<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=iso-8859-1"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>[Apologies for cross-postings]</div><div><br></div>==================================================<br> First Call for Papers<br>==================================================<br> EACL 2014 Workshop on<br>Cognitive Aspects of Computational Language Learning<br><br> April 26, 2014<br> Gothenburg, Sweden<br><br> <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/cognitivews2014/">https://sites.google.com/site/cognitivews2014/</a><br><br>Deadline for Paper Submissions: January, 23rd, 2014 (11:59pm GMT -12)<br>---------------------------------------------------------------<br><br>The human ability to acquire and process language has long attracted interest and <br>generated much debate due to the apparent ease with which such a complex and <br>dynamic system is learnt and used on the face of ambiguity, noise and uncertainty. <br>This subject raises many questions ranging from the nature vs. nurture debate of <br>how much needs to be innate and how much needs to be learned for acquisition to <br>be successful, to the mechanisms involved in this process (general vs specific) and <br>their representations in the human brain. There are also developmental issues related <br>to the different stages consistently found during acquisition (e.g. one word vs. two <br>words) and possible organizations of this knowledge. These have been discussed in <br>the context of first and second language acquisition and bilingualism, with cross linguistic <br>studies shedding light on the influence of the language and the environment.<br><br>The past decades have seen a massive expansion in the application of statistical and <br>machine learning methods to natural language processing (NLP). This work has yielded <br>impressive results in numerous speech and language processing tasks, including e.g. <br>speech recognition, morphological analysis, parsing, lexical acquisition, semantic <br>interpretation, and dialogue management. The good results have generally been viewed <br>as engineering achievements. Recently researchers have begun to investigate the relevance <br>of computational learning methods for research on human language acquisition and change.<br>The use of computational modeling is a relatively recent trend boosted by advances in <br>machine learning techniques, and the availability of resources like corpora of child and <br>child-directed sentences, and data from psycholinguistic tasks by normal and pathological <br>groups. Many of the existing computational models attempt to study language tasks under <br>cognitively plausible criteria (such as memory and processing limitations that humans face), <br>and to explain the developmental stages observed in the acquisition and evolution of the <br>language abilities. In doing so, computational modeling provides insight into the plausible <br>mechanisms involved in human language processes, and inspires the development of better <br>language models and techniques. These investigations are very important since if <br>computational techniques can be used to improve our understanding of human language <br>acquisition and change, these will not only benefit cognitive sciences in general but will reflect <br>back to NLP and place us in a better position to develop useful language models.<br><br>Success in this type of research requires close collaboration between the NLP, linguistics, <br>psychology and cognitive science communities. The workshop is targeted at anyone<br>interested in the relevance of computational techniques for understanding first, second and <br>bilingual language acquisition and language change in normal and clinical conditions. Long <br>and short papers are invited on, but not limited to, the following topics:<br><br>*Computational learning theory and analysis of language learning and organization<br>*Computational models of first, second and bilingual language acquisition<br>*Computational models of language changes in clinical conditions<br>*Computational models and analysis of factors that influence language acquisition and <br>use in different age groups and cultures<br>*Computational models of various aspects of language and their interaction effect in acquisition, <br>processing and change<br>*Computational models of the evolution of language<br>*Data resources and tools for investigating computational models of human language processes<br>*Empirical and theoretical comparisons of the learning environment and its impact on language <br>processes<br>*Cognitively oriented Bayesian models of language processes<br>*Computational methods for acquiring various linguistic information (related to e.g. speech, <br>morphology, lexicon, syntax, semantics, and discourse) and their relevance to research on human <br>language acquisition<br>*Investigations and comparisons of supervised, unsupervised and weakly-supervised methods for <br>learning (e.g. machine learning, statistical, symbolic, biologically-inspired, active learning, various <br>hybrid models) from a cognitive perspective<br><br>---------------------------------------------------------------<br>SUBMISSIONS<br><br>We invite three different submission modalities:<br><br>* Regular long papers (8 content pages + 1 page for references):<br> Long papers should report on original, solid and finished research<br> including new experimental results, resources and/or techniques.<br><br>* Regular short papers (4 content pages + 1 page for references):<br> Short papers should report on small experiments, focused contributions,<br> ongoing research, negative results and/or philosophical discussion.<br><br>* System demonstration (2 pages): System demonstration papers should<br> describe and document the demonstrated system or resources. We<br> encourage the demonstration of both early research prototypes and<br> mature systems, that will be presented in a separate demo session.<br><br>All submissions must be in PDF format and must follow the EACL<br>2014 formatting requirements (available at<br><a href="http://www.eacl2014.org/files/eacl-2014-styles.zip">http://www.eacl2014.org/files/eacl-2014-styles.zip</a>).<br>We strongly advise the use of the provided Word or LaTeX template<br>files. For long and short papers, the reported research should<br>be substantially original. The papers will be presented orally or as<br>posters. The decision as to which paper will be presented orally<br>and which as poster will be made by the program committee based<br>on the nature rather than on the quality of the work.<br><br>Reviewing will be double-blind, and thus no author information<br>should be included in the papers; self-reference should be<br>avoided as well. Papers that do not conform to these requirements<br>will be rejected without review. Accepted papers will appear in the<br>workshop proceedings, where no distinction will be made between<br>papers presented orally or as posters.<br><br>Submission and reviewing will be electronic, managed by the START system.<br><br>Submissions must be uploaded onto the START system by the submission deadline:<br><br> January 23rd, 2014 (11:59pm GMT -12 hours)<br><br>Please choose the appropriate submission type from the START<br>submission page, according to the category of your paper.<br><br>---------------------------------------------------------------<br>IMPORTANT DATES<br><br>Jan 23, 2014 Long and Short Paper submission deadline<br>Feb 05, 2014 System Demonstrations submission deadline<br>Feb 20, 2014 Notification of acceptance<br>Mar 03, 2014 Camera-ready deadline<br>Apr 26, 2014 Workshop<br><br>---------------------------------------------------------------<br>PROGRAM COMMITTEE<br><br>Afra Alishahi <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>Tilburg University (Netherlands)<br>Colin J Bannard <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>University of Texas at Austin (USA)<br>Marco Baroni <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>University of Trento (Italy)<br>Robert Berwick <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)<br>Philippe Blache <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>LPL, CNRS (France) <br>Jim Blevins <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>University of Cambridge (UK)<br>Antal van den Bosch Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands)<br>Chris Brew <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>Nuance Communications (USA)<br>Ted Briscoe <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>University of Cambridge (UK)<br>Alexander Clark <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>Royal Holloway, University of London (UK)<br>Robin Clark <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>University of Pennsylvania (USA)<br>Stephen Clark <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>University of Cambridge (UK)<br>Matthew W. Crocker Saarland University (Germany)<br>Walter Daelemans University of Antwerp (Belgium)<br>Dan Dediu <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (The Netherlands)<br>Barry Devereux <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>University of Cambridge (UK)<br>Benjamin Fagard Lattice-CNRS (France)<br>Jeroen Geertzen University of Cambridge (UK)<br>Ted Gibson <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)<br>Henriette Hendriks University of Cambridge (UK)<br>Marco Idiart <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)<br>Mark Johnson <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>Brown University (USA)<br>Aravind Joshi <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>University of Pennsylvania (USA)<br>Gianluca Lebani <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>University of Pisa (Italy)<br>Igor Malioutov <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)<br>Marie-Catherine de Marneffe The Ohio State University (USA)<br>Maria Alice Parente Federal University of ABC (Brazil)<br>Massimo Poesio University of Trento (Italy)<br>Brechtje Post <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>University of Cambridge (UK)<br>Ari Rappoport <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel)<br>Anne Reboul <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>L2C2-CNRS (France)<br>Kenji Sagae <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>University of Southern California (USA)<br>Sabine Schulte im Walde University of Stuttgart (Germany)<br>Ekaterina Shutova University of California, Berkeley (USA)<br>Maity Siqueira <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)<br>Mark Steedman <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>University of Edinburgh (UK)<br>Suzanne Stevenson University of Toronto (Canada)<br>Remi van Trijp <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris (France)<br>Shuly Wintner <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>University of Haifa (Israel)<br>Charles Yang <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>University of Pennsylvania (USA)<br>Beracah Yankama <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)<br>Menno van Zaanen Tilburg University (Netherlands)<br>Alessandra Zarcone University of Stuttgart (Germany)<br><br>---------------------------------------------------------------<br>WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS AND CONTACT<br><br>Alessandro Lenci (University of Pisa, Italy)<br>Muntsa Padró (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)<br>Thierry Poibeau (LATTICE-CNRS, France)<br>Aline Villavicencio (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)<br><br>For any inquiries regarding the workshop please send an email<br>to <a href="mailto:cognitive2014@gmail.com">cognitive2014@gmail.com</a></body></html>