PsychocompLA-2007: Final call for participation

[pcomp at hunter.cuny.edu]

************* Call for Participation **************

Psychocomputational Models of Human Language Acquisition

             PsychoCompLA-2007

http://www.colag.cs.hunter.cuny.edu/psychocomp/


August 1st at CogSci 2007 - Nashville, Tennessee

Workshop Topic:

The workshop is devoted to psychologically-motivated computational models of language acquisition. That is, models that are compatible with research in psycholinguistics, developmental psychology and linguistics.

Invited Speakers:

* Elissa Newport, University of Rochester
  Statistical language learning: Computational and
  maturational constraints
* Shimon Edelman, Cornell University
  The next challenges in unsupervised language
  acquisition: dependencies and complex sentences
* Robert Frank, Johns Hopkins University
  Transformational Networks
* Alex Clark, Royal Holloway University of London
  Learnable representations of languages: something old
  and something new
* Charles Yang, University of Pennsylvania
  The next challenges in unsupervised language
  acquisition: dependencies and complex sentences
* Robert C. Berwick, MIT & Sandiway Fong, University of
  Arizona
  The Great (Penn Treebank) Robbery: When statistics is
  not enough
* Amy Perfors, MIT, Terry Regier, University of Chicago
  & Josh Tenenbaum, MIT
  Indirect evidence and the poverty of the stimulus
* Dave Cochran, University of St. Andrews
  Selective Attention and Darwinised Data-Oriented
  Parsing
* Garrett Mitchener, College of Charleston & Misha
  Becker, University of North Carolina
  A computational model of learning verb subclasses in
  natural L1 acquisition
* Sharon Goldwater, Stanford University
  Distributional Models of Syntactic Category Acquisition:
  a Comparative Analysis
* Marco Tamburelli, University College London
  Are set-theoretic concepts still useful to children?
* Nicole Sager, Seth Herd & Eliana Colunga, University of
  Colorado at Boulder
  Modeling the Development of Bilingual and Second
  Language Reading
* Andrew Olney, University of Memphis
  Semantic Heads for Grammar Induction

Workshop Description:

This workshop will present research and foster discussion centered around psychologically-motivated computational models of language acquisition, with an emphasis on the acquisition of syntax. In recent decades there has been a thriving research agenda that applies computational learning techniques to emerging natural language technologies and many meetings, conferences and workshops in which to present such research. However, there have been only a few (but growing number of) venues in which psychocomputational models of how humans acquire their native language(s) are the primary focus. By psychocomputational models we mean models that are compatible with, or might inform research in psycholinguistics, developmental psychology or linguistics.

Psychocomputational models of language acquisition are of particular interest in light of recent results in developmental psychology that suggest that very young infants are adept at detecting statistical patterns in an audible input stream. Though, how children might plausibly apply statistical 'machinery' to the task of grammar acquisition, with or without an innate language component, remains an open and important question. One effective line of investigation is to computationally model the acquisition process and determine interrelationships between a model and linguistic or psycholinguistic theory, and/or correlations between a model's performance and data from linguistic environments that children are exposed to.

Although there has been a significant amount of presented research targeted at modeling the acquisition of word categories, morphology and phonology, research aimed at modeling syntax acquisition has just begun to emerge.

Workshop Organizer:
William Gregory Sakas, City University of New York
(sakas at hunter.cuny.edu)  

Workshop Co-organizer:
David Guy Brizan, City University of New York
(dbrizan at gc.cuny.edu)

Topics and Goals:

This workshop intends to bring together researchers from cognitive psychology, computational linguistics, other computer/mathematical sciences, linguistics and psycholinguistics working on all areas of language acquisition. Diversity and cross-fertilization of ideas is the central goal.

Contact: Psycho.Comp at hunter.cuny.edu

FYI, Related 2007 Meetings

Machine Learning and Cognitive Science of Language Acquisition
21-22 June, 2007

Cognitive Aspects of Computational Language Acquisition
29 June, 2007

Exemplar-Based Models of Language Acquisition and Use
6-17 August, 2007