Corpora: Re: 11.11, Calls: Information Retrieval, Syntax & Pragmatics

[Svetlana Sheremetyeva]

>
>                                                   CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
>
>                                                     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.
>
>
>  THE PROGRAM:
> June,12, 00
>
> 13.00 - 13.15      S. Sheremetyeva. Introduction
>
> 13.15-13.50        H. Manuelian. Reusability of Mental Representation Theory in
>                            Automatic Generation: Generating Expressions Referring to
>                           Objects  with G-TAG and RMs
>
> 13.50-14.25        D. Lonsdale. Leveraging Analysis Operators in Incremental
>                            Generation
>
> 14.25-15.00        S. Busemann. Interfacing Constraint-Based Grammars and
>                             Generation Algorithms
>
> 15.00-15.20          Break
>
> 15.20-17.00        Panel :  R. Kempson, S. Nirenburg, M.Zock, S.Sheremetyeva.
>
> PLEASE FIND  DETAILS ABOUT REGISTRATION AND ACCOMMODATION at the main conference
> homepage at
>
>                                                http://www.cs.bgu.il/~nlg2000
>
>  .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