Corpora: workshop deadline extended (fwd)

[Svetlana Sheremetyeva]

 WORKSHOP DEADLINE EXTENDED

 Call for papers

 Analysis for Generation

     a Workshop

in conjunction with
The International Conference on
Natural Language Generation INLG'2000 (June 13-14)

 June 12, 2000, Mitzpe
Ramon, Israel

1. The reasons why the workshop is of interest at this time.

The last decade has seen an explosion in the work done in the field of
NLG with the emphasis on the development of independent NLG applications
rather than generation modules of MT systems. While it seems natural to
consider problems of
analysis and generation as two sides of a coin in such NLP applications
as MT, researchers working on "pure" generation systems sometimes treat
problems arising at every stage of generation^content specification,
sentence planning, and
surface realization^as independent. Time may be ripe for examining the
mutual utility of analysis and generation in greater detail. The impetus
is, as can be expected, the goal of minimizing system-building efforts
in language engineering.

2.  A brief technical description of the issues the workshop will
address.

The workshop proposes to address:

     ^ issues connected to the needs of analysis in generation systems
as well as

     ^ issues of interrelation between generation and analysis from the
standpoint of reusability and adaptability of analysis techniques and
tools for generation.

     ^ issues of reusability of analysis knowledge and methodology of
its acquisition for generation.

Analysis as part of generation. A wide range of complex problems which
are considered to be specific for generation^content specification,
planning, and grammaticalization^may lead one to believe that generation
is completely independent
of analysis. Most generators tacitly assume that an intermediate system
module can use the output of the preceding module as its input without
any processing (that is, analysis) of this output. This is not, however,
the case in practice.

A modicum of analysis is, in fact, an essential part of every generation
system. The input to generation systems such as raw data in tables,
lists, diagrams, elements of various databases or even text snippets
that are fed into the system directly
by a user still must first be somehow processed, that is, analyzed. The
analysis is needed to provide both the necessary content and, often,
format for the content specification (see, for example, Dale 1995, Robin
1994, Kukich 1988, McKeown et al. 1994, Bateman and Teich 1995). This
problem becomes especially important in those applications (including
multilingual ones) in which at least some input to generation is in
textual form (e.g., Sheremetyeva and Nirenburg 1996).

Many NLG systems often use a variety of analysis techniques. The
question arises whether it is possible to develop criteria to better
choose and integrate analysis techniques which could be efficiently
applied at different stages of generation.

Reusability and adaptability of analysis techniques and tools for
generation. While it is not uncommon to believe that generation and
analysis are not reversible, a number of contributions over the years
have discussed reversibility of analysis
and generation resources, especially the grammars. Appelt 1987, Barnett
and Mani 1990 and van Noord 1993, among others, demonstrate how the use
of reversible grammars may lead to efficient and flexible natural
language parsing and
generation systems. It is worth discussing constraints on reversibility.

Reusability of analysis knowledge and methodology of its acquisition for
generation. Generation and analysis are closely related in that both
processes use many similar resources, and often it is less expensive to
reorganize an existing
"analysis" resource (e.g., an analysis lexicon) than to acquire one for
generation from scratch. (Allgayer et al. 1989, Viegas and Beale 1996,
Sheremetyeva and Nirenburg 1999a, 1999b). It is worth discussing how to
establish whether a resource
built for analysis can be used for generation and at what price.
In particular the workshop will seek to address the following issues:

I. Applications of analysis in generation and types of analysis
techniques used in NLG.

II. Reusability and adaptability of knowledge resources in generation
and analysis
- knowledge representation
     - lexicon format and indexing
     - rule writing format
- knowledge acquisition and adaptation
     - reversibility of grammars
     - use of microtheories
- architectural issues
     - converting (morphological, syntactic, semantic, etc.) analyzers
into generator modules
     - architectural peculiarities of systems involving both analysis
and synthesis and reusability of their modules.

FORMAT FOR SUBMISSION

Paper submissions should consist of full papers (maximum of 12 pages,
including references, 12pt font size). Each submission should include a
separate title page providing the following information: the title, a
short abstract, names and
affiliations of all the authors, the full address of the primary author
(or alternate contact person), including phone, fax, and email. Please
send your electronic submission (PostScript or PDF format) until APRIL,10
to:

Svetlana Sheremetyeva
Computing Research Laboratory, New Mexico State University
USA Box30001/Dept.3CRL/Las Cruces New Mexico 88003-8001
505 646 5466 (voice)
505 646 6218 (fax)
lana at crl.nmsu.edu

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission deadline: APRIL, 10 (extended)
Notification of acceptance: April 20
Final paper to workshop coordinator: April 28
Workshop: June 12
INLG 2000: June13 - June 16

3. Organizing Committee

Svetlana Sheremetyeva, Chair and contact person
Computing Research Laboratory, New Mexico State University, USA
lana at crl.nmsu.edu

Sergei Nirenburg
Computing Research Laboratory, New Mexico State University, USA
sergei at crl.nmsu.edu

Richard Kittredge
Department of Linguistics and Translation, University of Montreal
kittredge at IRO.UMontreal.CA

Anna Sagvall Hein
Department of linguistics, Uppsala University
Anna at ling.uu.se

Evelyne Viegas
Microsoft Corporation
evelynev at microsoft.com

Michael Zock
Language & Cognition LIMSI - CNRS
zock at limsi.fr