
* Top-level ontological taxonomies:
new proposals or critical analyses of existing ones
* Cognitive foundations of ontological distinctions
* Kinds of ontology:
top-level ontologies, domain ontologies, task ontologies,application ontologies
* Ontological commitment
APPLICATION AREAS
* Knowledge organization, integration and standardization
* Intelligent information access
* Information systems design
* Knowledge engineering
* Conceptual modelling
* Qualitative modelling
* Lexical semantics
* Terminology integration
* Product knowledge integration
* Geographic information systems
* Legal information systems
TOOLS AND METHODOLOGIES
* Ontological and linguistic instruments for conceptual analysis
* Methodologies for ontology development, maintenance, and integration
SUBMISSION OF PAPERS
Papers will be selected on the basis of a rigorous review of full paper
contributions. Authors should submit 5 copies to the Conference Chair by
December 19, 1997. Papers received after the deadline or not conforming to
the submission format will be rejected without review.
Submitted papers must be unpublished and substantially different from papers
under review. Papers that have been or will be presented at small
workshops/symposia whose proceedings are available only to attendees may be
submitted.
Each submission should include a title page containing the title, author(s),
affiliation(s), submitting author's mailing address, telephone number, fax
number and e-mail address, as well as an abstract and keywords indicating
the topic areas listed above that best describe the
contribution. Submissions must be at most 16 pages, excluding the title page
and the bibliography, with a maximum of 38 lines per page and an average of
75 characters per line (corresponding to the LaTeX article-style, 12pt)
using LaTeX or Microsoft Word. Papers should be sent in 5 copies. Fax or
electronic submissions will not be accepted.
Those proposing to submit papers must complete the form at the WWW address
<http://mnemosyne.itc.it:1024/fois98/> by Monday December 15, 1997. If
intending authors do not have WWW access, then an e-mail message must be
sent to <fois98(at)irst(dot)itc(dot)it> by the same date, giving details of any
proposed submission in the following format:
Title: <Title of paper>
Author: <Last name, initials>
Author: <Insert as many more author lines as necessary>
...
CorrespondingAuthor: <name of corresponding author>
CorrespondingEmail: <email of corresponding author>
CorrespondingAddress: <address of corresponding author>
Keywords: <insert list of keywords, preferably chosen from above list>
Abstract: <insert short abstract, max 200 words>
EndAbstract:
Should intending authors not have e-mail access, the information above
should be sent by letter to arrive to the Conference Chair by Monday
December 15, 1997.
The proceedings will be published in the IOS-Press (Amsterdam) bookseries
'Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications' and will be
available at the conference. Final camera-ready copies of the accepted
papers will be due by March 9, 1998. Authors will be responsible for
preparing the final camera-ready in conformity with the formatting
requirements laid down by the publisher (see instructions at the FOIS'98 web
page http://mnemosyne.itc.it:1024/fois98/submissions.html). Final papers
will be allowed at most fourteen (14) pages in the conference proceedings
style (corresponding to approximately 20 article-style LaTex pages).
SCHEDULE
| Monday, December | 15, 1997 Electronic abstracts due |
| Friday, December | 19, 1997 Papers due |
| Friday, February | 6, 1998 Results sent to authors |
| Monday, March | 9, 1998 Final papers due |
| Saturday-Monday, June | 6-8, 1998 FOIS'98 |
CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
| CONFERENCE CHAIR | ORGANIZATION CHAIR |
| Nicola Guarino | Alessandro Artale |
| National Research Council | ITC-IRST |
| LADSEB-CNR | Povo, I-38050 Trento, Italy |
| Corso Stati Uniti, 4 | e-mail: artale(at)irst(dot)itc(dot)it |
| I-35127 Padova, Italy | |
| e-mail: guarino(at)ladseb(dot)pd(dot)cnr(dot)it |
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
| Alessandro Artale - Enrico Franconi | (ITC-IRST, Trento, Italy) |
| Nicola Guarino - Claudio Masolo | (LADSEB-CNR, Padova, Italy) |
| Luca Pazzi - Sonia Bergamaschi | (Univ. of Modena, Italy) |
| Geri Steve - Aldo Gangemi | (ITBM-CNR, Roma, Italy) |
| Cristiano Castelfranchi - Rino Falcone | (IP-CNR, Roma, Italy) |
Topic 8: CFP: Discourse Relations and Discourse Markers -- Coling/ACL'98
From: Eduard Hovy <hovy(at)ISI(dot)EDU>
The notion of discourse relation has received many interpretations, some
of which are hardly compatible with one another. Nonetheless, there is a
consensus among researchers that intersegment relations hold between
adjacent portions of a text and that these relations may be signalled by
linguistic means, including so-called cue phrases, aspect and mood shifts,
theme inversions, and other markers.
The workshop intends to bring together researchers working on discourse
relations and discourse markers in different linguistic traditions and
different NLP applications. The particular focus of the workshop is
the issue of discourse relations from the viewpoint of linguistic
realization. Specifically, contributions should address one or more of
the following questions:
* What are sound methodologies for comparing similar discourse markers
(contrastive studies, distribution analyses, etc.)?
* What are sound methodologies for relating discourse relations with
potential realizations?
* Are there discourse relations that are *always* lexically signalled?
Are there any that are *never* lexically signalled?
* What non-lexical (i.e., syntactic or prosodic) means are used to signal a relation?
* In production, how does one decide whether to signal a relation at all?
* In production, how does one motivate a choice among candidate signals for a given relation?
* In production, how does the choice of signal interact with other decisions (in particular, those of linearizing some tree or graph structure)?
* In analysis, is it possible to reliably infer discourse relations from surface cues?
* In analysis, how can one disambiguate polysemous signals such as "and", "since" (temporal or causal) etc.?
* What are useful lexical representations of discourse markers, for both analysis and production?
* What are useful representations of discourse relations (and the entities they relate), such that they facilitate the realization decision? What
features would one like to have handy in a representation so that choices can be made easily?
* Are there significant differences between realizations in spoken and written language?
* How do individual languages differ in terms of any of the above issues?
Organizing committee
The workshop is organized by
Manfred Stede (Technical University, Berlin)
Leo Wanner (University of Stuttgart)
Eduard Hovy (ISI/USC, Marina del Rey)
This call for papers as well as future information on the workshop can
be found at http://www.cs.tu-berlin.de/~marker/aclcolingws.html
Timetable
Deadline for electronic submissions: March 10, 1998
Deadline for hardcopy submissions: March 13 (arrival date)
Notification of acceptance: May 1, 1998
Final manuscripts due: June 12, 1998
Topic 9: CFP: INLG'98 -- International Workshop on NL Generation
From: Graeme Hirst <gh(at)cs(dot)toronto(dot)edu>
(For more information, visit http://logos.uwaterloo.ca/~inlg98 )
The 9th biennial Workshop on Natural Language Generation will be held
in the scenic town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, near Niagara Falls, in
Ontario, Canada, on 5-7 August 1998.
The INLG workshop is the principal gathering for researchers in natural
language generation, providing a pleasant atmosphere for stimulating
and informative talks on all aspects of the topic. The workshop
attracts a healthy mixture of researchers from both universities and
research institutes, graduate students, and visitors from related
fields such as machine translation, multimedia presentation planning,
and parsing. About 65 people are expected to attend the workshop,
which traditionally has had a very diverse international
representation.
The town of Niagara-on-the-Lake is in the heart of one of Canada's
major fruit-growing and wine regions, and is 30 minutes' drive from
Niagara Falls. It is one of the oldest settlements in Canada, with
many fine examples of Victorian architecture. Niagara-on-the-Lake
bills itself as the prettiest town in Canada, and many would agree: its
main streets are quaint and picturesque, with many interesting shops,
cafes, and restaurants. It is also the home of the Shaw Festival, one
of the top North American repertory theatre companies.
The workshop is sponsored by the Association for Computational
Linguistics and ACL SIGGEN (Special Interest Group on Natural Language
Generation).
The workshop is in the week immediately prior to the joint conference
of COLING and ACL, in Montreal, Canada (10-14 August 1998). After the
workshop, a bus will take participants who wish to attend COLING / ACL
directly to the Toronto train station, for an express train to Montreal
(approximately 4 hours).
TOPICS OF INTEREST
Of interest are papers on all topics relating to the automated
production of natural language, including but not limited to: discourse
structure; grammar; lexis and lexical choice; text planning and schemas
(macroplanning); sentence planning (microplanning); semantics and
knowledge representation; register, genre, and pragmatics; generator
architecture; realization; generator applications; system descriptions;
generator evaluation; planning of text formatting; generation in
multimedia planning and presentation systems; speech synthesis.
Also welcomed are demonstrations of generation systems, or modules of
systems, running either via the Web or on a Sun computer to be provided
at the workshop.
REQUIREMENTS FOR SUBMISSION
Papers should describe unique work not published before. They should
emphasize the creative and interesting aspects of the work, but should
also describe empirical validation and testing as much as possible.
Papers that are being submitted to other conferences must state this
fact on the first page.
FORMAT FOR SUBMISSION
Theoretical papers must not exceed 10 pages, including title,
references, figures, etc. Please use no smaller than 11pt font, with
margins of 1 inch / 2.5 cm all around. Papers not satisfying the
specified length and formatting requirements will be rejected without
review.
System demonstrations will be reviewed as well. Please send an
outline, clearly marked as a system demonstration in the heading, that
describes the demonstration, including if possible screen shots.
Outlines may not exceed 4 pages, all included, using font no smaller
than 11pt and margins of 1 in / 2.5 cm all around. Outlines not
satisfying the specified length and formatting requirements will be
rejected without review.
ELECTRONIC SUBMISSION
Electronic submissions should be in the form of a PostScript file.
This file should be sent to hovy(at)isi(dot)edu, with the subject field "INLG
submission".
SUBMISSION IN HARD COPY
Hardcopy submission is possible too. Five copies of the paper or
demonstration outline should be sent to:
Eduard Hovy, INLG-98
Information Sciences Institute
4676 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695
U.S.A.
DEADLINES
Electronic submissions must be received by 28 January 1998, so that
they can be printed and checked for completeness. Electronic
submissions will be accepted only if they can be printed at ISI.
Hardcopy submissions must be received by 1 February 1998. Late papers
will be returned unreviewed.
Notification of receipt will be e-mailed to the first author (or
designated author) soon after receipt. Authors will be notified of
acceptance before 10 March 1998. Camera-ready copies of final papers
prepared in a format to be specified, preferably using a laser printer,
must be received by 15 June 1998, along with a signed copyright release
statement.
WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
The workshop is being organized by Chrysanne DiMarco of the University
of Waterloo, with the assistance of Graeme Hirst of the University of
Toronto. The Program Chair is Eduard Hovy of USC/ISI.
General workshop questions:
Chrysanne DiMarco, cdimarco(at)logos(dot)uwaterloo(dot)ca, phone +1 519 888 4443
General paper-submission questions:
Eduard Hovy, hovy(at)isi(dot)edu, phone +1 310 822 1510 x731
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Eduard Hovy, USC/ISI, Marina del Rey (chair)
Stephan Busemann, DFKI, Saarbruecken
Susan Haller, University of Wisconsin-Parkside
Helmut Horacek, University of the Saarland
Xiaorong Huang, Formal Systems, Toronto
Kristiina Jokinen, ATR, Kyoto
Guy Lapalme, University of Montreal
Elisabeth Maier, DFKI, Saarbruecken
Chris Mellish, University of Edinburgh
Marie Meteer, BBN
Jon Oberlander, University of Edinburgh
Cecile Paris, CSIRO, Sydney
Owen Rambow, CoGenTex Inc., Ithaca
Ehud Reiter, University of Aberdeen
Elke Teich, Macquarie University, Sydney
Marilyn Walker, AT&T Labs Research, Florham Park
For more information, visit the INLG-98 Website:
http://logos.uwaterloo.ca/~inlg98
Topic 10: JOB: ITRI, Brighton -- Research opportunities
From: Donia Scott <donia.scott(at)itri(dot)bton(dot)ac(dot)uk>
<http://www.itri.bton.ac.uk/posts/summer97.html>
ITRI, University of Brighton
The Information Technology Research Institute (ITRI) at the University
of Brighton, is a major centre for research in Computational Linguistics
and Language Engineering. Our principal research areas are natural
language generation, lexicons, corpora and human computer interfaces.
Our current research programme addresses the following theoretical
issues: anaphora, architectures for natural language generation,
automated interface design, constraint based reasoning, controlled
languages, corpora, diagrammatic reasoning, discourse, document design,
integrating text and graphics, lexical knowledge bases, lexical
representation, multilinguality, natural language interfaces, text
generation, underspecification, word sense disambiguation.
The Institute is comprised of around twenty staff and students: research
professors, readers, research fellows, research assistants, postgraduate
students and technical and administrative staff. We also regularly host
visiting researchers from other universities worldwide.
The Institute is housed in a self-contained brand new office suite with
excellent computing and network facilities and full administrative
support. As a dedicated research department, we place great emphasis on
career management and development, and participation in the wider
research community.
We are currently recruiting to fill up to six fixed-term research posts
over the next few months, ranging from research officers to principal
research fellows for up to three or five years in duration. A number of
PhD studentships may also be available.
If you are interested in working with us, we would be interested in
hearing from you. Please address all enquiries, enclosing a CV if
possible, to the address below. Suitable potential candidates will be
sent further information. Meanwhile, more detailed information regarding
the Institute is available on our web site.
Ms Vivienne Wicks, Research Administrator, Information Technology
Research Institute, University of Brighton, Lewes Road, Brighton, BN2
4GJ, United Kingdom.
| Tel: +44 1273 642900 | Email: admin(at)itri(dot)brighton(dot)ac(dot)uk |
| Fax: +44 1273 642908 | URL: http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/ |
Topic 11: JOB: ELRA/ELDA
From: elra-elda(at)calva(dot)net (Malin Nilsson)
===============================================
TECHNICAL ASSISTANT at ELRA/ELDA in Paris
===============================================
ELRA, the European Language Resources Association, has an immediate vacancy
for a Technical assistant for ELDA, its Paris-based distribution agency.
ELRA, a non-profit association registered in Luxembourg, was established in
1995 and receives financial support from the European Commission and
national governments to promote the development and exploitation of Language
Resources - monolingual and multilingual lexica, text corpora, speech
databases and terminology - in Europe. Enjoying strong backing from the
language engineering industry, ELRA's operations are conducted by the CEO
and his team at ELDA.
The role of the new technical assistant will be to contribute to the work of
a small support team in the development of the infrastructure for the
collection, validation, and licensing of LR and in the interactions with the
relevant players (i.e. producers, owners and users of LR who may be in the
industrial, commercial or academic world; and governmental and
non-governmental agencies), with a particular focus on textual and
terminological resources.
This position yields excellent opportunities for young, creative, and
motivated candidates wishing to participate actively in
establishing/building the European Union Language Engineering field. Terms
and conditions of employment are subject to negotiation, but will be
commensurated with the responsibilities of the post and will include
performance-based incentives. ELRA will pay relocation expenses for the
selected candidate. This is initially a one-year appointment with a strong
possibility of a further two years or permanent employment.
Qualifications:
- Excellent track record in Language Engineering and related fields.
- Technical experience in design and development of Language Engineering
solutions (preference for candidats with experience in the fields of written
text and/or terminology).
- Experience in collecting, validating, and marketing language resources,
software or other forms of intellectual property. =09
- Experience in packaging language resources for distribution using=
CD-ROM,
ftp facilities, etc.. will be a plus.
- Citizenship of, or residency papers for an EU country.
- Ability to work in at least two European languages including English.
Applicants should send a cover letter addressing the points listed above,
together with a current Curriculum Vitae, to:
ELRA Distribution Agency (ELDA), Dr. Khalid Choukri, 87, Avenue d'Italie
F-75013 Paris, France
Fax +33 1 45 86 44 88; e-mail: elra(at)calvanet(dot)calvacom(dot)fr
For more information on ELRA, see:http://www.icp.grenet.fr/ELRA/home.html
(English) or /ELRA/fr/home.html (French)
Initial applications by e-mail will be accepted with follow-up by post/fax.
eof
Issue 2
(For more information, visit http://logos.uwaterloo.ca/~inlg98 )
The 9th biennial Workshop on Natural Language Generation will be held
in the scenic town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, near Niagara Falls, in
Ontario, Canada, on 5-7 August 1998.
The INLG workshop is the principal gathering for researchers in natural
language generation, providing a pleasant atmosphere for stimulating
and informative talks on all aspects of the topic. The workshop
attracts a healthy mixture of researchers from both universities and
research institutes, graduate students, and visitors from related
fields such as machine translation, multimedia presentation planning,
and parsing. About 65 people are expected to attend the workshop,
which traditionally has had a very diverse international
representation.
The town of Niagara-on-the-Lake is in the heart of one of Canada's
major fruit-growing and wine regions, and is 30 minutes' drive from
Niagara Falls. It is one of the oldest settlements in Canada, with
many fine examples of Victorian architecture. Niagara-on-the-Lake
bills itself as the prettiest town in Canada, and many would agree: its
main streets are quaint and picturesque, with many interesting shops,
cafes, and restaurants. It is also the home of the Shaw Festival, one
of the top North American repertory theatre companies.
The workshop is sponsored by the Association for Computational
Linguistics and ACL SIGGEN (Special Interest Group on Natural Language
Generation).
The workshop is in the week immediately prior to the joint conference
of COLING and ACL, in Montreal, Canada (10-14 August 1998). After the
workshop, a bus will take participants who wish to attend COLING / ACL
directly to the Toronto train station, for an express train to Montreal
(approximately 4 hours).
TOPICS OF INTEREST
Of interest are papers on all topics relating to the automated
production of natural language, including but not limited to: discourse
structure; grammar; lexis and lexical choice; text planning and schemas
(macroplanning); sentence planning (microplanning); semantics and
knowledge representation; register, genre, and pragmatics; generator
architecture; realization; generator applications; system descriptions;
generator evaluation; planning of text formatting; generation in
multimedia planning and presentation systems; speech synthesis.
Also welcomed are demonstrations of generation systems, or modules of
systems, running either via the Web or on a Sun computer to be provided
at the workshop.
REQUIREMENTS FOR SUBMISSION
Papers should describe unique work not published before. They should
emphasize the creative and interesting aspects of the work, but should
also describe empirical validation and testing as much as possible.
Papers that are being submitted to other conferences must state this
fact on the first page.
FORMAT FOR SUBMISSION
Theoretical papers must not exceed 10 pages, including title,
references, figures, etc. Please use no smaller than 11pt font, with
margins of 1 inch / 2.5 cm all around. Papers not satisfying the
specified length and formatting requirements will be rejected without
review.
System demonstrations will be reviewed as well. Please send an
outline, clearly marked as a system demonstration in the heading, that
describes the demonstration, including if possible screen shots.
Outlines may not exceed 4 pages, all included, using font no smaller
than 11pt and margins of 1 in / 2.5 cm all around. Outlines not
satisfying the specified length and formatting requirements will be
rejected without review.
ELECTRONIC SUBMISSION
Electronic submissions should be in the form of a PostScript file.
This file should be sent to hovy@isi.edu, with the subject field "INLG
submission".
SUBMISSION IN HARD COPY
Hardcopy submission is possible too. Five copies of the paper or
demonstration outline should be sent to:
Eduard Hovy, INLG-98
Information Sciences Institute
4676 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695
U.S.A.
DEADLINES
Electronic submissions must be received by 28 January 1998, so that
they can be printed and checked for completeness. Electronic
submissions will be accepted only if they can be printed at ISI.
Hardcopy submissions must be received by 1 February 1998. Late papers
will be returned unreviewed.
Notification of receipt will be e-mailed to the first author (or
designated author) soon after receipt. Authors will be notified of
acceptance before 10 March 1998. Camera-ready copies of final papers
prepared in a format to be specified, preferably using a laser printer,
must be received by 15 June 1998, along with a signed copyright release
statement.
WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
The workshop is being organized by Chrysanne DiMarco of the University
of Waterloo, with the assistance of Graeme Hirst of the University of
Toronto. The Program Chair is Eduard Hovy of USC/ISI.
General workshop questions:
Chrysanne DiMarco, cdimarco@logos.uwaterloo.ca, phone +1 519 888 4443
General paper-submission questions:
Eduard Hovy, hovy@isi.edu, phone +1 310 822 1510 x731
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Eduard Hovy, USC/ISI, Marina del Rey (chair)
Stephan Busemann, DFKI, Saarbruecken
Susan Haller, University of Wisconsin-Parkside
Helmut Horacek, University of the Saarland
Xiaorong Huang, Formal Systems, Toronto
Kristiina Jokinen, ATR, Kyoto
Guy Lapalme, University of Montreal
Elisabeth Maier, DFKI, Saarbruecken
Chris Mellish, University of Edinburgh
Marie Meteer, BBN
Jon Oberlander, University of Edinburgh
Cecile Paris, CSIRO, Sydney
Owen Rambow, CoGenTex Inc., Ithaca
Ehud Reiter, University of Aberdeen
Elke Teich, Macquarie University, Sydney
Marilyn Walker, AT&T Labs Research, Florham Park
For more information, visit the INLG-98 Website:
http://logos.uwaterloo.ca/~inlg98
Issue 1
Date: 2 Jan 1997
TOPICS:
1. NEW! SIGGEN WEB SITE <http://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/siggen>
2. Contribute: workshop papers, thesis, siggen directory.
3. ELRA News
4. CFP: RIAO'97 Computer Assisted Information Searching On Internet
25 June 97, Montreal - Deadline March 3, 1997
<mailto:Abdellatif.Saoudi(at)irin(dot)univ-nantes(dot)fr>
5. NLP Research Positions in Sydney, Australia <rdale(at)mpce(dot)mq(dot)edu(dot)au>
6. CFP: EMNLP-2 (SIGDAT) - Deadline: March 3, 1997
August 1-2, 1997 (Immediately following AAAI-97) - Brown University
7. CFP: EUROSPEECH 97 - Deadline: 1 February 1997
Rhodes, Greece, 22-25 September 1997
8. CFP: BISFAI'97 - Deadline: February 2nd 1997
June 16-18, 1997, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Topic 1:
From: siggen(at)cs(dot)bgu(dot)ac(dot)il (Michael Elhadad)
Subject: SIGGEN Web site
Happy new year! SIGGEN is finally moving to the era of the World Wide Web.
The SIGGEN Web site is:
<http://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/siggen>
Please check it and contribute material to add there. Send me all your
comments. I have been thinking about adding a members directory. I believe
the best way is if you want to have your name and http address added there with
a short description of your interests, please mail them to me and I will
maintain the directory (until someone contributes a program to do these things
automatically).
From now on, I will add conference and workshop announcements on the Web site
and only send pointers in the newsletter (which will become much shorter).
With the new year, feel free again to contribute to this newsletter: send
questions, update on your research, paper announcements, reaction on published
papers, reviews etc.
The newsletter is sent approximately every two months. If you want to remove
your name from the list, please send email to siggen(at)cs(dot)bgu(dot)ac(dot)il.
Topic 2:
From: siggen(at)cs(dot)bgu(dot)ac(dot)il (Michael Elhadad)
Subject: Previous workshop papers
Many people have observed that many Generation papers have appeared in one of
the previous Workshops on Generation. These papers are difficult to find. We
should make every effort to make them more available. This is a call to all
authors of papers previously published in one of the Generation Workshops to
send to SIGGEN a pointer to the file(s) of the paper.
The SIGGEN Web site also contains pointers to generation resources: papers,
thesis, software. Contribute!
Topic 3:
From: elra(at)calvanet(dot)calvacom(dot)fr (Khalid Choukri)
Subject: INFORMATION FROM ELRA (European Language Resources Association)
ELRA (European Language Resources Association), was founded in Luxembourg in
February 1995, as a non-profit organization, with the goal of promoting the
creation, verification and distribution of Language Resources (LR). In addition
to helping users and developers, government agencies, and other interested
parties exploit language resources for a wide variety of use, ELRA serves as
the European repository for EU-funded language resources, and interact with
similar bodies in other parts of the world. Funded in the medium term by
membership fees, grants from the European Commission and national governments,
together with projects income, the Association will be financially
self-supporting in the long run. A 12-member Board is in charge of the strategy
and objectives to be adopted by the Association.
Relevant LR are Spoken Databases, Lexica, Grammars, Written Corpora and
Terminological Data. These are required for the development of speech and text
processing systems for a large number of applications in various information
technology areas.
ELRA licences LR for R&D, as soon as these are made available. According to the
agreements made between ELRA and its providers, resources can be either
reserved for research purposes or used for the development of products and
services. Licence agreements, drawn with the support of lawyers, are used for
negotiations. Such contracts are available at ELRA office. Lexica, Corpora
(spoken and written), Grammars and Tools are described in easy-to-understand
presentation forms. All these documents can be found on the ELRA Web site.
A Newsletter is released by ELRA every Quarter. The next three issues will
primarily and alternatively be devoted to each of the 3 Colleges of the
Association : spoken, written and terminological resources. The October
Newletter (vol.1 n.3) is already available at ELRA office. It is entirely
dedicated to Terminology. The next two issues will be dedicated to written and
spoken resources.
The ELRA Web site is now available in English and French. The URL addresses
are:
English version: <http://www.icp.grenet.fr/ELRA/home.html>
French version : <http://www.icp.grenet.fr/ELRA/fr/home.html>
A catalogue of the LR negotiated or under negotiation by ELRA can be found on
our Web site. For quotation, please refer to this site or directly to ELRA
office. A published version is released twice a year (together with number 1
and 3 of the Newsletter).
Resources appearing in the catalogue are separated according to the three
Colleges : spoken resources, written resources (corpora, lexica and tools) and
terminological resources. The catalogue consists of :
1) Spoken resources : 30 databases (recordings from microphone, telephone,
continuous speech, isolated words, several languages, etc.).
2) Written resources :
* 9 monolingual and multilingual corpora
* 12 monolingual lexica
* Over 30 multilingual lexical
* A linguistic software platform and Grammars Development platform
3) Terminological resources : over 90 databases with a wide range of domains
and several languages (French, English, German, Spanish, Danish, Italian,
Catalan, Turkish, Polish, Portuguese).
ELRA members are entitled to substantial discounts on public prices of the
resources and other products (such as the Guide for Terminology Agreements and
several commercial reports).
ELRA membership is open to any organization, public or private, with full
membership (including voting privileges) being available to organizations
registered in Europe. Purely for organizational purposes, members will be
assigned to one of the Colleges on the basis of their main area of
interest. The annual membership fee has been set at a modest ECU 1,000 to
encourage broad participation. You may also opt to join more than one College,
in which case you will be required to pay multiple membership fees.
Please ask for a membership form or download it from the ELRA Web site.
For further information :
Topic 4:
From: Abdellatif.Saoudi(at)irin(dot)univ-nantes(dot)fr (Abdellatif Saoudi)
"RIAO 97" will be the fifth conference in the series. RIAO 85 took place in
France, RIAO 88 at MIT (Cambridge MA., U.S.A.), RIAO 91 in Barcelona, Spain,
and RIAO 94 in New York. The Conference is organized by the "CENTRE DE HAUTES
ETUDES INTERNATIONALES D'INFORMATIQUE DOCUMENTAIRE" (CID) Paris.
Facing the growth of document information available throught the Internet way
(Web sites, NewsGroups or emails), it is necessary to offer new technologies,
mechanisms and systems to manage all that information. The huge amount of
information implies rapid indexing and retrieval engines, efficient datamining
and knowledge discovery systems in oder to find relevant or strategic
information. On one hand,linguistic tools are necessary when managing textual
information ; one the other hand specifics problems have to be solved regarding
the management of multimedia information : multimedia information
characterisation, search mechanisms, multimedia interfaces. Tools are also
necessary to deal with the diversity of the information source. Where is the
relevant information stored? Which are the best sources? How can heterogeneous
repositories be queried, ...? Finally, the current ways of diffusing
information such as the Internet lead to security problems that must not be
overlooked.
The purpose of this conference is to confront specialists in media contents
with specialists in Web-based searching.
More specifically, papers are expected to cover one or more of the following
topics :
A - Rapid indexing and retrieval engines, automatic abstracting
B - Evaluation of linguistic tools in information retrieval
C - Information Retrieval from several repositories
- Identification of duplicated documents in different
repositories (different languages, structures or versions),
- Unification of documents from heterogeneous repositories ;
datawarehousing,
- Interest of the use of datamining and knowledge discovery
strategies when querying large repositories,
- Evaluation of repository for a given search strategy.
D - Technology watch techniques using strategy on the Web ;
content adressable electronic mail, news group, WWW systems.
E - Architecture
- How can large data flows be exploited by information retrieval tools,
- Distributed, multi-agent architectures
F - Image
- Image content characterisation, human and automatic image description methods,
- Image search strategies
G - Sound
- Sound content characterisation,
- Automatic identification of sound type: speech, music...,
- Spoken language recognition,
- Word-spotting.
H - Content-based compression techniques
I - Multimedia interfaces : Iconic, navigational, speech interface
to web search
J - Data security problems: copyright protection, internet crime
K - Web-related international conventions and policies
IMPORTANT DATES :
| Closing date for submission: | 20 January 1997 |
| Notification of acceptance: | 10 March 1997 |
| Camera-ready copy: | 10 May 1997 |
| Conference start-date: | 25 June 1997 |
Detailed information regarding RIAO-97 can be found on the World Wide
Web Server :
http://www.sciences.univ-nantes.fr/RIAO97/
Topic 5:
From: Robert Dale <rdale(at)mpce(dot)mq(dot)edu(dot)au>
Subject: NLP Research Positions in Sydney, Australia
Are you in the northern hemisphere? Chilly, huh? Well: why not carry
out research in language technology in Sydney, Australia ...
The Microsoft Research Institute's Language Technology Group, situated
on the campus of Macquarie University in Sydney, is currently seeking
to hire two research scientists. The successful candidates will work
on a number of ongoing and new projects in the areas of natural
language processing and language engineering. We are particularly
interested in hiring people to work in the following three areas:
automatic text generation;
intelligent text processing and information extraction; and
connecting language and action.
Generally, we expect research staff to spend approximately 50% of
their time working on group projects, and 50% pursuing other research
avenues of their own devising. We are particularly interested in
candidates with previous experience in one or more of the following
areas:
corpus-based and statistical methods;
message extraction and understanding;
the use of natural language processing techniques in information
retrieval;
the design and development of dialogue systems;
text planning; and
linguistic realisation.
Applicants should have a postgraduate degree in computational
linguistics, computer science or linguistics, and competence in
several areas drawn from the following portfolio:
Computational linguistic theory: a basic understanding of parsing
techniques; a grounding in one or more syntactic theories; a
familiarity with techniques in statistical text processing; an
understanding of issues in discourse processing; an awareness
of the breadth of issues in the field; and
The ability to program (well!) in one or more of: C, C++, or Lisp.
MRI offers excellent computational facilities and the opportunity to
work in an expanding team that carries out leading-edge research in
language technology. MRI is located on the campus of Macquarie
University in North Ryde, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, one of the
world's most beautiful cities.
The positions will become available from January 1997, although actual
start dates are negotiable. The positions are open to those
considering postdoctoral positions as well as more experienced
candidates. Please send your application (including a CV and list of
publications) by email to Robert Dale (Robert.Dale(at)mq(dot)edu(dot)au) as soon
as possible and by January 1st 1997 at latest. Early indications of
interest would be useful if received by December 13th 1996. Informal
enquiries can be sent to the same address.
Find out more about MRI at <http://www.mri.mq.edu.au/ltg/>
Topic 6:
From: yarowsky(at)blaze(dot)cs(dot)jhu(dot)edu (David Yarowsky)
Subject: Call for Papers - EMNLP-2
The Association for Computational Linguistics and its
Special Interest Group SIGDAT announce the
WHEN: August 1-2, 1997 (Immediately following AAAI-97)
WHERE: Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION:
In the spirit of SIGDAT events, this conference will offer a general
forum for novel research in corpus-based and statistical natural
language processing. Areas of interest include (but are not limited
to):
- robust parsing, phrase structure analysis
- part of speech tagging
- term and name identification
- word sense disambiguation
- morphological analysis
- anaphora resolution
- event categorization
- discourse structure identification
- alignment of parallel texts and bilingual terminology
- language modelling
- lexicography
- machine translation
- spelling and grammar correction
SPECIAL SESSIONS: INFORMATION EXTRACTION and INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
In addition, we encourage submissions that describe and evaluate the
strengths, weaknesses, and recent advances in corpus-based NLP as
applied to INFORMATION EXTRACTION and INFORMATION RETRIEVAL (IR).
In recent years a number of corpus-based techniques for the automatic
linguistic annotation of text have been developed. How well do these
techniques for lexical tagging, parsing, anaphora resolution, etc.,
handle the specific problems encountered in practical language
processing tasks like information extraction and information
retrieval? When and how do current techniques fail? What new methods
have been developed to address the deficiencies of existing algorithms
for these tasks or to address problems specific to information
extraction? What problems still lack an adequate empirical solution?
How can data-driven NLP methods be used to improve the performance of
IR systems? Conversely, how can feedback from an IR system
effectively inform empirical techniques for natural language
understanding?
PROGRAM CHAIRS:
| Claire Cardie | Cornell University (chair) |
| Ralph Weischedel | BBN Systems and Technologies (co-chair) |
LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS:
| Eugene Charniak | Brown University |
SPONSOR: SIGDAT (ACL's special interest group for linguistic data and corpus-based approaches to NLP)
FORMAT FOR SUBMISSION: Authors should submit a full-length paper
(3500-8000 words) either electronically or in hardcopy. Electronic
submissions should be mailed to "cardie(at)cs(dot)cornell(dot)edu" and must
either be (a) plain ascii text, (b) a single postscript file (US
letter format), or (c) a LaTex file. In the latter case, please use
the aclsub style file and include only .EPS (encapsulated postscript)
figures. The aclsub style file is available at
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/People/cardie/emnlp/aclsub.sty or via
ftp from ftp.cs.cornell.edu/pub/cardie/emnlp/aclsub.sty. Hardcopy
submissions should be mailed to Claire Cardie (address below), and
should include six (6) copies of the paper.
REQUIREMENTS: Papers should describe original work. A paper accepted
for presentation cannot be presented or have been presented at any
other meeting. Papers submitted to other conferences will be
considered, as long as this fact is clearly indicated in the
submission.
SCHEDULE:
| Submission deadline: | March 3, 1997 |
| Notification date: | April 21, 1997 |
| Camera-ready copy due: | June 10, 1997 |
| Conference dates: | August 1-2, 1997 |
CONTACTS:
| Claire Cardie | Ralph Weischedel |
| Cornell University | BBN Systems and Technologies |
| Department of Computer Science | 70 Fawcett Street |
| 4142 Upson Hall | Cambridge, MA 02138 |
| Ithaca, NY 14850 USA | USA |
| cardie(at)cs(dot)cornell(dot)edu | weischedel(at)bbn(dot)com |
| (607)255-9206 | (617)873-3496 |
Topic 7:
From m.scordilis(at)wcl(dot)ee(dot)upatras(dot)gr Mon Dec 23 17:46:27 1996
Subject: EUROSPEECH'97 FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS
AIMS
The Fifth biennial European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology,
EUROSPEECH'97, of the European Speech Communication Association (ESCA), will be
held on the island of Rhodes, Greece, organized by the University of Patras,
Wire Communications Laboratory. Rhodes is situated in the southern Aegean Sea,
in the Mediterranean and it is famous for its natural beauty, its archeological
treasures and its highly developed tourism. ESCA is the European organization
that promotes research, development and applications in SPEECH COMMUNICATION
AND TECHNOLOGY. Host cities of the previous conferences were Paris (1989),
Genova (1991), Berlin (1993) and Madrid (1995). The upcoming conference will
include the latest developments in this field of major international
importance, presented in oral and poster sessions . Furthermore it will
include several keynote addresses by distinguished scientists. All
presentations and printed material will be in English, which is the official
language of the conference. In addition to the technical program, an exhibition
of products, services and prototypes related to Speech and Language
Communication and Technology will be held during the conference. Prospective
authors are invited to propose papers in any of the listed technical areas.
TECHNICAL AREAS
A. Speech production and perception
B. Phonetics and phonology
C. Prosody
D. Neurophysiology, psychoacoustics and psycholinguistics of speech
E. Auditory modeling
F. Speech analysis and modeling
G. Neural networks for speech and language processing
H. Robust speech processing, signal enhancement and noise reduction
I. Text-to-speech synthesis
J. Speech and audio coding and transmission
K. Speech recognition and understanding
L. Language modeling
M. Spoken dialogue systems design
N. Speaker and language recognition
O. Spoken language resources, assessment, standards and human factors
P. Multimodal speech and language processing20
Q. Technology for speech and language acquisition and learning
R. Applications for speech, language and hearing disorders and aids for
the communication impaired
S. Speech and language engineering for the telecommunications
T. Systems, hardware and architectures for speech processing
U. Applications of speech technology
V. Other related areas or emerging techniques and applications
SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS
Abstracts of original, not elsewhere published papers may be submitted either
by post (four copies must be submitted) or by e-mail in postcript or ascii
format only. They must be received no later than 1 February 1997 together with
the completed EUROSPEECH'97 Abstracts Cover Form given below. Abstracts should
not exceed two A4 pages (including figures and references). All submissions
will be acknowledged. E-mail abstracts will be acknowledged within 24 hours. If
they are not acknowledged, please check the e-mail address and resubmit. All
abstracts will be refereed by the Scientific Programme Committee. Submission of
an abstract implies a commitment to present the paper if accepted.
ABSTRACTS SUBMISSION ADDRESS:
EUROSPEECH'97
Wire Communications Laboratory
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Patras
26110 Rion, Patras, GREECE
E-mail: Abstracts-EURO97(at)wcl(dot)ee(dot)upatras(dot)gr
SPECIAL SESSIONS
EUROSPEECH'97 will include a Special Session on "Education for Language &
Speech Communication Sciences", which aims to address educational issues of
Phonetics, Spoken Language Engineering, Speech and Language Therapy, Computer
assisted learning (CAL) and the use of internet. Abstracts submitted for this
session must be indicated in the space provided in the Abstracts Cover
Form. For more information please contact:
| Gerrit Bloothooft | 20 |
Research Institute for Language and Speech (OTS)
Trans 10, 3512 JK Utrecht, The Netherlands
Phone: +31.30.2536042
Fax: +31.30.2536000
Email: Gerrit.Bloothooft(at)let(dot)ruu(dot)nl
SCHEDULE
| Submission of abstracts | To be received by | 1 February 1997 |
| Notification of acceptance | To be mailed out by | 1 April 1997 |
| Submission of photo-ready papers | To be received by | 20 May 1997 |
SATELLITE EVENTS
ESCA WORKSHOP ON INTONATION, 18-20 September 1997, at Athens, Greece.
Information contact: Antonis Botinis
Tel: +30 1 7211119
Fax: +30 1 7228981
E-mail: tonesca(at)di(dot)uoa(dot)gr
WWW server: http://www.di.uoa.gr/esca
EU SPEECH PROJECTS DAY, Monday, 22 September 1997, 9:00-13:00,
Convention Centre, Rodos Palace Hotel, Rhodes, Greece.
Information contact: Giovanni Battista Varile
European Commission, DG XIII E5 - Language Engineering
Tel: +352 430 132 867 Fax: +352 430 134 999 E-mail: Giovanni.Varile(at)lux(dot)dg13(dot)cec(dot)be
COCOSDA WORKSHOP'97 (The International Coordinating Committee for Speech
Databases and Speech I/O Systems Assessment), Friday, 26 September 1997,
9:00-13:00, Convention Centre, Rodos Palace Hotel.
Information contact: Mark Liberman
University of Pennsylvania
Tel: +1 215 898 0464 Fax: +1 215 573 2175
E-mail: myl(at)unagi(dot)cis(dot)upenn(dot)edu
European Tutorial & Research Workshop on AUDIO-VISUAL SPEECH PROCESSING:
Computational & Cognitive Science Approaches, 27-28 September 1997,
Centre, Rodos Palace Hotel, Rhodes (Greece).
Information contact: Christian BENOIT
Institut de la Communication Parlee, UPRESA CNRS No 5009, Universite
Stendhal,20
BP 25 X, F38040 Grenoble Cedex 9, FRANCE
Tel: (+33).4.76.82.43.36 Fax: (+33).4.76.82.43.35
E-mail: benoit(at)icp(dot)grenet(dot)fr
Web page: http://ophale.icp.grenet.fr/
COST WORKSHOP (Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical
research), 26-27 September 1997, Athens, Greece. Information contacts:
COST 249 COST 250
Continuous Speech Recognition Speaker Recognition in Telephony
| Jean Pierre Martens | Andrea Paoloni |
| Tel: +32 91 264 3395 | Tel: +39 6 5480 3351 |
| Fax: +32 91 264 3594 | Fax: +39 6 5480 4405 |
| E-mail: martens(at)elis(dot)rug(dot)ac(dot)be | E-mail: pao(at)fub(dot)it |
WEB-SITE
The Call for Papers, Call for Exhibitors and Sponsors, all necessary
forms, and continuously updated information about the Conference, as
well as about Greece and Rhodes, can be found at our web site at:
Topic 8:
From: Leo Joskowicz <josko(at)cs(dot)huji(dot)ac(dot)il>
Subject: BISFAI'97
The focus of BISFAI '97 will be on Intelligent Agents. The Symposium will,
however, retain its broad scope, and welcomes high quality research papers
in various areas of Artificial Intelligence, including machine learning,
automated reasoning, knowledge representation, neural nets, natural
language processing, etc.
The concept of an agent has become important in both artificial
intelligence and mainstream computer science. An agent is a hardware or
software system that is automonous, interactive with and reactive to its
environment and other agents. An agent can also be pro-active in taking the
initiative in goal-directed behaviour.
We solicit papers in all areas of Artificial Intelligence, and in
particular in the area of Intelligent Agents. Agents have a clear and
growing importance, both practical and theoretical. Because of their
commercial relevance, we encourage practitioners from industry to submit
papers dealing with various practical aspects.
Distinguished Invited Speakers (tentative):
| C. Boutilier | (U. of British Columbia) |
| V. Lesser | (U. of Massachusetts) |
| J. Rosenschein | (Hebrew U.) |
| G. Shafer | (Rutgers U.) |
| Y. Shoham | (Stanford U.) |
| P. Struss | (Technical University of Munich) |
| W. Wahlster | (DFKI GmbH) |
THE 1997 ISRAELI FEDERATED COMPUTING CONFERENCE: The Symposium will be part
of the new Israeli Federated Computing Conference (IFCC). For contact
points on this conference, see below). The IFCC will also include the
Eighth Israeli Conference on Computer-Based Systems and Software
Engineering (CBSE), which will take place on June 18-19, 1997, and the
Fifth Israeli Symposium on Theory of Computing and Systems (ISTCS'97),
which will take place on June 17-19, 1997.
Paper Submission: Submit three hard copies of an extended abstract (4-10
pages), or full paper, by February 2nd 1997, to
Leo Joskowicz
Institute of Computer Science
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Givat Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel
E-mail: josko(at)cs(dot)huji(dot)ac(dot)il
Authors will be notified of acceptance by 20th March 1997. A final version
of the accepted will appear in the conference preprints, which will be
distributed to participants at the symposium. Selected refereed full
length papers will be published in a special issue of the Annals of
Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence as a permanent record of the
Symposium. These should be submitted shortly after the conclusion of the
Symposium.
Information on registration, accommodations, etc., will appear in future
announcements, or contact: bisfai(at)cs(dot)biu(dot)ac(dot)il.
The web page site is:
<http://www.cs.biu.ac.il:8080/~schwart/bisfai97.html>
| Symposium Chair | |
| S. Kraus | (Bar-Ilan U.) |
| Program Co-Chairs | |
| D. Lehmann | (Hebrew U.) |
| L. Joskowicz | (Hebrew U.) |
eof
1996
Issue 7
Date: 19 Nov 1996
TOPICS:
1. CFP AI-ED 97 Kobe, Japan. Deadline January 23rd 1997 (partial)
2. Call for Participation KBCS - Bombay, India. Dec 16-18 1996 (partial)
3. Subject: UM97 CFP - Deadline Nov 25 1996 (full)
Topic 1:
From: miz(at)ei(dot)sanken(dot)osaka-u(dot)ac(dot)jp (Riichiro MIZOGUCHI)
Subject: CFP AI-ED 97 Kobe, Japan. Deadline January 23rd 1997
NOTE: Full call for paper on the Web.
CALL FOR PAPERS
A I - E D 9 7
8TH WORLD CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN EDUCATION
--- Knowledge and Media in Learning Systems ---
19th - 22nd August, 1997
Kobe International Conference Center, JAPAN
URL: http://www.ei.sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp/aied97/cfp.html
Co-Sponsored by:
Artificial Intelligence in Education Society(AI-ED) and
Japanese Society for Information and Systems in Education(JSISE)
In Cooperation with:
Asia-Pacific Chapter of the AACE
Japanese Association for Artificial Intelligence
The 8th World Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education
(AI-ED 97) is one of a series of international conferences designed to
report the best research in the field of AI in Education and to
provide opportunities for the cross-fertilisation of information and
ideas on research and applications in this field.
The theme for 1997 will be Knowledge and Media in Learning Systems,
and papers that explore the emerging roles of intelligent multimedia
and distributed technologies as well as computer supported
collaboration within that theme will be particularly welcome.
You are invited to submit proposals for research papers, survey papers,
themed papers, posters, tutorials, workshops, and panels.
All proposals will be reviewed for inclusion in the technical program.
Scope
The technical program focuses on research activities linking
Artificial Intelligence theories and techniques with Educational
theory and practice. Areas of interest include but are not limited to:
Agents
Architectures
Authoring systems and tutoring shells
Case-based systems
Cognitive development
Cognitive diagnosis
Collaboration and collaborative tools
Computer-assisted language learning
Conceptual change
Educational robotics
Evaluation of instructional systems
Human factors and interface design
Intelligent multimedia and hypermedia systems
Intelligent tutoring systems
Knowledge and skill acquisition
Knowledge representation for instruction
Learning environments and microworlds
Modelling pedagogical interactions
Motivation
Natural language interfaces
Networked learning and teaching systems
Non-standard and innovative interfaces
Principles and tools for instructional design
Social and cultural aspects of learning
Student modelling
Higher-order thinking skills and metacognition
Theories of teaching
Visual and graphical interfaces
+In addition to RESEARCH papers and posters in the above areas, SURVEY
papers will also be accepted. A survey paper will offer a coherent and
critical summary of achievements and outstanding problems in an area.
+To provoke debate and reflection, THEME papers are also sought under
the specific title "Knowledge and Media in Learning Systems - the next
15 years".
+Exhibits are expected to be an integral part of the AI-ED 97
conference. Companies or institutions offering to exhibit AI-ED
products are invited.
Topic 2:
From: KBCS Word Processing <kbcs(at)cs(dot)uni-sb(dot)de
PAPERS AND POSTERS
| Monday, | Receipt by e-mail of abstracts and |
| 25 November 1996 | author information |
| Monday, | Receipt of electronic submissions |
| 2 December 1996 | (optional) |
| Tuesday, | E-mail notification to authors if the |
| 3 December 1996 | requirement of hard-copy submission is waived |
| Friday, | Receipt of 5 hard copies of each |
| 6 December 1996 | manuscript (except where the hard-copy requirement was waived on 3 December) |
| Wednesday, | Notification of authors by e-mail about |
| 26 February 1997 | acceptance or rejection of submissions |
| Monday, | Receipt of electronic versions of |
| 31 March 1997 | camera-ready papers and summaries of posters |
DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM
| Wednesday, | Receipt by e-mail of 3-page submissions |
| 5 February 1997 | as ASCII text |
| Wednesday, | Notification to authors by e-mail about |
| 5 March 1997 | acceptance or rejection of submissions |
| Monday, | Receipt of electronic versions of |
| 31 March 1997 | camera-ready summaries of presentations |
WORKSHOPS
| Monday, | Receipt by e-mail of 3-page workshop | |
| 20 January 1997 | proposals as ASCII text | |
| Friday, | Notification by e-mail to workshop | |
| 14 February 1997 | proposers about acceptance or rejection of proposals | |
| Friday, | Submission, by proposers of accepted | |
| 21 February 1997 | workshops, of final calls for participation | |
| Tuesday, | Availability via the UM97 Web site | |
| 25 February 1997 | and by e-mail of calls for participation in workshops |
SYSTEM DEMONSTRATIONS
| Tuesday, | Registration of system demonstrations |
| 15 April 1997 | by e-mail |
As a potential author, you may now be wondering whether to
write up your work for UM97 or for a journal or another conference.
Here are some points to bear in mind:
1. A paper that appears in the proceedings will have the status of a
peer-reviewed publication in an internationally distributed
edited volume, which will be published by SpringerWien-New York.
2. As an additional means of ensuring accessibility of the
proceedings, electronic versions of the papers will remain
available on the World Wide Web site of User Modeling, Inc.
for a long time after the conference.
3. Publication in the proceedings volume can be viewed as a
step along the way to the production of a major journal article
about your research. The deadline will encourage you to produce
an initial version; the comments of the members of the international
program committee will help you to improve it; and the feedback
that you get on the final conference paper will help you to
produce a strong full journal manuscript. Journal editors will
not in general be bothered by the fact that a related
conference-length paper has been published, as long as your
journal submission is sufficiently longer, more detailed, and
otherwise expanded relative to the conference paper. (The journal
"User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction" is already reserving
space for articles of this sort.)
4. Experience with previous conferences in the UM series has
shown that they provide an exceptionally good environment for
exchanging ideas and making new contacts. There is a sharp
contrast with broader conferences, at which it is often hard to
find someone who is interested in the same topics as you are.
5. Finally, people who have visited Sardinia often claim that
it is one of the most beautiful places the world. There is
nothing wrong with enjoying this beauty for a few days before or
after UM97.
eof
Issue 6
Date: 20 Oct 1996
TOPICS:
1. E W N L G - 9 7 6th European Workshop on Natural Language Generation
DEADLINE NOV 15 1996!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2. Post in Computational Linguistics, Stirling <jld1(at)stir(dot)ac(dot)uk>
3. Practical Human-computer conversation 1997 <yorick(at)dcs(dot)shef(dot)ac(dot)uk>
Topic 1:
From: he232ho(at)rs1-hrz(dot)uni-duisburg(dot)de (Wolfgang Hoeppner)
Subject: EWNLG-97
CALL FOR PAPERS
E W N L G - 9 7
6th European Workshop on
Natural Language Generation
March 24 - 26, 1997
Gerhard-Mercator University, Duisburg, Germany
The workshop aims to bring together researchers interested in Natural
Language Generation from such different perspectives as Linguistics,
Artificial Intelligence, Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Engineering.
The meeting continues the tradition of a series of workshops held
biannually in Europe (Royaumont, 1987; Edinburgh, 1989; Judenstein,
1991; Pisa, 1993; and Leiden, 1995) but it is open to researchers from
all over the world.
Program Committee:
Stephan Busemann, Saarbruecken
Alison Cawsey, Edinburgh
Robert Dale, Sydney
Wolfgang Hoeppner, Duisburg (chair)
Richard Kittredge, Montreal
Stephan Mehl, Duisburg
Koenrad deSmedt, Bergen
Michael Zock, Paris
Papers, posters and demonstrations are invited on original and
substantial work related to the automatic generation of natural
language, including computational linguistics research, artificial
intelligence methods, computer models of human language processing,
empirical research, and the development and evaluation of applied
systems. Contributions on all aspects of natural language generation are
welcome, but the special theme of this workshop will be
'System Architectures for Text Generation'.
This topic comprises a variety of more specific questions, e.g. planning
and/or schemata, pragmatic impact on content selection and form
determination, serial or incremental processing, macro-planning and
micro-planning.
To encourage a workshop atmosphere while allowing a relatively large
number of people to participate, selected papers will be given large time
slots including ample discussion time; other papers will be grouped for
shorter presentations and mutual interaction, and there will be sessions
for posters and computer demonstrations.
Submissions:
Researchers wishing to present a PAPER are requested to submit three
copies of an original unpublished article (10 pages). To allow for
anonymous reviewing the name(s) and complete adress(es) of the
author(s) have to be provided on a separate sheet. We would appreciate
that you additionally send an electronic version of the paper (email or
diskette).
Researchers wishing to present a POSTER are invited to submit three
copies of a reduced version of their poster on 4 normal pages that
together form an A2 size sheet. Use a normal character size. As with
papers any personal information about the author(s) should appear on a
separate sheet.
Researchers wishing to demonstrate a computer PROGRAM are invited to
send three copies of a short description of their program together with
some examples of input and output and hardware requirements. Please
include the name(s) and complete address(es) of the author(s) in the
description.
All contributions must be sent BEFORE NOVEMBER 15, 1996 to the
Program Chairman at the following address:
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hoeppner
Gerhard-Mercator University, Duisburg
FB3 * Computational Linguistics
D-47048 Duisburg, Germany
Tel.: +49 203 379-2006/2008
email: hoeppner(at)unidui(dot)uni-duisburg(dot)de
Internet: http://verdi.uni-duisburg.de/EWNLG-96.html
Authors will be notified about acceptance or rejection by January 17, 1997.
Local arrangements:
Local arrangements are handled by: Wolfgang Hoeppner and Stephan
Mehl (University of Duisburg).
The meeting will be held from the morning of Monday March 24, 1997
through afternoon on Wednesday 26, in 'Die Wolfsburg' situated in the
municipal forest of Duisburg. This conference site congresses and
workshops from all scientific areas and is equipped with excellent
presentation facilities and modern guest rooms.
The cost of the workshop to each participant is currently estimated at
about DM 500 including accommodation and meals, but the participants'
fee may turn out to be lower depending on funding. The workshop will
also be open to a limited number of participants not contributing a
paper, poster or demo. A call for participation including more
information and a registration form will be sent out later as soon as the
program has been put together.
Please direct any inquiries to the adress above.
---------->------->----->--->->>> <<<-<---<-----<-------<----------
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hoeppner *********
Gerhard-Mercator-Universitaet Duisburg *======*
Fachbereich 3 * Computerlinguistik *====*
D-47048 Duisburg *==*
*
Tel.: (0203) 379-2006/2008
email: hoeppner(at)unidui(dot)uni-duisburg(dot)de
internet: http://verdi.uni-duisburg.de/hoeppner.html
or: http://verdi.uni-duisburg.de/Englisch/hoeppner.html
---------->------->----->--->->>> <<<-<---<-----<-------<----------
Topic 2:
From: Dr Judy L Delin <jld1(at)stir(dot)ac(dot)uk>
Subject: Post in Computational Linguistics, Stirling
Lectureship in Computational and Descriptive Linguistics
University of Stirling, Scotland
The University wishes to expand its growing activity in descriptive and
computational linguistics by appointing a Lecturer to work alongside Dr.
Judy Delin in the Department of English Studies.
We are looking for an established researcher in the field who will invest in
the development of research and teaching at Stirling, with expertise in
discourse, pragmatics, contrastive text analysis, natural language
generation, and/or speech generation. Experience or an interest in
contrastive text analysis in languages other than English, especially
Japanese, would be particularly desirable. The level of the appointment
reflects our expectation that the new person will be able to generate
external research funds and will have initiative in developing
collaborative research within and outside the group. The post will be
research-led, but the ideal candidate would also be able to help develop
future undergraduate and postgraduate teaching modules in linguistics
and computational linguistics. Future teaching and our research
development will also require expertise in programming for NLP.
Stirling is a small University situated in what is perhaps the most
beautiful campus in the U.K., and within easy reach of Edinburgh and
Glasgow. The accommodation is modern and well-equipped (networked,
Unix workstation or other platform if preferred). The Lecturer will be part
of the Language and Communication Research Group, an interdisciplinary
group that includes researchers from Psychology, Education, English
Studies, Japanese Studies, and the Centre for English Language
Teaching. Initiative in establishing further cross-disciplinary links will be
particularly encouraged.
The post would be for two years in the first instance with good prospects of
renewal. The appointment will be on the Lecturer B Scale, L. 20677 to
L. 26430 a year, with placement according to qualifications, experience,
and potential. Starting date is negotiable, although we hope that the new
Lecturer will be with us by January 1997.
Informal enquiries are welcome: please contact Dr Judy Delin on(+44) (0)
1786 467974, email: jld1(at)stir(dot)ac(dot)uk, or consult the Web page at
http://www.stir.ac.uk/english/Communication/post.html. Anyone sending
email or making an enquiry will be informed of the official closing date,
which is likely to be during September 1996, and will be sent a copy of
the further particulars for the post once this date is finalised with
our Staff Office.
Dr Judy Delin
Department of English Studies/Language and Communication Research Group
University of Stirling
Stirling FK9 4LA
Scotland
Tel: (+44) (0) 1786 467974
Fax: (+44) (0) 1786 466201
email: jld1(at)stir(dot)ac(dot)uk
URL: http://www.stir.ac.uk/english/Communication/post.html
Topic 3:
From: Yorick Wilks <yorick(at)dcs(dot)shef(dot)ac(dot)uk>
Subject: Practical Human-computer conversation by Lake Como 1997
CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST: PLEASE RECIRCULATE THIS WIDELY
1st INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON HUMAN-COMPUTER CONVERSATION
Bellagio, Italy, 14-16 July, 1997
We are seeking expressions of interest before formally
announcing a rather different kind of workshop: one that
will survey and demonstrate techniques for practical,
plausible, human computer conversation. The workshop would
be in the spirit of the Loebner Competition meetings, but
would not constitute any kind of "Turing" competition
under controlled deception conditions, but would, we hope,
give opportunity for extensive demonstrations of
working conversational systems, preferably without domain
restrictions.
As well as practical demonstrations we would hope for papers
and discussions on How-To-Do-It: including abstract
discussions of the computer individual as well as reports of
practical experiences of using the large resources and knowledge data
bases now available through forms of information retrieval
and natural language processing and their impact (together
with fast access techniques) on high-quality conversation
simulations. The meeting is not intended to be yet another
get together on linguistic methods for dialogue modelling
or human-computer interaction, but rather based on the
assumption that, in a range of places, great strides are
actually being made in real conversation simulations from
practical techniques and points of view, and that all would
benefit from face-to-face interaction on this, as well as
exploring the industrial/commercial applications of these
technologies in HCI/WWW environments in the very near
future.
The proposed site is the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni,
in Bellagio, Italy, on Lake Como, the
legendary site of Pliny's villa where the two arms of the
lake meet, and one of the most beautiful spots in the world,
though easily reached from Milan. The date, 14-16 July 1997,
immediately follows the EACL/ACL in Madrid.
Working system demonstrations
would be central, and there would also be a range of panels
on aspects of the state of the art.
Interest is solicited by email at the address below from anyone
with new ideas, results or ongoing work to report on any aspect of
human-computer conversation, or those with an interest in or commitment
to the exploitation of this technology.
The emphasis should be on the software techniques for
communication in natural language and NOT on speech recognition
or speech synthesis. Given sufficient interest
a committee will be established and conditions for submission
announced before the end of November 1996. Please put
Serbelloni in the message line of your email. Updatings of
developments for this workshop will be posted to:
http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/research/ilash/Meetings/Bellagio/
*********************************
Professor Yorick Wilks
AI and NN Research Group,
Department of Computer Science
University of Sheffield
Regent Court
211 Portobello St.,
Sheffield S1 4DP
UK
phone: (44) 114 282 5561
fax: (44) 114 278 0972
email: yorick(at)dcs(dot)shef(dot)ac(dot)uk
www: http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/People/Y.Wilks
*********************************
eof
Issue 5
Date: 07 Jul 1996
————————
======================================================================
TOPICS:
1. User Modeling Conference 1st CFP - <Cecile.Paris@itri(dot)brighton(dot)ac(dot)uk>
2. Generation thesis available - Lexical Semantics and Knowledge
Representation in Multilingual Sentence Generation - <stede@cs(dot)tu-berlin(dot)de>
3. Call for Participants - TALC96 - TEACHING AND LANGUAGE CORPORA
Lancaster University, UK, 9th-12th August, 1996 - <spb@comp(dot)lancs(dot)ac(dot)uk>
4. 2nd CFP - International Conference on Knowledge Based Computer Systems
Bombay, India - December 16-18, 1996 - Deadline Aug 15, 1996 - <kbcs@konark(dot)ncst(dot)ernet(dot)in>
======================================================================
Topic 1:
Subject: UM97: FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS
Date: June 2-5 1997 - Deadline 25 November 1996
From: Cecile Paris <Cecile.Paris@itri(dot)brighton(dot)ac(dot)uk>
Contents:
Background
Conference Topics
Conference Organization
Brief Submission Instructions
Contact Addresses
Important Dates
————————————— BACKGROUND ——————————————
User modeling has been found to enhance the effectiveness
and/or usability of software systems in a wide variety of
situations. A user model is an explicit representation of
properties of a particular user. A system that constructs and
consults user models can adapt diverse aspects of its performance
to individual users.
Techniques for user modeling have been developed and evaluated
by researchers in a number of fields, including artificial
intelligence, education, psychology, linguistics, human-computer
interaction, and information science.
The International Conferences on User Modeling provide a forum
in which academic and industrial researchers from all of these
fields can exchange their complementary insights on user modeling
issues. The size and format of the meetings support intensive
discussion, which often continues long after the conference has
ended.
UM97 follows the Fourth and Fifth International Conferences on
User Modeling, which took place in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in
August 1994 and Kailua-Kona, Hawaii in January 1996,
respectively. UM97 will include tutorials, invited talks, paper
and poster sessions, a doctoral consortium, workshops, and system
demonstrations.
Accepted papers, as well as summaries of other conference
contributions, will be published in a proceedings volume.
Information about the form of this publication will be made
available via the conference World Wide Web site. The Web site
will also provide access to electronic versions of contributions
to the conference.
The journal "User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction" is
reserving space for expanded versions of the best papers of UM97.
A $500 Best Paper Award is being sponsored by Kluwer Academic
Publishers.
UM97 is being sponsored by AI*IA, the Italian Association for
Artificial Intelligence.
——————————— CONFERENCE TOPICS ————————————
The following nonexhaustive list gives some examples of topics
that are relevant to UM97:
Construction of models of users' ...
* knowledge, beliefs, and misconceptions,
* preferences,
* goals and plans,
* typical behaviors,
* cognitive styles, ....
Exploitation of user models to achieve ...
* adaptive information filtering and retrieval,
* tailored information presentation,
* transfer of task performance from user to system,
* selection of instructional interventions,
* interface adaptation, ....
Inference techniques involving ...
* neural networks,
* psychometric methods,
* numerical uncertainty management,
* epistemic logic or other logic-based formalisms,
* default reasoning and truth maintenance,
* stereotype hierarchies, ....
Practical issues of ...
* privacy and user model inspectability,
* user model consistency,
* empirical evaluation,
* standardization of user modeling shell systems, ....
Systems for adaptive ...
* tutoring and provision of learning environments,
* explanation of system actions,
* on-line aiding,
* hypermedia and multimodal interaction,
* knowledge-based presentation design,
* product presentation,
* information management on the Internet,
* support of end-user programming,
* accommodation of users with special needs,
* support of collaboration, ....
—————————— CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION ——————————
| General Chair: | |
| Carlo Tasso | University of Udine, Italy |
| Organizing Chair: | |
| Alessandro Micarelli | University of Rome 3, Italy |
| Program Co-Chairs: | |
| Anthony Jameson | University of Saarbruecken, Germany |
| Cecile Paris | University of Brighton, UK |
| Program Committee: | |
| Nicholas J. Belkin | Rutgers University, USA |
| Beatrice Cahour | CNRS Rouen, France |
| Sandra Carberry | University of Delaware, USA |
| Albert Corbett | Carnegie Mellon University, USA |
| Fiorella de Rosis | University of Bari, Italy |
| Oren Etzioni | University of Washington, USA |
| Gerhard Fischer | University of Colorado, Boulder, USA |
| Helen M. Gigley | Office of Naval Research, USA |
| Brad Goodman | The MITRE Corporation, USA |
| Eric Horvitz | Microsoft Research, USA |
| Judy Kay | Sydney University, Australia |
| Alfred Kobsa | GMD FIT, Germany |
| Diane Litman | AT&T Research, USA |
| Pattie Maes | MIT Media Lab, USA |
| Uwe Malinowski | Siemens Corporate R&D, Germany |
| Gordon McCalla | University of Saskatchewan, Canada |
| Michael McTear | University of Ulster, UK |
| Alessandro Micarelli | University of Rome 3, Italy |
| Robert J. Mislevy | Educational Testing Service, USA |
| Riichiro Mizoguchi | Osaka University, Japan |
| Edie M. Rasmussen | University of Pittsburgh, USA |
| John Self | University of Leeds, UK |
| Julita Vassileva | Federal Armed Forces Univ., Germany |
| Wolfgang Wahlster | DFKI, Germany |
| Geoff Webb | Deakin University, Australia |
| Ingrid Zukerman | Monash University, Australia |
| Doctoral Consortium Organizers: | |
| Nadja De Carolis | University of Bari, Italy |
| Fiorella de Rosis | University of Bari, Italy |
| Workshop Coordinator: | |
| Christoph G. Thomas | GMD FIT, Germany |
| Demonstration Organizer: | |
| Giorgio Brajnik | University of Udine, Italy |
UM97 is being organized jointly by the Department of
Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Udine, the
Department of Scientific Disciplines of the University of Rome 3,
the Department of Informatics of the University of Bari, and CRS4
(Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in
Sardinia), under the auspices of User Modeling, Inc.
———————— BRIEF SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS —————————
PAPERS AND POSTERS
Submissions are invited that describe original academic or
industrial research on some aspect of user modeling.
Papers should describe significant, mature research; they will
be published in full length in the proceedings and presented in
talks at the conference.
Posters typically describe research which does not yet
represent a substantial advance but which can stimulate the
exchange of ideas. Summaries of posters will be included in the
proceedings.
The timetable and the length requirements for poster and paper
submissions are the same. Submissions to the poster category may
make more use of graphics and tables than is usual for paper
submissions, but they must be self-explanatory. If the authors do
not indicate a preference for the paper or poster category, the
program committee will judge which category is more appropriate.
Submissions must fit within 12 single-spaced pages printed with
a 12-point font. These 12 pages must include all elements of the
submission. Page 1 must include the title of the paper, a short
abstract (150 words), a list of keywords, and the authors' postal
and e-mail addresses and fax and phone numbers. The abstract and
the author information on Page 1 must also be included in an
e-mail message that is sent to the program co-chairs one week
before the submission of the manuscript.
A manuscript can be submitted either electronically (as a
PostScript file) or as hard copy. Details of the procedure for
electronic submission will be found in the full submission
instructions for UM97, which authors can obtain via the
conference Web site or by e-mail from the program co-chairs.
All authors should obtain these full submission instructions,
which will also contain information about style files designed to
facilitate manuscript preparation and general tips on how to
maximize the likelihood of acceptance.
DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM
The doctoral consortium will offer PhD students a chance to
discuss their plans and the intermediate results of their
research with a diverse and knowledgeable international audience.
Summaries of the accepted presentations will be included in the
proceedings volume.
Further information on the doctoral symposium, including
information about possible sources of funding, can be obtained
via the UM97 Web site and by e-mail from the doctoral consortium
organizers.
WORKSHOPS
Half-day workshops will permit discussion and debate on topics
of current interest. The format for each workshop will be
determined by the proposer of that workshop, who will also set
any necessary deadlines for participants. Before submitting a
proposal, each proposer should obtain instructions and advice via
the conference Web site and/or by e-mail from the UM97 workshop
coordinator.
SYSTEM DEMONSTRATIONS
Various platforms will be available for unrefereed system
demonstrations. Prospective presenters should contact the
demonstration organizer by e-mail and specify their hardware and
software requirements.
——————————— CONTACT ADDRESSES ————————————
Up-to-date conference information and detailed submission
instructions can be obtained via either of the following World
Wide Web sites:
http://www.cs.uni-sb.de/UM97/ (site in Germany) or
http://www.crs4.it/UM97/ (site in Sardinia)
The following addresses can be used for queries and (where
applicable) for submissions:
ORGANIZING CHAIR
um97-organization@cs.uni-sb.de
Fax: Alessandro Micarelli, +39-6-5573030
PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS:
um97-papers@cs.uni-sb.de
Hard-copy submissions:
Anthony Jameson
Department of Computer Science
University of Saarbruecken
Stuhlsatzenhausweg, Building 36.1
66125 Saarbruecken, Germany
Phone: +49-681-302-2474
DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM ORGANIZERS
um97-doctoral@cs.uni-sb.de
WORKSHOP COORDINATOR
um97-workshops@cs.uni-sb.de
DEMONSTRATION ORGANIZER
um97-demos@cs.uni-sb.de
———————————— IMPORTANT DATES ————————————
| PAPERS AND POSTERS | |
| Monday, | Receipt by e-mail of abstracts and |
| 25 November 1996 | author information |
| Monday, | Receipt of electronic submissions |
| 2 December 1996 | (optional) |
| Tuesday, | E-mail notification to authors if the |
| 3 December 1996 | requirement of hard-copy submission is waived |
| Friday, | Receipt of 5 hard copies of each |
| 6 December 1996 | manuscript (except where the hard-copy requirement was waived on 3 December) |
| Wednesday, | Notification of authors by e-mail about |
| 26 February 1997 | acceptance or rejection of submissions |
| Monday, | Receipt of electronic versions of |
| 31 March 1997 | camera-ready papers and summaries of posters |
| DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM | |
| Wednesday, | Receipt by e-mail of 3-page submissions |
| 5 February 1997 | as ASCII text |
| Wednesday, | Notification to authors by e-mail about |
| 5 March 1997 | acceptance or rejection of submissions |
| Monday, | Receipt of electronic versions of |
| 31 March 1997 | camera-ready summaries of presentations |
| WORKSHOPS | |
| Monday, | Receipt by e-mail of 3-page workshop |
| 20 January 1997 | proposals as ASCII text |
| Friday, | Notification by e-mail to workshop |
| 14 February 1997 | proposers about acceptance or rejection of proposals |
| Friday, | Submission, by proposers of accepted |
| 21 February 1997 | workshops, of final calls for participation |
| Tuesday, | Availability via the UM97 Web site |
| 25 February 1997 | and by e-mail of calls for participation in workshops |
| SYSTEM DEMONSTRATIONS | |
| Tuesday, | Registration of system demonstrations |
| 15 April 1997 | by e-mail |
======================================================================
Topic 2:
Subject: Generation thesis available
Date: 20 June 1996
From: Manfred Stede <stede@cs.tu-berlin.de>
Manfred Stede: Lexical semantics and knowledge representation in
multilingual sentence generation.
University of Toronto, Dept. of Computer Science, 1996.
This thesis develops a new approach to automatic language generation
that focuses on the need to produce a range of different {\em
paraphrases} from the same input representation. One feature of the
system is its solidly grounding representations of word meaning in a
background knowledge base, which enables the production of paraphrases
stemming from certain inferences, rather than from purely lexical
relationships alone.
The system is designed in such a way that the paraphrasing mechanism
extends naturally to a {\em multilingual} generator; specifically, we
will be concerned with producing English and German sentences. The
focus of the system is on {\em lexical} paraphrases, and one of the
contributions of the thesis is in identifying, analyzing and extending
relevant linguistic research so that it can be used to handle the
problems of lexical semantics in a language generation system. The
{\em lexical entries} are more complex than in previous generators,
and they separate the various aspects of word meaning, so that
different ways of paraphrasing can be systematically related to the
different motivations for saying a sentence in a particular way. One
result of accounting for lexical semantics in this fashion is a
formalization of a number of {\em verb alternations}, for which a
generative treatment is given.
While the actual {\em choice} of one paraphrase as the best-suited utterance
in a given situation is not a focal point of the thesis, two dimensions
of {\em preferring} a variant of a sentence are discussed: that of
assigning {\em salience} to the different elements of the sentence, and
that of {\em connotational} or {\em stylistic} features of the utterance.
These dimensions are integrated into the system, and it can thus
determine a preferred paraphrase from a set of alternatives.
To demonstrate the feasibility of the approach, the proposed
generation architecture has been implemented as a protoype, along with a
domain model that serves as the background knowledge base for specifying
the input to the generator. A range of generated examples is presented
to show the functionality of the system.
> If interested in either a hardcopy or a postscript file, please
> contact the author at stede@cs.tu-berlin.de
======================================================================
Topic 3:
Subject: Call for Participants TALC96 - Teaching and Language Corpora
Date: Lanncaster University, UK, 9th-12th August, 1996
From: "Mr S P Botley" <spb@comp.lancs.ac.uk>
AIMS OF THE CONFERENCE
While the use of computer text corpora in research is now well
established, they are now being used increasingly for teaching
purposes. This includes the use of corpus data to inform and create
teaching materials; it also includes the direct exploration of corpora
by students, both in the study of linguistics and of foreign languages.
Talc96 will build upon the success of Talc94, which brought together
researchers and teachers who are involved in such work, to take part in
an international exchange of current experience and expertise.
THEMES
KEY THEME: Talc96 will have a special focus on evaluating the claims
made for corpora in linguistics and language teaching.
OTHER THEMES: which the conference is expected to cover include -
1.) The use of corpora in student led learning and investigation.
2.) Software for corpus based language and linguistics learning.
3.) Developing corpora for teaching purposes.
4.) The exploitation of corpus based teaching and learning materials.
5.) The theory and practice of corpus based teaching and learning.
WORKSHOPS
Talc96 will also host several workshops related to teaching and
language corpora. To give an example of what those workshops may be,
Talc94 had a variety of workshops such as "Multilingual Corpus
Building" and "Concordancing and Corpus Retrieval". Workshops will be
of one to two hour duration.
Is available at <http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/ucrel/talc/>
Please register BEFORE 21st July 1996, otherwise we cannot guarantee
availability of accommodation.
======================================================================
Topic 4:
Subject: KBCS-96 (2nd CFP) Deadline Extended
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 - Deadline 15 August 1996
From: KBCS Word Processing <kbcs@konark.ncst.ernet.in>
THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF PAPERS HAS NOW BEEN EXTENDED TO AUGUST 15, 1996
____________________________________________________________________________ The International Conference on Knowledge Based Computer Systems will be held
in Bombay, India during December 16-18, 1996. The conference is intended to
act as a forum for promoting interaction among researchers in the field of
Artificial Intelligence in India and abroad. There will be a two day
conference during December 16-17, 1996 followed by one day of
post-conference tutorials on December 18, 1996.
Papers are invited on substantial, original and unpublished research on
all aspects of Artificial Intelligence, including, but not limited to the
following:
| o AI Applications | o AI Architectures |
| o Artificial Life | o Automatic Programming |
| o Cognitive Modeling | o Expert Systems |
| o Foundations of AI | o Genetic Algorithms |
| o Information Retrieval | o Intelligent Tutoring Systems |
| o Knowledge Acquisition | o Knowledge Representation |
| o Machine Learning | o Machine Translation |
| o Natural Language Processing | o Neural Networks |
| o Planning and Scheduling | o Reasoning |
| o Robotics | o Search Techniques |
| o Speech Processing | o Theorem Proving |
| o Uncertainty Handling | o User Interfaces |
| o User Modeling | o Vision |
Programme Committee:
| S. Arunkumar, IIT, Bombay | Amitava Bagchi, IIM, Calcutta |
| Pushpak Bhattacharya, IIT, Bombay | Margaret A. Boden, U of Sussex, UK |
| Nick Cercone, U of Regina, Canada | B. B. Chaudhuri, ISI, Calcutta |
| R. Chandrasekar, NCST, Bombay | S. K. Goyal, GTE Labs , USA |
| S. S. Gupta, TUL, Bombay | J. R. Isaac, NIIT, New Delhi |
| Aravind K. Joshi, | R. A. Kowalski, Imperial College, UK |
| U of Pennsylvania, USA | |
| H. N. Mahabala, INFOSYS, Bangalore | M. Narasimha Murthy, IISc, Bangalore |
| R. Narasimhan, CMC, Bangalore | S. Ramani, NCST, Bombay (Chair) |
| P. V. S. Rao, TIFR, Bombay | Patrick Saint-Dizier,U of Paul Sabatier, France |
| R. Sangal, IIT, Kanpur | R. Uthurusamy, GMR, USA |
| M. Vidyasagar, CAIR, Bangalore |
Format of Submission:
Authors should submit their papers, not to exceed 5000 words (including
figures and references) either electronically or in hard copy. Papers
should be in English. Papers should include an abstract of about 100-200
words in length. Papers outside the specified length are subject to
rejection without review. Since reviewing will be "blind", the authors'
names and affiliations along with the main area of the paper should be given
only on a separate cover sheet. Hard copy submissions should be sent in
triplicate. Papers in electronic form can be in any of the following
formats: plain text, Postscript, Latex, Microsoft Word, or Wordstar.
Submissions in electronic form are preferred.
Send papers to the KBCS-96 Secretariat at the address below.
Paper Submission Deadlines:
o Papers due: August 15, 1996
o Acceptance Notification: October 15, 1996
o Camera Ready Copy due: December 1, 1996
Call for Tutorials:
Proposals are invited for post-conference tutorials. Tutorials can be
half-day or full-day, and will be held on December 18th, 1996. The
proposal should be presented in the form of a 200-word abstract, one page
topical outline of the content, description of the proposers and their
qualifications relating to the tutorial content.
Tutorial Submission Deadlines:
o Proposal Submission: July 31, 1996
o Acceptance Notification: August 31, 1996
o Complete Tutorial materials due: December 1, 1996
Send proposals to the KBCS-96 Secretariat at the address below.
Organizing Committee:
| George Arakal, NCST (Chair) | K.S.R. Anjaneyulu, NCST |
| P. Ravi Prakash, NCST | Durgesh D. Rao, NCST |
| M. Sasikumar, NCST | T. Suresh, NCST |
For further information please refer to the KBCS-96 home page or
write to the KBCS-96 Secretariat.
___________________________________________________________________________ Address
| KBCS-96 Secretariat | Phone : +91 (22) 620 1606 |
| National Centre for Software Technology | Fax : +91 (22) 621 0139 |
| Gulmohar Cross Rd No. 9 | E-mail : kbcs@konark.ncst.ernet.in |
| Juhu, Bombay 400 049, India |
URL : http://konark.ncst.ernet.in/~kbcs/kbcs96.html
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