19.703, Calls: Computational Ling/UK; General Ling/USA

Mon Mar 3 00:27:41 UTC 2008

LINGUIST List: Vol-19-703. Sun Mar 02 2008. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 19.703, Calls: Computational Ling/UK; General Ling/USA

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1)
Date: 01-Mar-2008
From: Stephan Oepen < oe at ifi.uio.no >
Subject: Cross-Framework and Cross-Domain Parser Evaluation 

2)
Date: 29-Feb-2008
From: Stefan Mummert < stefan.mummert at arts.monash.edu.au >
Subject: Cross-Cultural Linguistics: RMMLA Convention

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2008 19:23:52
From: Stephan Oepen [oe at ifi.uio.no]
Subject: Cross-Framework and Cross-Domain Parser Evaluation
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Full Title: Cross-Framework and Cross-Domain Parser Evaluation 

Date: 23-Aug-2008 - 23-Aug-2008
Location: Manchester, United Kingdom 
Contact Person: Stephan Oepen
Meeting Email: oe at ifi.uio.no
Web Site: http://lingo.stanford.edu/events/08/pe/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 05-May-2008 

Meeting Description:

This workshop aims to bring together developers of broad-coverage parsers who
are interested in questions of target representations and cross-framework and
cross-domain evaluation and benchmarking. 

Call for Papers

22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics
Workshop on Cross-Framework and Cross-Domain Parser Evaluation
August 23 -- Manchester, UK

http://lingo.stanford.edu/events/08/pe/

Background and Motivation:
Broad-coverage parsing has come to a point where distinct approaches can offer
(seemingly) comparable performance: statistical parsers acquired from the PTB;
data-driven dependency parsers; 'deep' parsers trained off enriched treebanks
(in linguistic frameworks like CCG, HPSG, or LFG); and hybrid `deep' parsers,
employing hand-built grammars in, for example, HPSG, LFG, or LTAG. Evaluation
against trees in the WSJ section of the Penn Treebank (PTB) has helped advance
parsing research over the course of the past decade. Despite some scepticism,
the crisp and, over time, stable task of maximizing ParsEval metrics over PTB
trees has served as a dominating benchmark. However, modern treebank parsers
still restrict themselves to only a subset of PTB annotation; there is reason to
worry about the idiosyncrasies of this particular corpus; it remains unknown how
much the ParsEval metric (or any intrinsic evaluation) can inform NLP
application developers; and PTB-style analyses leave a lot to be desired in
terms of linguistic information.

This workshop aims to bring together developers of broad-coverage parsers who
are interested in questions of target representations and cross-framework and
cross-domain evaluation and benchmarking. From informal discussions that the
co-organizers had among themselves and with colleagues, it seems evident that
there is comparatively broad awareness of current issues in parser evaluation,
and a lively interest in detailed exchange of experience (and beliefs).
Specifically, the organizers hope to attract representatives from diverse
parsing approaches and frameworks, ranging from 'traditional' treebank parsing,
over data-driven dependency parsing, to parsing in specific linguistic
frameworks. Quite likely for the first time in the history of these approaches,
there now exist large, broad-coverage, parsing systems representing diverse
traditions that can be applied to running text, often producing comparable
representations. In our view, these recent developments present a new
opportunity for re-energizing parser evaluation research.

The workshop organizers invite papers on all aspects of parser evaluation,
qualitative and quantitative, including but not limited to:
- in-depth or contrastive evaluation of parsing systems;
- methology, test data, and technology for parser evaluation;
- reflections on existing standards and evaluation metrics;
- correlations between intrinsic and extrinsic parser evaluation;
- proposals for new target representations or success measures. 

Seeing the general theme of this workshop, submissions that discuss aspects of
cross-framework, cross-domain, or cross-linguistic parser evaluation are
especially welcome.

One of the workshop goals is to establish an improved shared knowledge
among participants of the strengths and weaknesses of extant annotation
and evaluation schemes.  In order to create a joint focus and in-depth
discussion, there will be a `lightweight' shared task. For a selection of 50
sentences (of which ten are considered obligatory, the rest optional) for which
PTB, GR, and PropBank (and maybe other) annotations are available, we will
invite contributors to scrutinize existing gold-standard representations
contrastively, identify perceived deficiencies, and sketch what can be done to
address these. As an optional component, participants in the shared task are
welcome to include 'native', framework-specific output representations and
actual results for a parsing system of their choice (be it their own or not) in
the contrastive study.  In either case, submissions to the shared task should
aim to reflect on the nature of different representations, highlight which
additional distinctions are made in either scheme, and argue why these are
useful (for some task) or unmotivated (in general).

Please see the workshop web pages for detailed submission information:
http://lingo.stanford.edu/events/08/pe/

Important Dates:
- Initial Call for Papers: March 1
- Shared Task Release: March 22
- Paper Submission Deadline: May 5
- Notification of Acceptance: June 6
- Camera-Ready Papers Deadline: July 1
- One-Day Workshop: August 23

Workshop Organizers and Programme Committee:
The workshop aims to appeal to a wide range of researchers across frameworks,
hence it has a relatively large and diverse group of organizers.  The
co-organizers will jointly make all decisions regarding the workshop form and
programme, and it is expected that most of the co-organizers participate in the
actual workshop. 
- Johan Bos, University of Rome `La Sapienza' (Italy)
- Edward Briscoe, University of Cambridge (UK)
- Aoife Cahill, University of Stuttgart (Germany)
- John Carroll, University of Sussex (UK)
- Stephen Clark, Oxford University (UK)
- Ann Copestake, University of Cambridge (UK)
- Dan Flickinger, Stanford University (USA)
- Josef van Genabith, Dublin City University (Ireland)
- Julia Hockenmaier, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA)
- Aravind Joshi, University of Pennsylvania (USA)
- Ronald Kaplan, Powerset, Inc. (USA)
- Tracy Holloway King, PARC (USA)
- Sandra Kuebler, Indiana University (USA)
- Dekang Lin, Google Inc. (USA)
- Jan Tore Lønning, University of Oslo (Norway)
- Christopher Manning, Stanford University (USA)
- Yusuke Miyao, University of Tokyo (Japan)
- Joakim Nivre, Växjö and Uppsala Universities (Sweden)
- Stephan Oepen, University of Oslo (Norway) and CSLI Stanford (USA)
- Kenji Sagae, Tokyo University (Japan)
- Nianwen Xue, University of Colorado (USA)
- Yi Zhang, DFKI GmbH and Saarland University (Germany) 

Please see the workshop web pages for additional contact information.

-------------------------Message 2 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2008 19:23:57
From: Stefan Mummert [stefan.mummert at arts.monash.edu.au]
Subject: Cross-Cultural Linguistics: RMMLA Convention
E-mail this message to a friend:
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Full Title: Cross-Cultural Linguistics: RMMLA Convention 

Date: 09-Oct-2008 - 11-Oct-2008
Location: Reno, Nevada, USA 
Contact Person: Stefan Mummert
Meeting Email: stefan.mummert at arts.monash.edu.au
Web Site: http://rmmla.wsu.edu/conferences/default.asp 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 31-Mar-2008 

Meeting Description:

Special session at RMMLA Convention: Cross-Cultural Linguistics and Contrastive
Rhetoric: Issues and Approaches in Language Analysis and Teaching 

Call for Papers

Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association
2008 Convention
Reno, Nevada, October 9-11

<http://rmmla.wsu.edu/conferences/default.asp>

Description: Focus on comparisons between languages: pragmatics, semantics,
syntax, morphology, phonetics/phonology, which contribute to understanding
linguistic structures/functions, and their application in foreign language teaching.

Please submit your proposals to: 
Stefan Mummert, School of LCL, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia 
stefan.mummert at arts.monash.edu.au

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