[Corpora-List] CFP: First International Conference on Global Interoperability for Language Resources

[Nancy Ide]

                          Announcement and First Call for Papers

                          FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
                                                   on
          GLOBAL INTEROPERABILITY FOR LANGUAGE RESOURCES

                               City University of Hong Kong
                                            Hong Kong
                                       9-11 January 2008
                                 http://icgl.ctl.cityu.edu.hk/

Language resources, including not only corpora but also lexicons,  
knowledge bases and ontologies, grammars, etc. support the  
development of language processing applications that are increasingly  
important to the global society. Substantial effort has been devoted  
to the creation of such resources for the world’s major languages  
over the past decades, and new projects are developing similar  
resources for less widely-used languages. Some standards and best  
practices have emerged for representing and linking language corpora  
and annotations, efforts such as “Global WordNet” and the development  
of framenets in multiple languages seek to create and link specific  
lexical and semantic resources across languages, and there are  
efforts to integrate such resources into general ontologies such as  
SUMO. As the need for cross-lingual studies and applications grows,  
it is increasingly important to develop resources in the world’s  
languages that can be compared and linked, used and analyzed with  
common software, and that contain linguistic information for the same  
or comparable phenomena. We envision the eventual development of a  
“global web” of language resources, wherein, for example,  
linguistically-annotated corpora in multiple languages are inter- 
linked via the use of common categories, or categories that are  
mapped to one another; resources such as wordnets and framenets are  
linked not only to versions in different languages, but also to each  
other; and common representations enable analysis and use of  
resources in different languages and of different types within  
available systems.

The first international conference on Global Interoperability for  
Language Resources will bring together designers, developers, and  
users of corpora and other language resources from across the globe,  
in order to:

o  assess the state of the art in methods and schemes for
    resource representation, annotation, interlinkage, and
    access;
o  consider the requirements for (and obstacles to)
    multi-lingual and multi-modal interoperability and
    standardization;
o  consider the requirements for achieving interoperability
    among multi-lingual resources of different types,
    including corpora, lexicons, knowledge bases,
    ontologies, etc., as well as the systems and frameworks
    that enable their creation and exploitation;
o  consider the ways in which web technologies are and may
    be used to enable resource interoperability and inter-
    linkage;
o  work toward the definition of best practice guidelines
    and standards for language resource representation,
    annotation, and use that will enable interoperability;
o  consider means to map or harmonize linguistic
    information in order to better enable cross-lingual
    studies;
o  provide direction for developers of resources for less
    widely used languages;
o  promote collaboration and cooperation among developers
    of language resources across the globe;
o  consider ways to provide central or distributed access
    to language resources developed throughout the world.

TOPICS

Paper submissions are invited on (but not limited to) the following  
topics:

o  multi-lingual and/or multi-modal language resources,
    with focus on the mechanisms enabling interoperability;
o  support for multi-linguality and multi-modality in
    systems/frameworks for resource creation, annotation,
    use, and access;
o  existing and proposed standards for language resources,
    including standards for linguistic annotations at any
    and all linguistics levels;
o  systems, frameworks, and architectures to support the
    development and exploitation of interoperable language
    resources;
o  evaluation of existing resources, systems and
    frameworks, and/or standards in terms of support for
    interoperability;
o  harmonization, integration, and/or linking of language
    resources, including corpora, wordnets, framenets,
    ontologies, etc.;
o  web-based technologies for resource interoperability,
    inter-linkage, and access;
o  ontologies for language resources, especially for
    support of  multi-linguality, multi-culturality, and
    multi-modality.

PROCEEDINGS

Accepted papers will be included in conference proceedings, to be  
published by City University Press, Hong Kong. Beijing. A selection  
of outstanding conference presentations will be published in a  
special issue of the journal Language Resources and Evaluation.

SUBMISSIONS

Submissions should be no more than 8 pages in length, including  
bibliography and any appendices. Author instructions will be posted  
on the conference web site.

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission deadline:     31 August 2007
Notification of acceptance:    30 September 2007
Camera-ready papers due:      31 October 2007
Conference dates:                  9-11 January 2008

INVITED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Nicoletta Calzolari          Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy
Christiane Fellbaum         Princeton University, USA
David Ferruci*                 IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, USA
Charles Fillmore	              International Computer Science  
Institute, UC Berkeley, USA
Nancy Ide                       Vassar College, USA
D. Terrence Langendoen  University of Arizona and the U. S. National  
Science Foundation
* to be confirmed

CONFERENCE ORGANISING COMMITTEE

Conference Convener:     Jonathan Webster, City University of Hong Kong
Conference Co-Chairs:     Nancy Ide, Vassar College, USA
                                      Alex Chengyu Fang, City  
University of Hong Kong
Conference Secretary:     Ernest Lam, City University of Hong Kong
Conference Webmaster:  Kin Tat Ko, City University of Hong Kong
Conference Website:      http://icgl.ctl.cityu.edu.hk/
Conference Inquiry:        icgl2008 at cityu.edu.hk

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

Eric Atwell, Leeds University, UK
Harry Bunt, the University of Tilburg, Holland
Bran Bogureav, IBM, USA
Nicoletta Calzolari, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy
Key-Sun Choi, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology,  
South Korea
Khalid Choukri, Evaluations and Language Resources Distribution  
Agency, France
Chris Cieri, Linguistic Data Consortium, USA
Arienne Dwyer, University of Kansas, USA
Alex Chengyu Fang, City University, Hong Kong
Christiane Fellbaum, Princeton University, USA
Charles Fillmore, International Computer Science Institute, UC  
Berkeley, USA
Sadaoki Furui, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
Eva Hajicova, Charles University, Czech Republic
Erhard Hinrichs, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen,  Germany
Mark Huckvale, University College London, UK
Nancy Ide, Vassar College, USA
Hitoshi Isahara, National Institute of Information and Communications  
Technology, Japan
Toru Ishida, Kyoto University, Japan
Kiyong Lee, Korea University, South Korea
Duo Li, Peking University, China
Inderjeet Mani, Georgetown University, USA
Srini Narayanan, International Computer Science Institute, UC  
Berkeley, USA
Adam Pease, Articulate Software, USA
Sameer Pradhan, BBN Technologies, USA
James Pustejovsky, Brandeis University, USA
Laurent Romary, Max-Planck Digital Library, Germany
Vasile Rus, the University of Memphis, USA
Pavel Smrz, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic
Maosong Sun, Tsinghua University, China
Takenobu Tokunaga, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
Piek Vossen, Vrije University, Holland
Jonathan Webster, City University, Hong Kong
Peter Wittenburg, Max-Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Holland
Yihua Zhang, Guangdong University of Forei