Arabic-L:LING:Computational Approaches Deadline Extended

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Tue 12 Apr  2005
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1) Subject:Computational Approaches Deadline Extended

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1)
Date: 12 Apr  2005
From:mdiab at cs.columbia.edu
Subject:Computational Approaches Deadline Extended


                 CALL FOR PAPERS

               ACL 2005 WORKSHOP ON

     COMPUTATIONAL APPROACHES TO SEMITIC LANGUAGES

          University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

                 June 29, 2005

  **********Extended Submission Deadline April 15 2005 ******************

For submissions we are using the START system,
  http://www.softconf.com/start/ACLSemLang05/submit.html


  WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
  ====================

  The Semitic family includes many languages and dialects spoken by a
large
  number of native speakers (around 300 Million). However, Semitic
languages
  are still understudied. The most prominent members of this family are
  Arabic
  and its dialects, Hebrew, Amharic, Aramaic, Maltese and Syriac. Beyond
  their
  shared ancestry which is apparent through pervasive cognate sharing, a
  common characteristic of these languages is the rich and productive
  pattern-based morphology and similar syntactic constructions.

  An increasing body of computational linguistics work is starting to
appear
  for both Arabic and Hebrew. Arabic alone, as the largest member of the
  Semitic family, has been receiving a lot of attention lately in terms
of
  dedicated workshops and conferences. These include, but are not limited
  to,
  the workshop on Arabic Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2002), a
  special session on Arabic processing in Traitement Automatique du
Langage
  Naturel (TALN 2004), the Workshop on Computational Approaches to Arabic
  Script-based Languages (COLING 2004), and the NEMLAR Arabic Language
  Resources and Tools Conference in Cairo, Egypt (2004). This phenomenon
has
  been coupled with a relative surge in resources for Arabic due to
  concerted
  efforts by the LDC and ELDA/ELRA. However, there is an apparent lag in
the
  development of resources and tools for other Semitic languages. Often,
  work
  on individual Semitic languages, unfortunately, still tends to be done
  with
  limited awareness of ongoing research in other Semitic languages.
Within
  the
  last four years, only three workshops addressed Semitic languages: an
ACL
  2002 Workshop on Computational Approaches to Semitic Languages and an
MT
  Summit IX Workshop on Machine Translation for Semitic Languages in
2003,
  and
  the EAMT 2004, held in Malta, had a special session on Semitic
languages.

  This workshop is a sequel to the ACL 2002 workshop and shares its goals
  of:

  (i) heightening awareness amongst Semitic-language researchers of
shared
  breakthroughs and challenges,
  (ii) highlighting issues common to all Semitic languages as much as
  possible,
  (iii) encouraging the potential for developing coordinated approaches;
and
  (iv) in addition, leveraging resource and tool creation for less
prominent
  members of the Semitic language family.


  WORKSHOP TOPICS
  ===============

  We invite submissions of papers addressing any of the following issues:

  - Computational approaches to phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics
and
  pragmatics of Semitic languages
  - Applications for Semitic languages such as, but not limited to,
machine
  translation, summarization and information retrieval
  - Tools for processing of Semitic languages (e.g. POS taggers, parsers,
  etc.)
  - Empirical studies of unique/specific phenomena in Semitic languages
  - Creating computational resources for Semitic languages
  - Comparative computational studies of Semitic languages
  - Leveraging resources in other languages (Semitic or other) to create
  resources and tools for Semitic languages

  While we invite submissions addressing any of the above topics, or
related
  issues, we particularly welcome work involving Semitic languages with
  scarce
  resources.


  WORKSHOP FORMAT
  ===============


  The workshop will last for one day, June 29th, and will consist of:

  - An invited talk (by Salim Roukos, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center)
  - Several sessions of regular paper presentations
  - A panel discussion drawing on aspects of the participating papers and
  their implications for future collaboration and coordination



  SUBMISSION INFORMATION
  ======================

Submissions will consist of regular full papers of max. 8 pages,
formatted
following the ACL 2005 guidelines
(http://www.aclweb.org/acl2005/index.php?stylefiles). All submissions
must
be anonymous. Authors are requested to prepare their manuscripts in a
manner which disguises their identities, affiliation status, etc.
Typically,
this means (1) omitting names and affiliations from the title page; (2)
refraining from excessive self-citation in the bibliography; and
(3)omitting
explicit references the authors' previous work in the text body.
Please send submissions in either .pdf or .ps form. Both submission and
review processes will be handled electronically.

For submissions we are using the START system,
http://www.softconf.com/start/ACLSemLang05/submit.html

In a separate email with subject SemCL05 please send names of Authors
and
name of contact person. We are pursuing the possibility of publishing a
selection of accepted papers in a journal special issue on Semitic
computational linguistics.


  IMPORTANT DATES
  ===============

  Regular paper submissions			April 15
  Notification (short and regular papers)	May 4
  Camera-ready papers				May 15


  ORGANIZERS
  ==========

  Kareem Darwish (German University in Cairo, Egypt) kareem at darwish.org
  Mona Diab (Columbia University, USA) mdiab at cs.columbia.edu
  Nizar Habash (Columbia University, USA) habash at cs.columbia.edu



  CONTACT
  =======


  For questions, comments, etc. please send email to
  semwksp-acl05 at ccls.columbia.edu



  PROGRAM COMMITTEE
  =================

  Ibrahim A. Alkharashi (King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology,
  Saudi Arabia)
  Tim Buckwalter (Linguistic Data Consortium, USA)
  Violetta Cavalli-Sforza (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
  Yaacov Choueka (Bar-Ilan University, Israel)
  Joseph Dichy (Lyon University, France)
  Martha Evens (Illinois Institute of Technology, USA)
  Ali Farghaly (SYSTRAN Software, Inc.)
  Alexander Fraser (USC/ISI)
  Andrew Freeman (Mitre)
  Alon Itai, (Technion, Israel)
  George Kiraz (Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, USA)
  Katrin Kirchhoff (University of Washington, USA)
  Alon Lavie (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
  Mohamed Maamouri (Linguistic Data Consortium, USA)
  Uzzi Ornan (Technion, Israel)
  Anne De Roeck (Open University, UK)
  Michael Rosner (University of Malta, Malta)
  Salim Roukos (IBM, USA)
  Khalil Sima'an (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)
  Abdelhadi Soudi (ENIM, Rabat, Morocco)
  Shuly Wintner (University of Haifa, Israel)
  Remi Zajac (SYSTRAN Software, USA)

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End of Arabic-L:  12 Apr  2005