<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">=======================================================</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">First Call for Papers and Participation</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">EMNLP Workshop on Arabic Natural Language Processing </div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
Including Shared Task on Automatic Arabic Error Correction</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
Apologies for multiple postings</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px"> Please distribute to colleagues</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">=======================================================</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">First Call for Papers and Participation</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Arabic Natural Language Processing Workshop</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
collocated with EMNLP 2014, Doha, Qatar </div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
Workshop date: <span class="" tabindex="0"><span class="">Saturday October 25, 2014</span></span></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Paper submission deadline: <span class="" tabindex="0"><span class="">July 26, 2014</span></span></div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Shared task registration deadline: <span class="" tabindex="0"><span class="">July 1, 2014</span></span></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">=======================================================</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">====================</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">====================</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">There has been a lot of progress in the last 15 years in the area of</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
Arabic Natural Language Processing (NLP). Many Arabic NLP (or Arabic</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">NLP-related) workshops and conferences have taken place, both in the</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Arab World and in association with international conferences, e.g.,</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
the conference on Arabic Language Resources and Tools (MEDAR-2009,</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">NEMLAR-2004), the workshop on Computational Approaches to Semitic</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Languages (LREC 2010, EACL 2009, ACL 2007, ACL 2005, ACL 2002, ACL</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
1998), the workshop on Computational Approaches to Arabic Script-based</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Languages (MTSummit XII 2009, LSA 2007, COLING 2004), the</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">International Symposium on Computer and Arabic Language (ISCAL 2009,</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
ISCAL 2007), the Colloque International sur le Traitement Automatique</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">de la Langue Arabe (CITALA 2007), the International Symposium on</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Processing of Arabic (Tunisia 2002), the workshop on Arabic Language</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2002), and the workshop on Arabic</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Language Processing (ACL -2001), among others. This workshop proposal</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">follows in the footsteps of these efforts to provide a forum for</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
researchers to share and discuss their ongoing work. This workshop is</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">timely given the continued rise in research projects focusing on</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Arabic NLP in the Arab World and the West.</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">We invite submissions on topics that include, but are not limited to,</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
the following:</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">* Basic core technologies: morphological analysis, disambiguation,</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px"> tokenization, POS tagging, named entity detection, chunking,</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
parsing, semantic role labeling, sentiment analysis, Arabic dialect</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px"> modeling, etc.</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">* Applications: machine translation, speech recognition, speech</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
synthesis, optical character recognition, pedagogy, assistive</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px"> technologies, social media, etc.</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">* Resources: dictionaries, annotated data, specialized databases etc.</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
<span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Submissions may include work in progress as well as finished work.</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
Submissions must have a clear focus on specific issues pertaining to</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">the Arabic language whether it is standard Arabic, dialectal, or</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">mixed. Descriptions of commercial systems are welcome, but authors</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
should be willing to discuss the details of their work. Submissions</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">are expected to be 8 pages long plus 2 pages for references.</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Associated with the workshop will be a shared task on Arabic text</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
error correction (details below).</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
===========</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">SHARED TASK</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
===========</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">As part of the Arabic Natural Language Processing Workshop at EMNLP</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">2014 (to be held in Doha, Qatar), we will conduct a shared task on</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
Automatic Arabic Error Correction. We designed this task in the</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">traditions of high profile shared tasks in natural language processing</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">such as CONLLÕs grammar/error detection and correction shared tasks in</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
2011-2013 and numerous machine translation campaigns by</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">NIST/WMT/MEDAR, among others. The task relies on resources created</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">under the Qatar Arabic Language Bank (QALB) project (currently over 1M</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
words of manually corrected Arabic text). A participating system in</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">this shared task will be given Modern Standard Arabic texts, which are</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">to be automatically corrected. The provided input will be provided in</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
Arabic script and in a standard Romanization scheme, and will be</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">annotated for part-of-speech (in three different granularities),</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">clitics (which appear in 20% of Arabic words), lemmas, English</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
glosses, and dependency tree relations. All of the input text will be</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">preprocessed in a common way to make sure all participants have access</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">to all of these features at no additional overhead novelty cost. An</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
XML format will be used to encode all of this information. A</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">participating system then returns a corrected version of the Arabic</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">text that is one sentence per line in an XML format. The task is</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
focused on correction as opposed to identification. There will not be</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">an error identification task per se. Participants need to register.</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Once registered, all participating teams will be provided with a</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
common training data set, which includes common preprocessed input and</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">corrected output. A common development set will also be provided. A</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">blind test data set will be used to evaluate the output of the</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
participating teams. An evaluation script will be provided to all the</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">teams. Participants are expected to author a short paper (4 pages + 2</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">for references) describing their approach, resources and experiments.</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
The paper needs to follow the standard format of EMNLP conference.</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
===============</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">IMPORTANT DATES</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
===============</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Shared task registration period: <span class="" tabindex="0"><span class="">April8, 2014 through July 1, 2014</span></span></div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Shared task test release: <span class="" tabindex="0"><span class="">July 7, 2014</span></span></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
Shared task system output collection: <span class="" tabindex="0"><span class="">July 18, 2014</span></span></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Submission deadline (Workshop and shared task papers): <span class="" tabindex="0"><span class="">July 26, 2014</span></span></div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Author notification: <span class="" tabindex="0"><span class="">August 26, 2014</span></span></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
Camera Ready: <span class="" tabindex="0"><span class="">September 15, 2014</span></span></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Workshop:<span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span><span class="" tabindex="0"><span class="">October 25, 2014</span></span> </div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">==========</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
ORGANIZERS</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">==========</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px"><br>
</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Program Co-chairs</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Nizar Habash, Columbia University</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Stephan Vogel, Qatar Computing Research Institute</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Publication Co-chairs</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
Nadi Tomeh, Paris 13 University</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Houda Bouamor, Carnegie Mellon University Qatar</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Website Committee</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Kareem Darwish, Qatar Computing Research Institute</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Noura Farra, Columbia University </div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Shared Task Committee</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
Behrang Mohit, Carnegie Mellon University Qatar</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Alla Rozovskaya, Columbia University</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
Wajdi Zaghouani, Carnegie Mellon University Qatar </div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">Ossama Obeid, Carnegie Mellon University Qatar</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
Nizar Habash, Columbia University (advisory)</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">
Program Committee Members </div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px">(TBA in Second Call)</div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">
</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></div><div><div dir="ltr">
<div>-----------------------------------------------------</div><div>Wajdi Zaghouani</div><div><font size="1">Research Associate</font></div><div><font size="1">Carnegie Mellon University-Qatar, Education City</font></div>
<div><font size="1">PO Box 24866, Doha, Qatar</font></div><div><font size="1">Office: CMU-Q 1210, Phone: (+974) 4454-8646</font></div><div><font size="1">Email: <a href="mailto:wajdiz@qatar.cmu.edu" target="_blank">wajdiz@qatar.cmu.edu</a></font></div>
<div><font size="1">Web: <a href="http://www.qatar.cmu.edu/~wajdiz/" target="_blank">www.qatar.cmu.edu/~wajdiz/</a></font></div></div></div>
</div>