CFP: EACL 2009 Workshop on Cognitive Aspects of Computational Language Acquisition

[Thierry Poibeau]

2nd Call for Papers

EACL 2009 Workshop on COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF COMPUTATIONAL LANGUAGE 
ACQUISITION

30 or 31 March 2009
Athens, Greece

http://www-lipn.univ-paris13.fr/~poibeau/cognitive/

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Workshop Description
====================

This workshop is focused on the relevance of computational learning methods 
for research on human language acquisition. Developing and applying such 
computational techniques that can improve our understanding of human 
language acquisition will not only benefit cognitive sciences in general, 
but will also reflect back to NLP and place us in a better position to 
develop useful language models.

The workshop aims to bring together researchers from the diverse fields of 
NLP, machine learning, artificial intelligence, (psycho)linguistics, etc. 
who are interested in the relevance of computational techniques for 
understanding human language learning.

The workshop is intended to bridge the gap between the computational and 
cognitive communities, promote knowledge and resource sharing, and help 
initiate interdisciplinary research projects. Success in this type of 
research requires close collaboration between NLP and cognitive scientists. 
To this end, interdisciplinary workshops can play a key role in advancing 
existing and initiating new research. This was demonstrated by some 
successful events like the previous edition of this workshop held at ACL 
2007.


Areas of interest
=================

Papers are invited on, but not limited to, the following topics:

- Computational learning theory and analysis of language learning

- Computational models of human (first, second and bilingual) language 
acquisition

- Computational models of various aspects of language acquisition, and 
their interaction with each other

- Computational models of the evolution of language

- Data resources and tools for investigating computational models of human 
language acquisition

- Empirical and theoretical comparisons of the learning environment and its 
impact on the acquisition task

- Computational methods for acquiring various linguistic information 
(related to e.g. speech, morphology, lexicon, syntax, semantics, and 
discourse) and their relevance to research on human language acquisition

- Investigations and comparisons of supervised, unsupervised and 
weakly-supervised methods for learning (e.g. machine learning, statistical, 
symbolic, biologically-inspired, active learning, various hybrid models) 
from the cognitive aspect

Papers can cover one or more of these areas.

Submission Information
======================

Papers should describe original work and should indicate the state of 
completion of the reported results. In particular, any overlap with 
previously published work should be clearly mentioned. Submissions will be 
judged on correctness, novelty, technical strength, clarity of 
presentation, usability, and significance/relevance to the workshop.

Submissions should follow the two-column format of the EACL 2009 
main-conference proceedings and should not exceed eight (8) pages, 
including references. We strongly recommend the use of either the LaTeX 
style file or the Microsoft-Word Style file, which can be found at 
http://www.eacl2009.gr/conference/authors.

The reviewing will be blind. Therefore, the paper should not include the 
authors' names and affiliations. Furthermore, self- citations and other 
references that could reveal the author's identity should be avoided.

Submission will be electronic. The only accepted format for submitted 
papers is Adobe PDF. Papers must be submitted no later than December 19, 
2008 using the submission webpage that will be available soon.

Submissions will be reviewed by 3 members of the Program Committee. Authors 
of accepted papers will receive guidelines regarding how to produce 
camera-ready versions of their papers for inclusion in the EACL workshop 
proceedings.

Notification of receipt will be emailed to the contact author.


Important Dates
===============

- Paper submission deadline: 19 December 2008
- Acceptance notification sent: 30 January 2009
- Final version deadline: 13 February 2009
- Workshop date: 30 or 31 March 2009


Workshop Chairs
===============

- Thierry Poibeau (CNRS and University Paris 13, France) - Afra Alishahi 
(University of Saarland, Germany)) - Aline Villavicencio (Federal 
University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil and University of Bath, UK)

Address any queries regarding the workshop to:
cognitive2009 at gmail.com


Program Committee
=================

- Colin J Bannard (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 
Germany) - Marco Baroni (University of Trento, Italy) - Robert C. Berwick 
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA) - Jim Blevins (University of 
Cambridge, UK) - Rens Bod (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands) - Antal 
van den Bosch (Tilburg University, The Netherlands) - Chris Brew (Ohio 
State University, USA) - Ted Briscoe (University of Cambridge, UK) - Robin 
Clark (University of Pennsylvania, USA) - Stephen Clark (University of 
Oxford, UK) - Matthew W. Crocker (Saarland University, Germany) - James 
Cussens (University of York, UK) - Walter Daelemans (University of Antwerp, 
Belgium and Tilburg University, The Netherlands) - Ted Gibson 
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA) - Henriette Hendriks 
(University of Cambridge, UK) - Julia Hockenmaier (University of Illinois 
at Urbana-Champaign, USA) - Marco Idiart (Federal University of Rio Grande 
do Sul, Brazil) - Mark Johnson (Brown University, USA) - Aravind Joshi 
(University of Pennsylvania, USA) - Anna Korhonen (University of Cambridge, 
UK) - Alessandro Lenci (University of Pisa, Italy) - Massimo Poesio 
(University of Trento, Italy) - Brechtje Post (University of Cambridge, UK) 
- Ari Rappoport (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel) - Dan Roth 
(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA) - Kenji Sagae (University 
of Southern California, USA) - Sabine Schulte im Walde (University of 
Stuttgart, Germany) - Mark Steedman (University of Edinburgh, UK) - Suzanne 
Stevenson (University of Toronto, Canada) - Patrick Sturt (University of 
Edinburgh, UK) - Bert Vaux (University of Wisconsin, USA) - Charles Yang 
(University of Pennsylvania, USA) - Menno van Zaanen (Macquarie University, 
Australia) - Michael Zock (LIF, CNRS, Marseille, France)