10.707, Calls: Lang & Consciousness, Machine Interpretation

Tue May 11 00:22:02 UTC 1999

LINGUIST List:  Vol-10-707. Mon May 10 1999. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 10.707, Calls: Lang & Consciousness, Machine Interpretation

Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Wayne State U.<aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at linguistlist.org>
            Andrew Carnie: U. of Arizona <carnie at linguistlist.org>

Reviews: Andrew Carnie: U. of Arizona <carnie at linguistlist.org>

Associate Editors:  Martin Jacobsen <marty at linguistlist.org>
                    Brett Churchill <brett at linguistlist.org>
                    Ljuba Veselinova <ljuba at linguistlist.org>

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		    Jody Huellmantel <jody at linguistlist.org>
		    Karen Milligan <karen at linguistlist.org>

Software development: John H. Remmers <remmers at emunix.emich.edu>
                      Chris Brown <chris at linguistlist.org>

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Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karen at linguistlist.org>
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As a matter of policy, LINGUIST discourages the use of abbreviations
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=================================Directory=================================

1)
Date:  Fri, 7 May 1999 21:08:13 +0000
From:  "M. Stamenov" <stamenov at nias.knaw.nl>
Subject:  "Language and Consciousness"

2)
Date:  Fri, 7 May 1999 09:08:54 +0900 (JST)
From:  Francis Bond <bond at cslab.kecl.ntt.co.jp>
Subject:  Constraints on Machine Interpretation

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Fri, 7 May 1999 21:08:13 +0000
From:  "M. Stamenov" <stamenov at nias.knaw.nl>
Subject:  "Language and Consciousness"

DEADLINE APPROACHING

A workshop and symposium on "Language and
Consciousness" will be held June 25-27, 1999, at
the LSA Summer Institute at the University of
Illinois. The workshop will consist of fifteen
hours lecturing and discussion format. For
orientation about it, please consult the web
page of the LSA Summer Institute at:

http://www.beckman.uiuc.edu/groups/cs/linginst/Workshops/lang.html

During the workshop two evening sessions will be
dedicated to a symposium on consciousness and
language. The participants in the workshop are
encouraged to consider the possibility of
contributing to the symposium a paper on some
topic related to workshop's theme. The papers
will be given a 20 min. presentation
time plus 10 min. discussion time.

The deadline for 500-words abstract submission
is May 20, 1999. Those interested in preparing a
paper for the symposium, please contact Maxim
Stamenov at stamenov at nias.knaw.nl.

Abstracts should be sent by mail or e-mail to:

Maxim Stamenov, Ph.D.
Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study
in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Meijboomlaan 1
2242 PR Wassenaar
The Netherlands
E-mail: stamenov at nias.knaw.nl

-------------------------------- Message 2 -------------------------------

Date:  Fri, 7 May 1999 09:08:54 +0900 (JST)
From:  Francis Bond <bond at cslab.kecl.ntt.co.jp>
Subject:  Constraints on Machine Interpretation

Final TMI'99 Workshop Call for Papers
Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Machine Translation
CONSTRAINTS ON MACHINE INTERPRETATION
http://crl.nmsu.edu/~jamtrup/tmi99/

Extended Deadline: May, 28, 1999

Conference: August 23 - 25, 1999
Workshop:   August 26, 1999
University College, Chester, England

The translation of spoken utterances (MI, machine Interpreting) is one
of the most challenging tasks within the field of MT. There are still
several phenomena which are unknown or insufficiently described and
are not accounted for in the systems currently available. These
phenomena affect all stages of processing within MT systems. To name
just a few, the translation of spoken language has to take into
account:

- Prosody. While prosodic features have been integrated into MI
systems over the last few years, their application has largely been
restricted to disambiguation tasks (to detect boundaries of various
kinds and for classification). The influence of specific conditions,
e.g. stress, on the prosodic realization of texts is more or less
unknown.

- Basic characteristics of speech as opposed to written language.
Hesitations, repairs, breaking offs and others fall into this
class. Their occurrence if often unexpected, the recognition and
utilization of these seems underdeveloped

- Characteristics of lexica and grammars. Clearly, the knowledge
sources for systems dealing with spoken input has to be different from
those analyzing written language. Especially spontaneous speech can
usually not be covered using a standard grammar constructed with
written texts in mind.

- User-Machine interfaces. Using speech as input and output of machine
translation systems poses new and sometimes unexpected problems for
the design of the interface through which an user interacts with a
system. These range from designing a high quality of synthesis to the
assessment of the reactions to sometimes long waiting periods during a
translation.

As a consequence, a MI system does not only contain the additional
components needed to analyze and synthesize speech, but the core
modules have to be adapted as well to the demands of speech-to-speech
communication. The collaboration between researchers working in the
traditional core field of MT and in the more speech-oriented fields
is highly advantageous for a successful design and implementation of a
speech-to-speech translation application.

The workshop ``Constraints on Machine Interpretation'' calls for
contributions relevant for the translation of spoken language,
including, but not limited to:
- Speech recognition, language recognition, speaker identification
- Prosody and its use in MI systems
- Analysis, transfer and generation of spoken input utterances
- Architecture and design of MI systems and their user interfaces
- Dialog behavior, design and analysis
- Evaluation of MI systems

The workshop complements the main theme of TMI'99 (Modalities and MT:
Where can MT be used?) by concentrating on one important modality,
namely speech. It will be held as a one day workshop on Aug, 26th
1999, right after the main conference.

IMPORTANT DATES:
Paper submissions due    May, 28, 1999
Acceptance notification  June, 15, 1999
Final copies due         July 2, 1999
Conference dates         Aug 23-25, 1999
Workshop                 Aug 26, 1999

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
The format of submissions for the workshop should follow the
general guidelines of the main conference.

The submissions should be sent to one of the contact addresses
below. Also note that the  schedule for submissions, notification
and final versions is different from the schedule of the main conference.

CONTACT
Susanne J. Jekat
University of Hamburg
Computer Science Department
Vogt-Koelln-Str. 30
225 27 Hamburg
Germany
Phon: + 49 40 5494 - 2520
Fax: + 49 40 5494 - 2515
e-mail: jekat at informatik.uni-hamburg.de
web:    http://nats-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~jekat/

Jan W. Amtrup
Computing Research Laboratory
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, NM 88003
USA
Phone: (+1 505) 646.2965
Fax:   (+1 505) 646.6218
e-mail: jamtrup at crl.nmsu.edu
web:    http://crl.nmsu.edu/~jamtrup/

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