2014Q3 Reports: SIGPARSE

SIGPARSE is ACL's special interest group on natural language parsing. The main purposes of the SIG are: to promote interest in the parsing of natural languages; to provide a means of disseminating information about natural language parsing; to ensure the continuity of the biennial 'International Conferences on Parsing Technologies' (IWPT); and to endorse relevant meetings and workshops.

The most recent IWPT was the 13th in the series, and was held in Nara, Japan, in November 2013. The local arrangements committee was based at Nara Institute of Science and Technology, and was chaired by Yuji Matsumoto. Harry Bunt (Tilburg) was general chair for the conference, and the program co-chairs were Khalil Sima'an (Amsterdam) and Liang Huang (CUNY, New York). The conference was a success, with a rich programme of activities including: around 20 paper and poster presentations, two invited talks, a banquet, and an excursion to nearby industrial and academic research institutes.

In the past year, the SIG has endorsed the Workshop on Statistical Parsing of Morphologically Rich Languages in October 2013, and the Joint Workshop on Statistical Parsing of Morphologically Rich Languages and Syntactic Analysis of Non-Canonical Languages to be held in August 2014.

The next IWPT will take place in late 2015, and the SIG officers are currently assessing candidate locations and dates, and selecting program co-chairs.

SIGPARSE maintains a website that contains information about the SIG, upcoming activities, and instructions for joining the membership and the mailing list. There are currently 220 SIG members. The website address is: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sigparse/