23.1123, Calls: Computational Ling, Pragmatics, Semantics, Syntax, Phonology/Poland

Tue Mar 6 16:07:39 UTC 2012

LINGUIST List: Vol-23-1123. Tue Mar 06 2012. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 23.1123, Calls: Computational Ling, Pragmatics, Semantics, Syntax, Phonology/Poland

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Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:06:53
From: Gianluca Giorgolo [gianluca_giorgolo at carleton.ca]
Subject: ESSLLI 2012 Workshop on Formal and Computational Approaches to Multimodal Communication

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Full Title: ESSLLI 2012 Workshop on Formal and Computational Approaches to Multimodal Communication 
Short Title: FoCoMC 

Date: 06-Aug-2012 - 10-Aug-2012
Location: Opole, Poland 
Contact Person: Katya Alahverdzhieva
Meeting Email: K.Alahverdzhieva at sms.ed.ac.uk
Web Site: http://xerxes.carleton.ca/~giorgolo/gesture-workshop/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; Phonology; Pragmatics; Semantics; Syntax 

Call Deadline: 16-Mar-2012 

Meeting Description:

Face-to-face dialogue is consistently accompanied by co-verbal behaviours playing an active role in achieving a successful communication. A non-exhaustive list of the co-verbal actions that take part in communication includes hand gestures, head movements, eye-gaze dynamics, etc. The workshop aims at collecting state-of-the-art research in the area of multimodal communication. The focus is on formal and computational approaches that bridge the gap between novel research findings and well-established methods from linguistics, human-human interaction and human-machine interaction.

The study of co-verbal components of communication is still a young research field, in particular regarding formal and computational approaches. However, the interest in the field is rapidly growing as the increasing number of researchers interested in it and the various dedicated conferences show.

The workshop is of interest for researchers of various backgrounds:

- For formal linguists working on natural language: the workshop is an opportunity for formal linguist to extend their perspective on the properties that define language. Co-verbal forms of communication are deeply connected with the structures of natural language - numerous studies have found a systematic link between co-verbal behaviour on one hand and prosodic, syntactic, semantic, and discourse structures on the other. Studying the interplay between the distinct modalities of communication not only brings up new challenging research questions related to the nature of language but it also sheds light on well-known problems in linguistics (e.g. embodied nature of meaning, aspectuality, referential 'space').

- For computational linguists and researchers interested in human-machine interaction: the possibility of exploiting the information coming from different sources is becoming an important technique in the toolkit of natural language understanding. Further to this, the increasing ubiquitousness of multimodal devices is opening up new ways of interaction between users and machines. In both cases, co-verbal behaviour is an important factor that scientists have to take into account. Collecting reliable multimodal data is becoming more and more viable (for example with the introduction of technologies like time-of-flight cameras and other similar devices) and it is a necessary condition to design human-machine interaction systems.

The workshop aims at providing a platform to discuss these topics among the researchers already interested in formal and computational aspects of multimodal communication, and to introduce the current state of research to the participants of ESSLLI that are not familiar with these phenomena.

A non-exhaustive list of topics covered by the workshop includes:

- Co-verbal actions and linguistic structures
- Resources, e.g., tools, corpora, annotation guidelines, for studying (the interplay between) the distinct modalities of communication
- Multimodal interfaces addressing the usage of gaze, gesture, speech, etc.
- Modelling human behaviour for the purposes of human-computer interaction systems
- Experimental design for studying multimodal behaviour

Invited Speakers:

Costanza Navarretta (University of Copenhagen) 

Final Call for Papers:

Extended submission deadline: March 16, 2012

Workshop Format:

Abstracts are invited for 30-minute talks (20 min talk + 10 min questions), 3 each day of the workshop. The workshop will be opened by a 60-minute main session and closed by a 30-minute session for concluding remarks and feedback.

Submission Details:

Authors are invited to submit abstracts describing original and unpublished work. Abstracts detailing ongoing work will be considered within the discretion of the programme committee. Submissions should be anonymous, and must not exceed 2 pages including examples and references. All abstracts must be submitted electronically in pdf form via Easychair:

https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=focomc2012

Each submission will be anonymously reviewed by three members of the programme committee, and possibly by additional reviewers. The accepted papers will appear in the workshop electronic proceedings.

Important Dates:

Submission deadline: March 16, 2012
Notification of workshop contributors: May 1, 2012
Final submission of camera-ready copies: June 1, 2012
Workshop dates: August 6-10, 2012

Practical Information:

All workshop participants including the presenters will be required to register for ESSLLI. The registration fee for authors presenting a paper will correspond to the early student/workshop speaker registration fee. Moreover, a number of additional fee waiver grants will be made available by the ESSLLI Organising Committee on a competitive basis and workshop participants are eligible to apply for those. There will be no reimbursement for travel costs and accommodation. Workshop speakers who have difficulty in finding funding should contact the local organizing committee to ask for the possibilities for a grant.

Further information about ESSLLI 2012:

http://www.esslli2012.pl

Workshop Webpage:

http://xerxes.carleton.ca/~giorgolo/gesture-workshop/

Workshop Organisers:

Gianluca Giorgolo (Carleton University)
Katya Alahverdzhieva (University of Edinburgh)

Workshop Scientific Committee:

Alex Lascarides (University of Edinburgh)
Hannes Rieser (Bielefeld University)
Katya Alahverdzhieva (University of Edinburgh)
Gianluca Giorgolo (Carleton University)

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