19.230, Calls: Computational, General Ling/Italy; Lang Acquisition/USA

Sun Jan 20 00:44:37 UTC 2008

LINGUIST List: Vol-19-230. Sat Jan 19 2008. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 19.230, Calls: Computational, General Ling/Italy; Lang Acquisition/USA

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1)
Date: 18-Jan-2008
From: Jakub Piskorski < Jakub.Piskorski at jrc.it >
Subject: Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing 

2)
Date: 17-Jan-2008
From: Susanne Rott < srott at uic.edu >
Subject: Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:40:23
From: Jakub Piskorski [Jakub.Piskorski at jrc.it]
Subject: Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing
E-mail this message to a friend:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=19-230.html&submissionid=166744&topicid=3&msgnumber=1  

Full Title: Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing 
Short Title: FSMNLP 2008 

Date: 11-Sep-2008 - 12-Sep-2008
Location: Ispra, Italy 
Contact Person: Jakub Piskorski
Meeting Email: Jakub.Piskorski at jrc.it
Web Site: http://langtech.jrc.it/FSMNLP2008 

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; Computational Linguistics; General
Linguistics; Typology 

Call Deadline: 11-May-2008 

Meeting Description

Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing - FSMNLP 2008
Seventh International Workshop

Joint-Research Center of the European Commission, Ispra, Italy
11-12 September 2008
http://langtech.jrc.it/FSMNLP2008 

Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing - FSMNLP 2008
Seventh International Workshop

First Call for Papers 

Joint-Research Center of the European Commission, Ispra, Italy
11-12 September 2008
http://langtech.jrc.it/FSMNLP2008

This year FSMNLP is merged with the FASTAR 
(Finite Automata Systems - Theoretical and Applied Research) 
Workshop (http://www.fastar.org).

Aim and Scope

The aim of the FSMNLP 2008 is to bring together members of the research and
industrial community working on finite-state based models in language
technology, computational linguistics, web mining, linguistics, and cognitive
science or on related theory and methods in fields such as computer science and
mathematics. The workshop will be a forum for researchers and practitioners working

on NLP applications,
on the theoretical and implementation aspects, or
on their combination.

The special theme of FSMNLP 2008 centers around high performance finite-state
devices in large-scale natural language text processing systems
and applications. We invite in particular novel high-quality papers related 
to the topics including:

- practices and experience in deployment of finite-state techniques in
real-world applications processing massive amount of natural language data
- industrial-strength finite-state pattern engines for information retrieval,
information extraction and related text-mining tasks
- scalability issues in FS-based large-scale text processing systems
- efficient finite-state methods in search engines
- implementation, construction, compression and processing techniques for huge
finite-state devices and networks
- novel application and efficiency-oriented finite-state paradigms (compilation
and processing), e.g., finite-state devices with rich label annotations,
unification-based finite-state devices 
- comparative studies of time and space efficient finite-state methods (vs.
other techniques) utilized in NLP applications
- novel application areas for finite-state devices in text processing and
information management systems 
- design patterns for implementing finite-state devices and toolkits 

We also invite submissions that are related to the traditional FSMNLP themes
including but not limited to:

1. NLP applications and linguistic aspects of finite-state methods

The topic includes but is not restricted to:

- speech, sign language, phonology, hyphenation, prosody,
- scripts, text normalization, segmentation, tokenization, indexing,
- morphology, stemming, lemmatisation, information retrieval, web mining,
spelling correction, 
- syntax, POS tagging, partial parsing, disambiguation, information extraction,
question answering 
- machine translation, translation memories, glossing, dialect adaptation,
- annotated corpora and treebanks, semi-automatic annotation, error mining,
searching 

2. Finite-state models of language

With this more focused topic (inside 1) we invite papers on aspects that
motivate sufficiency of finite-state methods or their subsets for capturing
various requirements of natural language processing. The topic includes but is
not restricted to: 

- performance, linguistic applicability, finite-state hypotheses
- Zipf's law and coverage, model checking against finite corpora
- regular approximations under parameterized complexity, limitations and
definitions of relevant complexities such as ambiguity, recursion, crossings,
rule applications, constraint violations, reduplication, exponents,
discontinuity, path-width, and induction depth
- similarity inferences, dissimilation, segmental length, counter-freeness,
asynchronous machines 
- garden-path sentences, deterministic parsing, expected parses, Markov chains
- incremental parsing, uncertainty, reliability/variance in stochastic parsing,
linear sequential machines

3. Practices for building lexical transducers for the world's languages.

The topic accounts for usability of finite-state methods in NLP. It includes but
is not restricted to:

- required user training and consultation, learning curve of non-specialists
- questionnaires, discovery methods, adaptive computer-aided glossing and
interlinearization
- example-based grammars, unsupervised learning, semi-automatic learning,
user-driven learning (see topic 5 too)
- low literacy level and restricted availability of training data, writing
systems/phonology under development, new non-Roman scripts, endangered languages
- linguist's workbenches, stealth-to-wealth parser development 
- experiences of using existing tools (e.g. TWOL) for computational morphology
and phonology

4. Specification and implementation of sets, relations and multiplicities in NLP
using finite state devices

The topic includes but is not restricted to:

- regular rule formalisms, grammar systems, expressions, operations, closure
properties, complexities
- algorithms for compilation, approximation, manipulation, optimization, and
lazy evaluation of finite machines 
- finite string and tree automata, transducers, morphisms and bimorphisms
- weights, registers, multiple tapes, alphabets, state covers and partitions,
representations
- locality, constraint propagation, star-free languages, data vs. query complexity 
- logical specification, MSO(SLR,matches), FO(Str,<), LTL, generalized
restriction, local grammars
- multi-tape automata, same-length relations and partition-based morphology,
Semitic morphology
- autosegmental phonology, shuffle, trajectories, synchronization, segmental
anchoring, alignment constraints, syllable structure, partial-order reductions
- varieties of regular languages and relations, descriptive complexity of
finite-state based grammars
- automaton-based approaches to declarative constraint grammars, constraints in
optimality theory
- parallel corpus annotations, register automata, acyclic timed automata

5. Machine learning of finite-state models of natural language

This topic includes but is not restricted to:

- learning regular rule systems, learning topologies of finite automata and
transducers
- parameter estimation and smoothing, lexical openness
- computer-driven grammar writing, user-driven grammar learning, discovery
procedures 
- data scarcity, realistic variations of Gold's model, learnability and
cognitive science
- incompletely specified finite-state networks
- model-theoretic grammars, gradient well/ill-formedness

6. Finite-state manipulation software (with relevance to the above themes)

This topic includes but is not restricted to

- regular expression pre-compilers such as regexopt, xfst2fsa, standards and
interfaces for finite-state based software components, conversion tools
- tools such as LEXC, Lextools, Intex, XFST, FSM, GRM, WFSC, FIRE Engine, FADD,
FSA/UTR, SRILM, FIRE Station and Grail
- free or almost free software such as MIT FST, Carmel, RWTH FSA, FSA Utilities,
FSM<2.0>, Unitex, OpenFIRE, OpenFST, Vaucanson, SFST, PCKIMMO, MONA, Hopskip,
ASTL, UCFSM, HaLeX, SML, and WFST (see
http://forums.csc.fi/kitwiki/pilot/view/KitWiki/FsmReg for more examples)
- results obtainable with such exploration tools as automata, Autographe, Amore,
and TESTAS 
- visualization tools such as Graphviz and Vaucanson-G
- language-specific resources and descriptions, freely available benchmarking
resources

The descriptions of the topics above are not meant to be complete, and should
extend to cover all traditional FSMNLP topics. Submitted papers or abstracts may
fall in several categories.

Submission

We expect three kinds of submissions: 

- full papers, 
- short papers, and
- interactive software demos. 

Submissions are electronic and in PDF format via a web-based submission server.
Authors are encouraged to use Springer LNCS style (Proceedings and Other
Multiauthor Volumes) for LaTeX in producing the PDF document. More information
on this style can be found at:
http://www.springer.com/east/home/computer/lncs?SGWID=5-164-7-72376-0
The page limit for full papers is 12 pages, whereas short papers and 
software demo descriptions are limited to 6 pages. The information about the
author(s) should be omitted in the submitted papers since the review process wil
be blind. More detailed information will be available soon on the workshops
homepage http://langtech.jrc.it/FSMNLP2008

Publication

The papers and abstracts will be published in FSMNLP 2008 proceedings.
Publication of revised versions of the papers in a special journal issue 
is planned.

Important Dates

Paper submissions due: 11 May 
Notification of acceptance: 11 June
Camera-ready versions due: 30 June 

Program Committee (to be extended)

Cyril Allauzen (Google Research, New York, USA) 
Francisco Casacuberta (Instituto Tecnologico De Informática, Valencia, Spain) 
Maxime Crochemore (King's College London, U.K.) 
Jan Daciuk (Gdansk University of Technology, Poland) 
Karin Haenelt (Fraunhofer Gesellschaft and University of Heidelberg, Germany) 
Thomas Hanneforth (University of Potsdam, Germany) 
André Kempe (Yahoo Search Technologies, Paris, France) 
Derrick Kourie (University of Pretoria, South Africa) 
Andras Kornai (Budapest Institute of Technology, Hungary and MetaCarta, USA)
Hans-Ulrich Krieger (DFKI GmbH, Saarbrücken, Germany) 
Eric Laporte (Université de Marne-la-Vallée, France) 
Stoyan Mihov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria) 
Kemal Oflazer (Sabanci University, Turkey and CMU, Pittsburgh, USA) 
Jakub Piskorski (Joint Research Center of the European Commission, Italy) 
Strahil Ristov (Ruder Boskovic Institute, Zagreb, Croatia) 
Wojciech Rytter (Warsaw University, Poland) 
Jacques Sakarovitch (Ecole nationale supérieure des Télécommunications, France) 
Max Silberztein (Université de Franche-Comté, France) 
Wojciech Skut (Google Research, Mountain View, USA) 
Bruce Watson (Dept. of Computer Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa) 
Shuly Wintner (University of Haifa, Israel) 
Atro Voutilainen (Connexor Oy, Finland) 
Anssi Yli Jyrä (University of Helsinki and CSC Ltd., Espoo, Finland) 
Sheng Yu (University of Western Ontario, Canada) 
Lynette van Zijl (Stellenbosch University, South Africa) 

Organizing Committee

Derrick Kourie (University of Pretoria, South Africa) 
Jakub Piskorski (Joint Research Center of the European Commission, Italy) 
Hristo Tanev (Joint Research Center of the European Commission, Italy) 
Bruce Watson (Dept. of Computer Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa) 

Steering Committee

Lauri Karttunen (Palo Alto Research Center, USA and Stanford University, USA) 
Kimmo Koskenniemi (University of Helsinki, Finland) 
Kemal Oflazer (Sabanci University, Turkey and Carnegie Mellon University, USA) 
Anssi Yli Jyrä (University of Helsinki and CSC Ltd., Espoo)

-------------------------Message 2 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:40:31
From: Susanne Rott [srott at uic.edu]
Subject: Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing
E-mail this message to a friend:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=19-230.html&submissionid=166621&topicid=3&msgnumber=2 

Full Title: Reconciling Language Learning and Assessment 

Date: 25-Apr-2008 - 26-Apr-2008
Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA 
Contact Person: Susanne Rott
Meeting Email: srott at uic.edu
Web Site: http://www.uic.edu/depts/lclc/Research/symposium08.shtml 

Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition 

Call Deadline: 22-Feb-2008 

Meeting Description

Language Symposium 2008 

April 25-26, 2008

Sandi Port Errant Language and Cultural Learning Center, the University of
Illinois at Chicago

Reconciling Language Learning and Assessment 

Call for Proposals

The Sandi Port Errant Language and Culture Learning Center
at the University of Illinois-Chicago

together with

The Center for the Study of Languages
at the University of  Chicago

and

The Council on Language Instruction
The Multimedia Learning Center
The Searle Center for Teaching Excellence
at Northwestern University

Invite you to participate in 

Language Symposium 2008
Reconciling Language Learning and Assessment
April 25-26, 2008
University of Illinois-Chicago

Join us on Friday evening for our opening keynote speaker:
Carol Chapelle
Iowa State University

On Saturday the Symposium will continue with presentations.    
Topics may include:	
- Assessing learners and programs, including curricula
- Classroom testing across skills and levels
- Types of assessment, including alternative assessments and self-assessment
Assessment of language skills and cultural knowledge
- Heritage speakers - challenges and successes
- Scales, descriptors, and guidelines
- Testing instruments, including AP placement tests
- Online and multimedia resources
- Testing research and its application

Language instructors at all levels are invited to submit proposals; all
languages are welcome.

Submission deadline: Friday, February 22, 2008
http://www.uic.edu/depts/lclc/Research/symposium08.shtml

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