18.1375, Calls: Computational Ling/Germany; General Ling/Germany

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LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1375. Mon May 07 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 18.1375, Calls: Computational Ling/Germany; General Ling/Germany

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===========================Directory==============================  

1)
Date: 06-May-2007
From: Thomas Hanneforth < tom at ling.uni-potsdam.de >
Subject: Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing 

2)
Date: 05-May-2007
From: Uli Sauerland < uli at alum.mit.edu >
Subject: Experimental Pragmatics 2007

 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 13:06:46
From: Thomas Hanneforth < tom at ling.uni-potsdam.de >
Subject: Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing 
 

Full Title: Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing 
Short Title: FSMNLP 2007 

Date: 14-Sep-2007 - 16-Sep-2007
Location: Potsdam, Germany 
Contact Person: Thomas Hanneforth
Meeting Email: fsmnlp2007 at ling.uni-potsdam.de
Web Site: http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/fsmnlp2007 

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 03-Jun-2007 

Meeting Description

The aim of the FSMNLP 2007 is to bring together members of the academic,
research, and industrial community working on finite-state based models in
language technology, computational linguistics, linguistics and cognitive
science or on related theory or methods in fields such as computer science and
mathematics. The workshop will be a forum for researchers working
- on NLP applications,
- on the theoretical and implementation aspects, or
- on their combination. 

Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing - FSMNLP 2007
Second Call for Papers

Sixth International Workshop
University of Potsdam, Germany
14-16 September 2007
http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/fsmnlp2007
mailto://fsmnlp2007@ling.uni-potsdam.de

Papers due: 3 June 2007

We invite novel high-quality papers that are related to the themes including but
not limited to:

1. NLP applications and linguistic aspects of finite-state methods

The topic includes but is not restricted to:

- speech, sign language, phonology, hyphenation, prosody
- scripts, text normalization, segmentation, tokenization, indexing
- morphology, stemming, lemmatisation, information retrieval, spelling correction
- syntax, POS tagging, partial parsing, disambiguation, information extraction
- machine translation, translation memories, glossing, dialect adaptation
- annotated corpora and treebanks, semi-automatic annotation, error mining,
searching 

2. Finite-state models of language

With this more focused topic (inside 1) we invite papers on aspects that
motivate sufficiency of finite-state methods or their subsets for capturing
various requirements of natural language processing. The topic includes but is
not restricted to:

- performance, linguistic applicability, finite-state hypotheses
- Zipf's law and coverage, model checking against finite corpora
- regular approximations under parameterized complexity, limitations and
definitions of relevant complexities such as ambiguity, recursion, crossings,
rule applications, constraint violations, reduplication, exponents,
discontinuity, path-width, and induction depth
- similarity inferences, dissimilation, segmental length, counter-freeness,
asynchronous machines
- garden-path sentences, deterministic parsing, expected parses, Markov chains
- incremental parsing, uncertainty, reliability/variance in stochastic parsing,
linear sequential machines 

3. Practices for building lexical transducers for the world's languages.

The topic accounts for usability of finite-state methods in NLP. It includes but
is not restricted to:

- required user training and consultation, learning curve of non-specialists
- questionnaires, discovery methods, adaptive computer-aided glossing and
interlinearization
- example-based grammars, semi-automatic learning, user-driven learning (see
topic 6 too)
- low literacy level and restricted availability of training data, writing
systems/phonology under development, new non-Roman scripts, endangered languages
- linguist's workbenches, stealth-to-wealth parser development
- experiences of using existing tools (e.g. TWOL) for computational morphology
and phonology 

4. Specification and implementation of sets, relations and multiplicities in NLP
using finite automata

The topic includes but is not restricted to:

- regular rule formalisms, grammar systems, expressions, operations, closure
properties, complexities
- algorithms for compilation, approximation, manipulation, optimization, and
lazy evaluation of finite machines
- finite string and tree automata, transducers, morphisms and bimorphisms
- weights, registers, multiple tapes, alphabets, state covers and partitions,
representations
- locality, constraint propagation, star-free languages, data vs. query complexity
- logical specification, MSO(SLR, matches), FO(Str,<), LTL, generalized
restriction, local grammars 

5. Constraint-based grammars and k-ary regular relations

With this more focused topic (inside 4) we invite researchers from related
fields (computational linguists, mathematicians and computer scientists) into
discussion that is motivated by constraint-based, declarative approaches to
morphology/phonology and computational problems related to them. For example,
regular relations in general are not closed under intersection, but restricted
use of intersection of relations have proven useful in computational phonology
and morphology, and their implementations such as KIMMO, PC-KIMMO, TWOLC, SEMHE,
AMAR, WFSC, etc. In the future, new useful approaches and implementations may
come up. The approaches may also propagate to other application areas in natural
language processing, including finite-state syntax and query languages for
parallel annotations in linguistic corpora. The topic includes but is not
restricted to:

- multi-tape automata, same-length relations and partition-based morphology,
Semitic morphology
- autosegmental phonology, shuffle, trajectories, synchronization, segmental
anchoring, alignment constraints, syllable structure, partial-order reductions
- problems related to auto-intersection of multi-tape automata e.g. marked Post
Correspondence Problem
- varieties of regular languages and relations, descriptive complexity of
finite-state based grammars
- automaton-based approaches to declarative constraint grammars, constraints in
optimality theory
- parallel corpus annotations, register automata, acyclic timed automata 

6. Machine learning of finite-state models of natural language

This topic includes but is not restricted to:

- learning regular rule systems, learning topologies of finite automata and
transducers
- parameter estimation and smoothing, lexical openness
- computer-driven grammar writing, user-driven grammar learning, discovery
procedures
- data scarcity, realistic variations of Gold's model, learnability and
cognitive science
- incompletely specified finite-state networks
- model-theoretic grammars, gradient well/ill-formedness 

7. Finite-state manipulation software (with relevance to the above themes)

This topic includes but is not restricted to

- regular expression pre-compilers such as regexopt, xfst2fsa, standards and
interfaces for finite-state based software components, conversion tools
- tools such as LEXC, Lextools, Intex, XFST, FSM, GRM, WFSC, FIRE Engine, FADD,
FSA/UTR, SRILM, FIRE Station and Grail
- free or almost free software such as MIT FST, Carmel, RWTH FSA, FSA Utilities,
FSM<2.0>, Unitex, OpenFIRE, Vaucanson, SFST, PCKIMMO, MONA, Hopskip, ASTL,
UCFSM, HaLeX, SML, and WFST
- results obtainable with such exploration tools as automata, Autographe, Amore,
and TESTAS
- visualization tools such as Graphviz and Vaucanson-G
- language-specific resources and descriptions, freely available benchmarking
resources 

The descriptions of the topics above are not meant to be complete, and should
extend to cover all traditional FSMNLP topics. Submitted papers or abstracts may
fall in several categories.



	
-------------------------Message 2 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 13:07:25
From: Uli Sauerland < uli at alum.mit.edu >
Subject: Experimental Pragmatics 2007 

	

Full Title: Experimental Pragmatics 2007 
Short Title: XPRAG 2007 

Date: 13-Dec-2007 - 16-Dec-2007
Location: Berlin, Germany 
Contact Person: Uli Sauerland
Meeting Email: xprag at zas.gwz-berlin.de
Web Site: http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/xprag 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 31-Aug-2007 

Meeting Description:

Human communication has always been a focus not only of linguistics, but also
experimental psychology. While traditional linguistic research based on
speakers' judgments will always be the fastest and most reliable way to develop
a general theory of the adult speaker, formal experimental research makes two
important contributions to linguistic theory: (i) populations other than
competent adults can be investigated and (ii) differentiated measurements can be
taken of competent adults and others. Therefore, linguistic and formal
experimental research are not separable, also in the area of semantics and
pragmatics. But only in recent years, a critical mass of researchers with deep
theoretical knowledge and access to experimental methods has emerged such that
one can speak of a field of Experimental Pragmatics. The field has grown and
will continue to grow because of the development and refinement of experimental
methods and new techniques based on technological advances. This conference
serves to keep researchers in the field abreast of current research and to
provide an overview of the field to linguists and psychologists not actively
involved yet. 

Experimental Pragmatics 2007 is a sequel to three very successful, independently
organized meetings in 2001 in Lyon, 2003 in Milan, and 2005 in Cambridge (UK).
However, it differs from these meetings by addressing more topics and connecting
also to results in semantics. The earlier successful meetings focused mostly on
implicatures in acquisition and polarity. The planned topics at this meeting
are: types, negation, implicatures and the semantics-pragmatics boundary. The
conference is planned around four three-hour sessions for each of the four
topics just mentioned. Each session will consist of two invited one-hour
lectures and a subsequent one-hour discussion on the topic. The discussion will
be introduced by an invited commentary of between 20 and 30 minute length and
then the discussion will be open to all participants. In addition to the four
thematic sessions, the conference will feature a eight submitted presentations
each 20 min plus 10 min for discussion long, and a large number of poster
presentations. The submitted talks and poster presentations are selected on the
basis of a double-blind abstract evaluation process involving the invited
speakers. The reviewers take into account scientific quality of the abstract
(primary) and special interest for the four themes of the conference (secondary).

Invited speakers by thematic session:

Evening lecture on language and cognition: Ted Gibson (MIT)
Types: Martin Hackl (Pomona), Liina Pylkkanen (NYU), comments: Bart Geurts
(Nijmegen)
Negation: Barbara Kaup (TU Berlin), Andrea Gualmini (Utrecht), comments: Ira
Noveck (ICS Lyon) 
Implicatures: Napoleon Katsos (Cambridge), Julie Sedivy (Brown), comments: Ted
Gibson (MIT)
Semantics-pragmatics boundary: Reinhard Blutner (Amsterdam), tba., comments:
Richard Breheny (UCL)

Important Dates:

August 31st, 2007  Abstract Submission Deadline
Abstracts should be one-page plus an additional page for examples, graphs,
tables, and references.  We're planning to use an electronic abstract submission
system and will announce the submission details in a second call.

September 29th, 2007 Abstract review process complete 

December 13th, 6 pm: Evening lecture by Ted Gibson (MIT) on language and
cognition location: Berlin, Germany, Schuetzenstr. 18, new building of ZAS (near
Checkpoint Charlie)

December 14-16th, 2007: Main Conference, 9 a.m. till 6:30 pm
location: Berlin, Germany, Unter den Linden 6, main building of Humboldt University

Organizers: Uli Sauerland (ZAS, Berlin), Anton Benz (ZAS, Berlin), Manfred
Krifka (Humboldt University and ZAS, Berlin), Kazuko Yatsushiro (Humboldt
University, Berlin)

Conference Sponsors: German Research Council DFG (Main Conference Sponsor); ZAS;
Humboldt University; European Union FP6, project CHLaSC (Evening Lecture on
December 13th)




 




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