6.58 Calls: Penn linguistics; Computational Lexical Semantics

The Linguist List linguist at tam2000.tamu.edu
Mon Jan 16 23:16:21 UTC 1995


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LINGUIST List:  Vol-6-58. Mon 16 Jan 1995. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 188
 
Subject: 6.58 Calls: Penn linguistics; Computational Lexical Semantics
 
Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. <aristar at tam2000.tamu.edu>
            Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at emunix.emich.edu>
 
Asst. Editors: Ron Reck <rreck at emunix.emich.edu>
               Ann Dizdar <dizdar at tam2000.tamu.edu>
               Ljuba Veselinova <lveselin at emunix.emich.edu>
               Liz Bodenmiller <eboden at emunix.emich.edu>
 
-------------------------Directory-------------------------------------
 
1)
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 95 01:09:38 EST
From: bhatt at babel.ling.upenn.edu (Rajesh Bhatt)
Subject: final call for papers
 
2)
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 1995 17:29:35 EST
From: Martha Palmer (mpalmer at linc.cis.upenn.edu)
Subject: Workshop on Computational Lexical Semantics
 
-------------------------Messages--------------------------------------
1)
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 95 01:09:38 EST
From: bhatt at babel.ling.upenn.edu (Rajesh Bhatt)
Subject: final call for papers
 
 
                          CALL FOR PAPERS
 
                 The Penn Linguistics Club Announces
 
          The Nineteenth Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium
 
             Saturday and Sunday, February 25 and 26, 1995
 
We welcome papers on any topic in linguistics. Speakers will have
twenty minutes for their presentation and five minutes for discussion
and questions.
 
Prospective speakers should submit an abstract no later than Monday,
January 16, 1995 to:
 
        The Penn Linguistics Colloquium Committee
        Department of Linguistics
        619 Williams Hall
        University of Pennsylvania
        Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6305
 
Abstracts should be no longer than 2 pages in 12 point font with 1 inch
margins and should be accompanied by an index card including your name,
affiliation (department and institution), address, email address and
the subfield of linguistics (or related discipline) that you find most
appropriate to your topic. Submission by email to plc19 at babel.ling.upenn.edu
will be greatly appreciated.
 
Abstracts will be evaluated by jurors from the University of Pennsylvania
and other institutions.
 
Colloquium participants are invited to submit their paper to the Penn Review
of Linguistics, which will be published late in the spring following the
Colloquium.
 
If you have any further questions, please contact us at the above address
or via e-mail at plc19 at babel.ling.upenn.edu
 
 
 
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2)
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 1995 17:29:35 EST
From: Martha Palmer (mpalmer at linc.cis.upenn.edu)
Subject: Workshop on Computational Lexical Semantics
 
 
        1st Annual Workshop for the IFIP Working Group for
     Natural Language Processing and Knowledge Representation
 
             Computational Lexical Semantics of Verbs
                         April 28 and 29
                        U. of Pennsylvania
                 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
   sponsored by the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science
                    at the U. of Pennsylvania
                             and IFIP
 
   PROGRAM  COMMITTEE: Martha  Palmer,  Harry Bunt,  Bonnie  Dorr,
Paul  Jacobs, Sergei  Nirenburg,  James Pustejovsky,  Patrick  St.
Dizier, Rich Thomason
 
   We  would  like  to  hold  a  two-day  workshop  on  issues  in
computational lexical  semantics.   Long recognized as a  critical
component  of   any  natural  language  system,   this  area   has
paradoxically offered  tantalizing glimpses  of a  wealth of  data
for  resolving parsing  and reference  issues, while  at the  same
time  successfully  eluded systematic  representation.     Current
implementations each  have their own  representation schemas,  and
require  customized  lexical semantic  representations,  with  the
notion of  reuse and  recycle with respect  to lexicons  seemingly
quite far  out of  reach.   However, a  recent spate of  workshops
on  dictionaries and  on lexical  semantics, current  developments
in linguistics  such as Wordnet [Miller,  1991], and Levin's  verb
classes [Levin,1993]  , as  well as the  wide-spread use of  MRDs,
(Machine Readable  Dictionaries), suggest  that the  time is  ripe
for a push towards commonality.
 
 
   The  aim of  this workshop  is  to bring  together  influential
researchers in  linguistics, text  analysis, machine  translation,
lexical semantics,  formal semantics and knowledge  representation
for  an in-depth  discussion of  fundamental issues.    The  focus
of the  workshop will  be the discussion  of the  representational
needs  of pre-selected  controversial  lexical items,  all  verbs.
Having  established  these   needs,  the  ability   of  individual
system implementations  to meet these  needs will be compared  and
contrasted.  The utility of data  structures such as multi-lingual
ontologies and  cross-linguistic verb classification schemes  will
be stressed,  with an open  discussion of possible techniques  and
methodologies for  determining such  data structures.   The  short
term benefit would  be a greater consensus on  representation that
would  allow researchers  to exchange  lexicons and  morphological
analyzers, and  to collaborate on common  corpora.  The long  term
goal is  a unified  methodology for resolving  issues in  semantic
representation that  would allow the  whole to  be built from  the
sum of its parts  - that would encourage the joint  development of
a shared core lexicon.  It is not expected  that a single workshop
can accomplish  this objective,  but rather  that open  discussion
can  allow us  to  recognize  unexpected areas  of  agreement  and
isolate areas of disagreement.   The two day workshop  would begin
each day  with presentations and panel  discussions, and break  up
into  working groups  in the  afternoons.    These working  groups
will  examine  the  pre-selected examples  and  work  through  the
comparisons of the implementations of these  examples with respect
to different  systems.   It will be necessary  to keep the  number
of participants in the workshop quite low, and  we will expect the
participants to engage in a certain amount  of advance preparation
in order to make the working groups as effective as possible.
 
 
   The two days will be organized as follows:   The first day will
concentrate  on semantic  problems in  text  analysis of  English,
with presentations of  different system approaches.   The speakers
will be  asked to  focus on  selected examples,  and give  details
about their system's treatment of the following issues:
 
   - Interaction  between  syntax  and semantics;   definition  of
     linking rules (by class, by thematic role,  by verb argument,
     etc.)
 
   - Relation between  alternations and  verb classes;  properties
     inherited by verb classes
 
   - Status of thematic  roles vs.  thematic  relations vs.   verb
     classes
 
In addition  to system  approach presentations,  we would like  to
have three  invited speakers, on  Knowledge Representation, Lexical
Semantics and Verb Classifications.
 
   The second  day the  emphasis will shift  more to  multilingual
analysis,  and  extending some  of  the techniques  discussed  the
day before  to other languages.    The presentations of  different
approaches  will look  at some  of the  same examples  as the  day
before, as well as additional ones, focusing on:
 
   - language-specific primitives vs.  interlingua primitives
 
   - language-specific ontologies vs.  an interlingua ontology
 
We would hope to have one more invited talk on Wordnet.
 
Anyone  interested  in participating in this workshop is invited to
send a 1/2 page Statement of Interest to mpalmer at linc.cis.upenn.edu
 
                        or
 
                Martha Palmer
                CIS Department
                Moore School
                U of Pennsyslvania
                Philadelphia, PA 19104-6389
 
        by Feb 17.  Participants will be notified by March 17.
 
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