2nd CoLogNET-ElsNET Symposium: CfP

[Raffaella.Bernardi]

                        CALL FOR PAPERS
	    *Submission Deadline: 1st of September*

                2nd CoLogNET-ElsNET Symposium

   "Questions and Answers: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives"

                18 December 2003, Amsterdam (NL)
        (http://www-uilots.let.uu.nl/~ctl/workshops/CES03/)

         Co-located event: 14th Amsterdam Colloquium, 19/21 December 2003
                 (http://www.illc.uva.nl/AC03/)


INVITED SPEAKERS:

Werner Ceusters (Language and Computing)
Jeroen Groenendijk (ILLC, University of Amsterdam)
Karen Sparck Jones (Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge)

SPECIAL ISSUE:

A selection of contributions will be published as special issue of the
Journal of Applied Logic (ELSEVIER). (See below for author instructions.)

BACKGROUND:

The symposium is the second of three devoted to the exploration of the
common ground between the "Logic and Natural Language Processing" Area of
CoLogNET (Network of Excellence in Computational Logic,
http://www.colognet.org/) and ELSNET (Network of Excellence in Human
Language Technologies, http://www.elsnet.org/).
The topic of this session is 'Questions and Answers'. The symposium will
address both the logical foundations underlying these notions, and
technological implications for question answering systems.

It aims at bringing together researchers interested in a
combination of theoretical and applied perspectives, and invites an
exchange of ideas between computational linguists, computer scientists and
logicians. It will feature invited talks by leading researchers from
academia and industry as well as a number of contributed talks.

SCOPE:

Human language is the only medium we have for storing and transmitting
complex information, especially propositional knowledge. Language is also
the most natural medium for solliciting information. If we want to know
something, we simply ask questions.  The adequate formal treatment of
questions has long been recognized as a central challenge for semantics.

The interpretation of questions by computer programs has been the major
problem for all attempts to make databases accessible by natural language.
Yet before simple question-answering systems could be realized,
researchers had already extended the challenge to systems that would be
able to particpate in coherent and informative dialogues.

With the explosive growth of freely available digital information on the
WWW the need for reliable question-answering keeps increasing.  A
promising new line of research concentrates on open-domain question
answering by exploiting the unstructured textual information on the web.

Against this background, we invite papers on formalization of querying
systems for integrated structured domains (like databases, ontologies,..)
as well as for open domain sources (like web-based documents). A
(non-exclusive) list of potential areas and issues of interest is given
below.

Areas:  Formal Semantics,
        Knowledge Representation,
        Discourse/Dialogue,
        Question Anwering,
        Semantic Web,
        IR -- Search Engines

Issues: Questions: linguistic analysis of interrogatives,
        theoretical and practical approaches to question semantics,
        presuppositions/implicatures in questions,
        interpretation of questions in context,
        query interpretation and query extension in IR,
        questions that do not look like questions,
        paraphrasing of questions for answer detection,
        asking for cause and reason.
        Answers:  comparing (possible) answers,
        evaluating (possible) answers, contextual binding of
        (possible) answers -- i.e., temporal and spatial dependencies,
        quantified and conditional questions,
        with quantified and conditional answers, etc.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE:

Paper submissions must be anonymous and are limited to at most 8 pages
including references, figures etc.  Only electronic submissions will be
accepted. Please email your submission -- pdf (preferred), or postscript
-- to Raffaella.Bernardi at unibz.it; write "Symposium: Submission" in the
subject. A notification will be sent to you.

Each submission should also specify the author's name, affiliation, postal
address, email address and title in the body of the email message. For
more information, please contact the workshop co-chairs.

Camera ready versions of accepted papers should use the ELSEVIER Harvard
style (http://authors.elsevier.com/).

IMPORTANT DATES:

       Deadline for Submissions: 01 September 2003
       Notification of Acceptance: 15 October 2003
       Deadline for Proceedings: 15 November 2003
       CoLogNET-ElsNET symposium: 18 December 2003
       14th Amsterdam Colloquium: 19/21 December 2003

PROGRAM COMMITTEE:

        Raffaella Bernardi (co-chair), Free University of Bolzano
        Michael Moortgat (co-chair), University of Utrecht
        Enrico Franconi, Free University of Bolzano
        Maarten de Rijke, University of Amsterdam
        Hans Uszkoreit, University of Saarland
        Bonnie Weber, University of Edinburgh

ORGANIZATION:

The CoLogNET-ElsNET symposia are organized by the ``Logic and Natural
Language Processing'' area of CoLogNET (Area 6), in collaboration with
ELSNET. CoLogNET is a three year European NoE (2002-2004) in Computational
Logic, whereas ELSNET is dedicated to human language technologies.

For any further information visit the symposium web site:
http://www-uilots.let.uu.nl/~ctl/workshops/CES03/

or contact:

Raffaella Bernardi
Free University of Bolzano-Bozen
P.zza Domenicani 3
39100 Bolzano-Bozen, Italy
Phone: +39-0471-315 620
Fax: +39-0471-315 649
e-mail: Raffaella.Bernardi at unibz.it