19.591, Calls: Applied Ling/UK; Comp Ling/Greece

Thu Feb 21 15:30:24 UTC 2008

LINGUIST List: Vol-19-591. Thu Feb 21 2008. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 19.591, Calls: Applied Ling/UK; Comp Ling/Greece

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1)
Date: 20-Feb-2008
From: Victoria Murphy < victoria.murphy at education.ox.ac.uk >
Subject: Exploring the Relationship Between L1 and L2 

2)
Date: 20-Feb-2008
From: Charles Callaway < ccallawa at inf.ed.ac.uk >
Subject: Integrating Embodied Conversational Agents with Speech

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:26:43
From: Victoria Murphy [victoria.murphy at education.ox.ac.uk]
Subject: Exploring the Relationship Between L1 and L2
E-mail this message to a friend:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=19-591.html&submissionid=170123&topicid=3&msgnumber=1  

Full Title: Exploring the Relationship Between L1 and L2 

Date: 27-Mar-2009 - 28-Mar-2009
Location: Oxford, United Kingdom 
Contact Person: Ernesto Macaro
Meeting Email: ernesto.macaro at education.ox.ac.uk
Web Site: http://www.education.ox.ac.uk/home/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics 

Meeting Description:

First and Second Languages: Exploring the Relationship in Pedagogy-related
Contexts. 

Call for Papers

Deadline for proposals (papers): 1 July 2008
Deadline for proposals (posters): 1 October 2008
Please send proposals providing a Title and an Abstract of no more than 200
words to ernesto.macaro at education.ox.ac.uk

Plenary speakers confirmed:
- Professor Fred Genesee, Department of Psychology, McGill University
- Professor Vivian Cook, School of ECLS, University of Newcastle
- Professor Kees de Bot, Department of Applied Linguistics, University of Groningen

-------------------------Message 2 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:26:52
From: Charles Callaway [ccallawa at inf.ed.ac.uk]
Subject: Integrating Embodied Conversational Agents with Speech
E-mail this message to a friend:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=19-591.html&submissionid=170135&topicid=3&msgnumber=2 

Full Title: Integrating Embodied Conversational Agents with Speech 

Date: 21-Jul-2008 - 21-Jul-2008
Location: Patras, Greece 
Contact Person: Charles Callaway
Meeting Email: ccallawa at inf.ed.ac.uk
Web Site: http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/ws-ecai08/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 10-Apr-2008 

Meeting Description:

Workshop on Integrating Embodied Conversational Agents with Speech
and Advanced Dialogue Modeling

Combining ECAs, Affective Speech Interfaces, and Dialogue Modeling to
improve language-based computer interaction. 

First Call for Papers for

Integrating Embodied Conversational Agents with Speech
and Advanced Dialogue Modeling

A Workshop in conjunction with the European Conference on AI
Monday 21st July, 2008 -- Patras, Greece
http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/ws-ecai08/

Topics and Goal:
Language technology is a key component in human-computer interfaces, as it
increases the chances for non-technical people to quickly and successfully
interact with computers. Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) can similarly
allow for easier communication as well as provide the familiarity they are used
to in conversations in their daily lives, while reducing the required learning time.

Research into ECAs has progressed to the point where it is common to include
them as an interface option, even in deployed commercial systems like website
assistants. However, like push-button telephone menus, their dialogue
capabilities have been extremely limited, due to ECA research that has focused
mainly on other issues such as believability and simulating low-level
multi-agent turn-based communication.

This workshop is intended to address this gap between the expectations and
actual capabilities of dialogue in ECAs, focusing on application areas where
it is already common to have ECA-based interaction. We welcome those
researchers who are interested in studying adding ECAs to existing advanced
dialogue systems, as well as those with applications involving ECAs who are
interested in endowing them with the ability to communicate via richer natural
language dialogue.

A further aim of this workshop is the use of affect in speech for dialogue-based
ECAs. Speech is a very natural form of interaction, and including affect in ECA
based interfaces provides for a more natural style of human-human conversation,
just as imperfect visual details underlie the ''uncanny valley'' phenomenon.
Understanding a user's affective state and communicating the internal affective
state in an ECA-based systems should provide for a more emotionally engaging
experience for the user, while helping establish trust.

We intend to explore topics from, but not limited to, the following areas:
- Dialogue strategies involving computer participants
- Infrastructure for interpretation and generation of natural language
- Representation and reasoning needed to add ECAs to existing applications
- Detecting affect in student utterances or generating affective feedback
- Integration of language with other modalities (e.g., speech and gesture)
- Authoring tools for ECAs that have dialogue systems
- Rigorous evaluation of any of the above topics

We welcome submissions for both oral (up to 8 pages) and poster presentation (up
to 4 pages) describing original, previously unpublished research.

Important Dates:
April 10, 2008  -  Workshop paper submission deadline.
May 10, 2008    -  Notification of workshop paper acceptance.
May 26, 2008    -  Workshop camera ready copy submission
July 21, 2008   -  Workshop date.

Organizing Committee:
Charles Callaway, University of Edinburgh, UK
Andrea Corradini, University of Potsdam, Germany
Manish Mehta, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Program Committee:
Jan Alexandersson, DFKI, Germany
Lars Bo Larsen, Aalborg University, Denmark
Marc Cavazza, Teesside University, UK
Marcela Charfuelan, DFKI, Germany
Rachel Coulston, OHSU, USA
Jens Edlund, KTH, Sweden
Joakim Gustafson, KTH, Sweden
Thomas Hanneforth, University of Potsdam, Germany
Ed Kaiser, Adapx, USA
Antonio Krueger, University of Muenster, Germany
Sanjeev Kumar, Cisco Systems, USA
James Lester, North Carolina State University, USA
Brian Magerko, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Brian McWhinney, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Anton Nijholt, University of Twente, the Netherlands
Patrick Olivier, Newcastle University, UK
Ana Paiva, INESC-ID/Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal
Catherine Pelachaud, Université de Paris 8 and INRIA, France
Kari-Jouko Räihä, University of Tampere, Finland
Mark Riedl, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Markku Turunen, University of Tampere, Finland
Johannes Wagner, Southern Denmark University, Denmark

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