Call for participation: Coling 2000 workshop on Efficiency in Parsing

[John Carroll]

              EFFICIENCY IN LARGE-SCALE PARSING SYSTEMS

                      a workshop to be held at

           Coling 2000, the 18th International Conference
                   on Computational Linguistics

                     Luxembourg, 5 August 2000

This workshop will focus on methods, grammars, and data to facilitate
empirical assessment and comparison of the efficiency of large-scale
parsing systems.

Organisers

  John Carroll, University of Sussex
  Robert C. Moore, Microsoft Research
  Stephan Oepen, Saarland University


Programme

  9:00   Registration
  9:30   Efficient Large-Scale Parsing - a Survey
         John Carroll
  9:45   Invited Talk: Why not Cubic?
         Ronald M. Kaplan
 10:45   Discussion

 11.00   Coffee Break

 11:30   Large Scale Parsing of Czech
         Pavel Smrz, Ales Horak
 12:05   Precompilation of HPSG in ALE into a CFG for Fast Parsing
         John C. Brown, Suresh Manandhar
 12:40   Demo: Cross-Platform, Cross-Grammar Comparison - Can it be Done?
         Ulrich Callmeier, Stephan Oepen

 13:00   Lunch

 14:30   Demo: Tools used in creating Microsoft's Large-Scale Parsers
         Hisami Suzuki, Jessie Pinkham
 14:50   Measuring Efficiency in High-accuracy, Broad-coverage Statistical Parsing
         Brian Roark, Eugene Charniak
 15:25   Time as a Measure of Parsing Efficiency
         Robert C. Moore

 16:00   Coffee Break

 16:30   Some Experiments on Indicators of Parsing Complexity for Lexicalized Grammars
         Anoop Sarkar, Fei Xia, Aravind Joshi
 17:05   Discussion
 18:00   Close


Workshop Scope and Aims

  Interest in large-scale, grammar-based parsing has recently seen a
  large increase, in response to the complexities of language-based
  application tasks such as speech-to-speech translation, and enabled by
  the availability of more powerful computational resources and by
  efforts in large-scale and collaborative grammar engineering.

  There are two main paradigms in the evaluation and comparison of the
  performance of parsing algorithms and implemented systems: (i) the
  formal, complexity-theoretic analysis of how an algorithm behaves,
  typically focussing on worst-case time and space complexity bounds;
  and (ii) the empirical study of how properties of the parser and input
  (possibly including the grammar used) affect actual, observed run-time
  efficiency.

  It has often been noted that the theoretical study of algorithms alone
  does not (yet) suffice to provide an accurate prediction about how a
  specific algorithm will perform in practice, when used in conjunction
  with a specific grammar (or type of grammar), and when applied to a
  particular domain and task.  Therefore, empirical assessment of
  practical parser performance has become an established technique and
  continues to be the primary means of comparison among algorithms.  At
  the same time, system competence (i.e. coverage and overgeneration
  with respect to a particular grammar and test set) cannot be decoupled
  from the evaluation of parser performance, because two algorithms can
  only be compared meaningfully when they really solve the same problem,
  i.e. either directly use the same grammar, or at least achieve
  demonstrably similar competence on the same test set.

  The focus of the workshop is on large-scale parsing systems and
  precise, comparable empirical assessment.  We envisage discussion at
  the workshop will centre on methods, reference grammars, and test data
  that will facilitate improved comparability.  The workshop is intended
  to bring together representatives from sites working on grammar-based
  parsing (both in academic and corporate environments) to help the
  field focus and converge on a common, pre-standard practice in
  empirical assessment of parsing systems.


Workshop Fees

  DM 100 (regular participants), DM 50 (students); registration includes
  one copy of the workshop proceedings and refreshments.  Please register
  on-line at `https://www.coling.org/registration3.php3' (secure form).


Programme Committee

  John Carroll, University of Sussex, UK
  Gregor Erbach, Telecommunications Research Centre Vienna, Austria
  Bernd Kiefer, DFKI Saarbruecken, Germany
  Rob Malouf, Rijkuniversitet Groningen, The Netherlands
  Robert Moore, Microsoft Research, USA
  Gertjan van Noord, Rijkuniversitet Groningen, The Netherlands
  Stephan Oepen, Saarland University, Germany
  Gerald Penn, Bell Labs Research, USA
  Hadar Shemtov, Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre, USA
  Kentaro Torisawa, Tokyo University, Japan


Conference Information

  General information about Coling 2000 is at `http://www.coling.org/'.
  See `http://www.coling.org/workshops.html' for information about this
  and other Coling workshops.