16.2253, Calls: Computational Ling/USA; Cognitive Science/Russia

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-2253. Mon Jul 25 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.2253, Calls: Computational Ling/USA; Cognitive Science/Russia

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1)
Date: 22-Jul-2005
From: Jana Sukkarieh < jana.sukkarieh at clg.ox.ac.uk >
Subject: Natural Language and Knowledge Representation 

2)
Date: 24-Jul-2005
From: Denis Akhapkin < denis at da2938.spb.edu >
Subject: 2nd Biennial Conference on Cognitive Science 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 22:19:46
From: Jana Sukkarieh < jana.sukkarieh at clg.ox.ac.uk >
Subject: Natural Language and Knowledge Representation 
 

Full Title: Natural Language and Knowledge Representation 
Short Title: NL-KR 

Date: 11-May-2006 - 13-May-2006
Location: Melbourne Beach, Florida, United States of America 
Contact Person: Jana Sukkarieh
Meeting Email: jana.sukkarieh at clg.ox.ac.uk
Web Site: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lady0641/Flairs06_NL_KR/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 21-Nov-2005 

Meeting Description:

This track is an attempt to provide a forum for discussion on Natural Language,
Knowledge Representation/Reasoning and bridge a gap between Natural Language
Processing and Knowledge Representation. 


NATURAL LANGUAGE AND KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION (NL-KR)

Special Track at FLAIRS 2006


ANNOUNCEMENT 

Holiday Inn Melbourne Oceanfront,  Melbourne Beach, FLORIDA, USA


MAIN CONFERENCE: 11-12-13 MAY 2006

Special track web page: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lady0641/Flairs06_NL_KR
Main conference web page: http://www.indiana.edu/~flairs06


PURPOSE OF THE NL-KR TRACK

We believe the Natural Language Processing (NLP) and the Knowledge
Representation (KR) communities have common goals. They are both concerned with
representing knowledge and with reasoning, since the best test for the semantic
capability of an NLP system is performing reasoning tasks. Having these two
essential common grounds the two communities ought to have been collaborating,
to provide a well-suited representation language that covers these grounds.
However, the two communities also have difficult-to-meet concerns. Mainly, the
semantic representation (SR) should be expressive enough and should take the
information in context into account while the KR should be equipped with a fast
reasoning process.

Moreover, the main objection against an SR or a KR is that they need experts to
be understood. Non-experts communicate (usually) via a natural language (NL) and
more or less they understand each other while performing a lot of reasoning. An
essential practical value of  representations is their attempt to be
transparent.  This will particularly be useful when/if the system provides a
justification for a user or a knowledge engineer on its line of reasoning using
the underlying KR (i.e. without generating back to NL).

We all seem to believe that, compared to Natural Language, the existing
Knowledge Representation and reasoning systems are poor. Nevertheless, for a
long time, the KR community dismissed the idea that NL can be a KR. That's
because NL can be very ambiguous and there are syntactic and semantic processing
complexities associated with it. However, researchers in both communities have
started looking at this issue again. Possibly, it has to do with the NLP
community making some progress in terms of processing and handling ambiguity,
the KR community realising that a lot of knowledge is already 'coded' in NL and
that one should reconsider the way they handle expressivity and ambiguity.

This track is an attempt to provide a forum for discussion on this front and to
bridge a gap between NLP and KR.  A KR in this track has a well-defined syntax,
semantics and a proof theory. It should be clear what authors mean by NL-like,
based on NL or benefiting from NL (if they are using one). It does not have to
be a novel representation.


NL-KR TRACK TOPICS

 For this track, we will invite submissions including, but not limited to:

  a. A novel NL-like KR or building on an existing one
  b. Reasoning systems that benefit from properties of NL to reason with NL
  c. Semantic representation used as a KR : compromise between expressivity and
efficiency?
  d. More Expressive KR for NL understanding (Any compromise?)
  e.  Any work exploring how existing representations fall short of addressing
some problems involved in modelling,  manipulating or reasoning (whether
reasoning as used to get an interpretation for a certain utterance, exchange of
utterances or what utterances follow from other utterances) with NL documents
  f. Representations that show how classical logics are not as efficient,
transparent, expressive or where a one-step application of an inference rule
require more (complex) steps in a classical environment and vice-versa; i.e. how
classical logics are more powerful, etc
  g. Building a reasoning test collection for natural language understanding
systems: any kind of reasoning (deductive, abductive, etc); for a deductive test
suite see for e.g. deliverable 16 of the FraCas project
(http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~fracas/). Also, look at textual entailment
challenges 1 and 2 
< http://www.pascal-network.org/Challenges/RTE >
  h. Comparative results (on a common test suite or a common task) of different
representations or systems that reason with NL (again any kind of reasoning).
The comparison could be either for efficiency, transparency or expressivity
  i. Knowledge acquisition systems or techniques that benefit from properties of
NL to acquire knowledge already 'coded' in NL
  j. Automated Reasoning, Theorem Proving and KR communities views on all this


NL_KR TRACK PROGRAM COMMITTEE

James ALLEN, University of Rochester, USA
Patrick BLACKBURN, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique, France
Johan BOS, University of Edinburgh, UK
Richard CROUCH, Palo Alto Research Centre, USA
Maarten DE RIJKE, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Anette FRANK, DFKI, Germany
Fernando GOMEZ, University of Central Florida, USA
Sanda HARABAGIU, University of Texas at Dallas, USA
Jerry HOBBS, Information Sciences Institute, USA
Chung Hee HWANG, Raytheon Co., USA
Shalom LAPPIN, King's College, UK
Carsten LUTZ, Dresden University of Technology, Germany
Dan MOLDOVAN,  University of Texas at Dallas, USA
Jeff PELLETIER, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Lenhart SCHUBERT, University of Rochester, USA
John SOWA, VivoMind Intelligence, Inc., USA
Jana SUKKARIEH, University of Oxford, UK (Chair)
Geoff SUTCLIFFE, Miami University, USA
Timothy WILLIAMSON, University of Oxford, UK


NL_KR TRACK INVITED SPEAKER

John SOWA, VivoMind Intelligence, Inc., US


FLAIRS 2006 INVITED SPEAKERS

Alan BUNDY, University of Edinburg, Scotland
Bob MORRIS,  Nasa Ames Research Center, USA
Mehran SAHAMI, Standford University and Google, USA
Barry SMYTH, University College Dublin, Ireland


NL-KR TRACK PROPOSED BY

Jana Sukkarieh, University of Oxford, UK
email: J.Sukkarieh.94 at cantab.net


WEB and TECH SUPPORT

Simon Dobnik, University of Oxford, UK
email: Simon.Dobnik at clg.ox.ac.uk


SUBMISSION DETAILS

Submissions must arrive no later than 21 November 2005. Only electronic
submissions will be considered. Details about submission can be found on :
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lady0641/Flairs06_NL_KR/submission_details.html


PROCEEDINGS

Printed Proceedings will be published only on demand. Proceedings on CD will be
provided to all. A special journal issue may also be arranged.


IMPORTANT DATES

* Submission of papers:  21 November,  2005
* Notification of acceptance: 20 January, 2006
* Final version of the paper is due : 13 February, 2006
* Main Conference: 11-13 May 2006
* Track: max 1 day during the main conference

Internet connections and various computer platforms and facilities will be
available at the conference site. Those interested  in running a demo please
contact Jana Sukkarieh < J.Sukkarieh.94 at cantab.net > or Simon Dobnik 
< Simon.Dobnik at clg.ox.ac.uk >.



	
-------------------------Message 2 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 22:19:51
From: Denis Akhapkin < denis at da2938.spb.edu >
Subject: 2nd Biennial Conference on Cognitive Science 

	

Full Title: 2nd Biennial Conference on Cognitive Science 
Short Title: Cogsci06 

Date: 09-Jun-2006 - 13-Jun-2006
Location: St.-Petersburg, Russia 
Contact Person: Denis Akhapkin
Meeting Email: cogsci06 at cs.msu.su
Web Site: http://www.cogsci.ru/cogsci06/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science 

Call Deadline: 15-Oct-2005 

Meeting Description:

The Second Biennial Conference on Cognitive Science
June 9-13, 2006, St. Petersburg
Second Call for Papers

The Russian Association for Cognitive Studies invites submissions for The Second
Biennial Conference on Cognitive Science is organized by the St. Petersburg
State University and will be held on 9-13 June, 2006, in St. Petersburg. Our
goal in organizing the conference is to continue the multidisciplinary dialog
started in Kazan in 2004 during the 1st Russian Conference on Cognitive Science.
Topics of interest include cognition and its evolution, intellect, thinking,
perception, consciousness, knowledge representation and acquisition, language as
a means of cognition and communication, brain mechanisms of cognition, emotion
and higher forms of behavior. Psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists,
specialists in artificial intelligence and neuroinformatics, computer
scientists, philosophers, anthropologists, as well as other researchers
interested in interdisciplinary research on cognition, are invited to submit
abstracts for oral and poster presentations. 

The working languages of the conference will be Russian and English. The
conference program will include overview lectures by leading experts in
cognitive science, round tables, oral papers, posters, and a special session for
students and junior researchers. The invited speakers are Natalya Behtereva,
Fergus Craik, Sergey Inge-Vechtomov, Riitta Hari, Ray Jackendoff, Kenneth
Hugdahl, Thomas Goschke, Ronald W. Langacker, Michael Long, Yury Natochin, Nancy
J. Nersessian, Michel Paradis, Dan Slobin, Vladimir Zinchenko and others. In
addition to scheduled sessions, four special workshops are planned during the
Conference:
- ''Segmentation of Behavior''
- ''Eye Movements, Cognition, and Communication''
- ''Emotions, Bilingualism, and Cognition''
- ''Cognitive Aspects of Ontology Design and Development''

Working languages are Russian and English

SUBMISSIONS

DEADLINE: October 15, 2005
	
There are two categories for submission: 
PAPERS (20- or 30-minute spoken presentations) and POSTERS. 
Papers on all topics related to cognition that present results from completed
but original unpublished research as well as report on current research with an
emphasis on novel approaches, methods, ideas, and perspectives are invited for
submission.

Submitted abstracts should be in Russian or English and no longer than 2 pages
(single-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 pt), including illustrations and references.
They will be peer-reviewed according to several criteria, including originality,
quality, and significance of research, relevance to a broad audience of
cognitive science researchers, and clarity of presentation. One author cannot
participate in more than two submitted papers (only once as a first author).
Papers accepted for oral presentation will be presented as scheduled talks.
Papers accepted for poster presentation will be presented at a poster session at
the conference. 
	
ADDRESS FOR ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS: cogsci06 at cs.msu.su 

FORMAT: MS Word file (or .pdf for complex graphics) attached to an e-mail
message. At the beginning of an abstract please indicate the following information:
-	the title of the paper
-	the author(s) information, including:
o	full name
o	affiliation
o	educational status or degree (undergraduate student, graduate student, Ph.D.,
etc.)
o	postal address
o	phone number
o	e-mail address
-	5 to 7 keywords
-	whether the paper is intended for one of the four special workshops.

The Program Committee will inform the authors of its decision on the acceptance
per e-mail by January 15, 2006. Abstracts of the papers accepted for publication
will be published by the beginning of the conference. Authors of top-rated
conference papers will be invited to prepare expanded versions of their papers
for publication in a special volume.

CONFERENCE FEES:
	Full fee for Russian and the CIS participants:  1500 RUR
	Reduced student fee for Russian and the CIS participants:  500 RUR
	Full fee for participants from outside of Russia and the CIS:  150 EUR
	Reduced student fee for participants from outside of the CIS:  50 EUR
	
ACCOMODATION:
A block of rooms will be reserved at two hotels in St. Petersburg, at the rate
40-100 EUR and above per day. Student participants can apply for a limited
number of hostel rooms at the St. Petersburg University Student Hostel, at the
rate of 12 EUR (participants outside of the CIS), 350 RUR for Russian and the
CIS participants. 

St. Petersburg is one of the most beautiful cities of Europe, and the Conference
takes place in the prime time --  the famous White Nights. A city-tour, an
excursion to the Hermitage and to Amber Room, and a night-boat tour along the
Neva-river will be organized

PROGRAM COMMITTEE: 
Boris M. Velichkovsky (Dresden University of Technology and Moscow State
University), Chair. 
Tatiana V. Chernigovskaya (St.-Petersburg State University), Co-Chair
Yury I. Alexandrov (Institute of Psychology, Russian Academy of Sciences), Co-Chair 
Denis N. Akhapkin (Institute of Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of
Sciences), Secretary

CHAIR OF THE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: 
Tatiana V. Chernigovskaya (St.-Petersburg State University). 

Additional information on the conference is available at the web site of the
Association for Cognitive Studies http://www.cogsci.ru/cogsci06/ or by e-mail
at: cogsci06 at cs.msu.su


 



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