[Corpora-List] CFP: Multi-Word Expressions Workshop

Thu Apr 2 10:07:15 UTC 2009

Please circulate. Apologies for multiple copies.

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CALL FOR PAPERS

Multiword Expressions: Identification, Interpretation, Disambiguation  
and Applications
(MWE 2009)

Workshop at the ACL/IJCNLP 2009 Conference

Singapore, 06 August 2009

http://multiword.sourceforge.net/PHITE.php?sitesig=CONF&page=CONF_40_MWE_2009___lb__ACL__rb__

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Description

Multi-Word Expressions (MWEs) are an indispensable part of natural  
languages and appear
steadily on a daily basis, both new and already existing but  
paraphrased. Thus, the
automated processing of MWEs is important for many natural language  
applications. The
meaning of MWEs can be either motivated or arbitrary. Native speakers  
master most MWEs,
while learners of a foreign language have to learn MWEs by heart. The  
interpretation of
MWEs poses a major challenge for automated analysis helping both  
groups easily master
MWEs.

The growing interest in MWEs in the NLP community has led to many  
specialized workshops
held every year since 2001 in conjunction with ACL, EACL and LREC;  
there have been also
two recent special issues on MWEs published by leading journals: the  
International
Journal of Language Resources and Evaluation, and the Journal of  
Computer Speech and
Language.

As a result of the overall progress in the field, the time has come to  
move from basic
preliminary research to actual applications in real-world NLP tasks.  
Following this
trend, the LREC-MWE'08 focused on gathering resources and creating a  
common repository in
order to rank MWE candidates and facilitate further research.

Workshop topics

(1) Identification. Identification is a major problem for MWEs. The  
MWE identification
task is to determine whether a MWE is used non-compositionally  
(figuratively) or
compositionally (literally) in a particular context. The  
identification of MWEs by
automated means is a difficult task, as it does not suffice to store  
the MWE into a
dictionary database. Rule-based (morphosyntactic rules) and/or  
statistical approaches may
be needed to identify MWEs in context.

(2) Interpretation. Semantic interpretation of MWEs, particularly noun  
compounds and
determinerless prepositional phrases, is the task of determining the  
implicit semantic
relation holding between the MWE's sub-components. This specific area  
is inviting
research on (linguistically) identifying the semantic relations (SRs)  
and automatic SR
interpretation in MWEs. The relation inventories used can be of  
different granularity and
dependent on the particular type of MWE construction. In some cases,  
MWE's semantics can
be also specified in terms of a suitable paraphrase.

(3) Disambiguation. Disambiguation (Semantic classification) is the  
task of specifying
the semantics of MWEs based on an inventory of semantic relations. It  
tends to presuppose
the ability to classify the (degree of) compositionality of MWEs and  
applies only to
compositional MWEs. The aim is to specify the semantics of MWEs in  
terms of predefined
semantic categories, e.g., in WordNet.

(4) Applications. Identifying MWEs in context and understanding their  
syntax and
semantics is important for many natural language applications,  
including but not limited
to question answering, machine translation, information retrieval, information
extraction, and textual entailment. Still, despite the growing  
research interest, there
are not enough successful applications in real NLP problems, which we  
believe is the key
for the advancement of the field.

Submission information

Submissions must describe substantial, original, and unpublished work.  
Submissions will
be judged on correctness, originality, technical strength,  
significance and relevance to
the conference, and interest to the attendees. Full papers may consist  
of up to eight (8)
pages in total (references icluded) and will be presented orally. The  
deadline for paper
submission is May 1, 2009 (GMT + 8).
The official style files for ACL/IJCNLP 2009 are available at:
http://www.acl-ijcnlp-2009.org/main/authors/stylefiles/.
The workshop submissions should use the same formatting guidelines. As  
the reviewing will
be blind, the paper must not include the authors' names and  
affiliations. Furthermore,
self-references that reveal the author's identity, e.g., "We  
previously showed (Smith,
1991) ...", must be avoided. Instead, use citations such as "Smith  
previously showed
(Smith, 1991) ...". Papers that do not conform to these requirements  
will be rejected
without review.
Submission is electronic using paper submission software at:
https://www.softconf.com/acl-ijcnlp09/MWE/

Important dates

Paper submission deadline
  May 1, 2009

Notification of acceptance of papers
  June 1, 2009

Camera-ready copies due
  June 7, 2009

ACL-IJCNLP 2009 Workshops
  August 6-7, 2009

Programme committee

Inaki Alegria, University of the Basque Country (Spain)
Timothy Baldwin, Stanford University (USA); University of Melbourne  
(Australia)
Colin Bannard, Max Planck Institute (Germany)
Francis Bond, National Institute of Information and Communications  
Technology (Japan)
Gael Dias, Beira Interior University (Portugal)
Ulrich Heid, Stuttgart University (Germany)
Stefan Evert, University of Osnabrueck (Germany)
Afsaneh Fazly,University of Toronto (Canada)
Nicole Gregoire,University of Utrecht (The Netherlands)
Roxana Girju,University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA)
Kyo Kageura, University of Tokyo (Japan)
Brigitte Krenn, Austrian Research Institute for Artificial  
Intelligence (Austria)
Eric Laporte, University of Marne-la-Vall?e (France)
Rosamund Moon, University of Birmingham (UK)
Diana McCarthy, University of Sussex (UK)
Jan Odijk, University of Utrecht (The Netherlands)
Stephan Oepen, Stanford University (USA); University of Oslo (Norway)
Darren Pearce, London Knowledge Lab (UK)
Pavel Pecina, Charles University (Czech Republic)
Scott Piao, University of Manchester (UK)
Violeta Seretan, University of Geneva (Switzerland)
Suzanne Stevenson, University of Toronto (Canada)
Stan Szpakowicz, University of Ottawa (Canada)
Beata Trawinski, University of Tuebingen (Germany)
Peter Turney, National Research Council of Canada (Canada)
Kiyoko Uchiyama, Keio University (Japan)
Begona Villada Moiron, University of Groningen (The Netherlands)
Aline Villavicencio, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)

Workshop chairs

Dimitra Anastasiou, Localisation Research Centre, Limerick University, Ireland
Chikara Hashimoto, National Institute of Information and  
Communications Technology, Japan
Preslav Nakov, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Su Nam Kim, University of Melbourne, Australia

Contact

For any inquiries regarding the workshop please contact Dimitra Anastasiou.

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