16.350, Calls: Computational Linguistics

[LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-16-350. Fri Feb 04 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.350, Calls: Computational Linguistics

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Wayne State U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>

Reviews (reviews at linguistlist.org)
        Sheila Collberg, U of Arizona
        Terry Langendoen, U of Arizona

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, Wayne
State University, and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Sadie Williams <sadie at linguistlist.org>
================================================================

As a matter of policy, LINGUIST discourages the use of abbreviations
or acronyms in conference announcements unless they are explained in
the text.

To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at
http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html.



===========================Directory==============================

1)
Date: 03-Feb-2005
From: Jose Luis Vicedo < vicedo at dlsi.ua.es >
Subject: Computational Linguistics: Question Answering in Restricted Domains

	
-------------------------Message 1 ----------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 09:10:42
From: Jose Luis Vicedo < vicedo at dlsi.ua.es >
Subject: Computational Linguistics: Question Answering in Restricted Domains


Full Title: Computational Linguistics

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics

Call Deadline: 04-Jul-2005

CALL FOR PAPERS

SPECIAL ISSUE of COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS
on QUESTION ANSWERING IN RESTRICTED DOMAINS


GUEST EDITORS

* Diego Molla
  Macquarie University
  diego at ics.mq.edu.au

* Jose Luis Vicedo
  Alicante University
  vicedo at dlsi.ua.es

TOPIC AREA

In early descriptions of AI problems, question answering (QA) was typically used
to illustrate Natural Language Understanding (NLU) tasks. It could be argued
that QA is an ideal task to advance knowledge in inference, NLU, and
Computational Linguistics (CL) in general.

There has been a recent surge of interest in research in QA, but much of that
research focuses on the mining of answers from open-domain text collections.

The use of restricted domains, on the other hand, presents interesting
challenges and opportunities that may take research to a new stage.

Different domains may present different stylistic conventions. Also, restricted
domains may use terminology that is not stored in conventional lexical
resources. As a consequence, approaches devised for open-domain systems may
encounter difficulties when applied to these specific domains, thus raising the
question of how portable and re-usable these systems can be, and, on the other
hand, which kinds of additional or new NLP techniques are needed.

The most salient opportunities derive from the nature of the restricted domains
and the sorts of questions that are asked in these domains. Restricted domains
enable the development and use of knowledge and lexical resources that would be
impossible to produce for open domains. Moreover, the kind of questions users
desire to pose to the QA system are dependent on the domain, and typically they
require a more complex processing than the 'factual' questions generally used in
the common evaluations of open-domain QA. Restricted domains are therefore ideal
for the development of logic-based approaches and the integration of reasoning
methods that would handle questions requiring complex inferences.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

-Comparisons between open-domain and restricted-domain QA.
-Characterisations of types of domains and technology required for QA on those
domains.
-Portability of QA systems between different domains.
-Generation of answers from multiple documents.
-Use of ontologies.
-Inference and reasoning.
-Question and information source analysis and representation.
-Knowledge representation.
-Answer validation.
-Question type classification and analysis.
-Evaluation.

Papers should not simply describe an existing system. Of primary interest is the
theoretical basis of the work presented. We will especially welcome papers that
show the impact of the above topics on aspects of QA in restricted domains that
may give an insight towards advanced research in CL and NLP.

SCHEDULE

     31 Jan 2005 - Call for papers issued
      4 Jul 2005 - Papers due
     17 Oct 2005 - Notification to authors

SUBMISSION PROCESS

Only electronic submission will be accepted. All submissions should be sent to
the CL journal < compling at ics.mq.edu.au > in accordance with the instructions
provided at (http://www.aclweb.org/cl/); in the subject line of your email,
please ensure that you indicate that the paper is intended for the QA Special Issue.

In addition to following the procedure described on the web site, authors should
also send the abstract of their paper electronically to the two guest editors: <
diego at ics.mq.edu.au >, < vicedo at dlsi.ua.es >.





-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-16-350