[Corpora-List] Call for Papers: International Workshop on Formal and Computational Approaches to Multimodal Communication

[Katya Alahverdzhieva]

============================================
International Workshop on Formal and Computational Approaches to
Multimodal Communication

held under the auspices of ESSLLI 2012

August 6-17 2012
Opole, Poland

--- First Call for Papers ---

Submission deadline: February 15, 2012
=============================================

Workshop details

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
background:

* 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

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 program committee, and possibly by additional reviewers. The
accepted papers will appear in the workshop electronic
proceedings.

Important dates

Submission deadline: February 15, 2012
Notification of workshop contributors: April 15, 2012
Final submission of camera-ready copies: May 15, 2012
Workshop dates: exact dates to be announced soon, but within August 
6-17, 2011

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 Program Committee
(to be announced)


-- 
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.


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