Appel: Special issue of the french journal TAL on dialog

[Alexis Nasr]

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                         CALL FOR PAPERS
                   Deadline: 31 january 2002
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                            DIALOG
		  Linguistic Aspects of the
              Computational Treatment of Dialog

           Special issue of the french journal TAL edited by
                 Claire Gardent (CNRS, Nancy)  et
         Jean-Marie Pierrel (Universite Henri Poincare, Nancy)

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SCOPE : Linguistic aspects of human-computer dialogs

Language, alone or in interaction with other medien, is one of the
most important means of communication between humans. It is also
increasingly used in written or multi-modal human-computer interaction
with the aim of providing the user with a more natural and more convivial
means of interaction. The aim of this special issue is to bring
together results bearing on the modeling and implementation of these
linguistics aspects which are specific to human-computer dialogs.

Dialog cannot be reduced to the simple juxtaposition of an
analysis/recognition process with a generation/synthesis one. It
raises a number of specific issues linked to the structure and usage
of language in a dialogic context which must be taken into account to
satisfy a minimal degree of acceptability such as for instance:

- the modeling of utterances in a dialogic context which, to support
a high flexibility and tolerance for the unexpected (repairs,
heistations, self-repairs) requires a redefinition of the notion of
syntactic well-formedness and completeness;

- a model of context-based interpretation which can deal with the
ellipses and anaphors typical of a dialog context and more generally
with the complex interactions between language, context of use and
domain of application that are characteristic of dialogs;

- a formalisation of the reasoning and inference processes underlying
dialog which is necessary to go beyond a simple question/answer
system and usually goes hand-in-hand with a full-scale modeling of
dialog systems.

TOPICS (NOT LIMITATIVE)

In this special issue, we wish to publish either innovative papers or
synthesis and prospective articles bearing on the following topics:

- Dialog and corpora: annotation schems for written and spoken dialog;
techniques, tools and resources for the treatment of dialog corpora;
Corpus analysis results.
- Flexibility and tolerance for the unexpected: linguistic analysis,
modeling and inplementation of repairs, hesitations and self-repairs;
- Anaphors and ellipses in dialog : syntax, semantics and/or prosody;
- Prosody in Dialog: role and modeling;
- Modeling of the reference mechanisms used in dialog (to objects
and/or to eventualities);
- Dialog functions and dialog management;
- Context-based interpretation and/or planning of responses -- in
particular, how these contribute to a more natural interaction;
- Representation of dialog specific structures;
- Dialog models;
- User intentions and conversational phenomena;
- Speech acts, structure and planning of dialog;
- Presuppositions in dialog;
- Adaptation to the user;
- Dialog acceptability and consequences on the architecture of
Dialog systems;
- Evaluation of dialog systems.


FORMAT

The articles (25 pages maximum) will be submitted either in Word or in
Latex. The HERMES style files are available at
<http://www.editions-hermes.fr/ rubrique Auteurs>


LANGUAGE

Articles can be written in French or in English. English written
articles are only accepted from non-french speaking authors.

DEADLINES

The deadline for submission is 31 January 2002. A notification of
intention to submit should be sent to Claire Gardent
(Claire Gardent at loria.fr) or Jean-Marie Pierrel
(Jean-Marie.Pierrel at inalf.fr) before 31 December 2001.

The articles will be refereed by a member of the TAL editorial board
and by two members of the editorial committee specifically created by
the guest editors for this special issue. The decision of the
editorial boards will be communicated to the authors on 31 March
2002.

The final version of the accepted papers is due on 30 June for a
publication scheduled for Autumn 2002.

SUBMISSIONS

The articles must be submitted either electronically to
Isabelle.Blanchard at loria.fr or as hardcopy (three copies) to:

	Isabelle Blanchard
 	Batiment LORIA-CNRS
	BP 239
	F-54506 Vandoeuvre lès Nancy CEDEX
	France

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE (Preliminary)
- Jean-Yves Antoine, University of Brittany (France)
- Niels Ole Bernsen, University of Southern-Denmark (Denmark)
- Johan Bos, University d'Edimburg (UK)
- Jean Caelen, CNRS, Grenoble (France)
- Jean Carletta, University of Edinburgh (UK)
- Claire Gardent, CNRS, Nancy (France)
- Daniel Luzati, University of le Mans (France)
- David Milward, SRI, Cambridge (UK)
- Jacques Moeschler, University of Geeva (Switzerland)
- Jean-Marie Pierrel, ATILF & LORIA, Nancy (France)
- Massimo Poesio, University of Essex (UK)
- Owen Rambow, ATT Labs (USA)
- Norbert Reithinger, DFKI (Germany)
- Hannes Rieser, University of Bielefeld (Germany)
- Laurent Romary, INRIA, Nancy (France)
- Gérard Sabah, LIMSI  (France)
- Paul Sabatier, LIM (France)
- Donia Scott, ITRI, Brighton (UK)
- Jacques Siroux, IRISA (France)
- Kees van Deemter, ITRI, Brighton (UK)
- Henk Zeevat, University d'Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

JOURNAL T.A.L. (http://www.atala.org/tal/)

The international journal Traitement Automatique des Langues (TAL) has
been published since 1969 by the french Association pour le traitement
automatique des langues (ATALA) with the support of the Centre
National pour la recherche scientifique (CNRS). The journal TAL covers
all fields of computational linguistics and its aim is to provide mainly
(but not only) french speaking researchers and students with
publications in all domains of computational linguistics. It appears
three times a year and is distributed by HERMES.

T.A.L. EDITORIAL BOARD

Anne Abeille (University Paris VII, France)
Philippe Blache (CNRS, Aix-en-Provence)
Pierrette Bouillon (ISSCO, Geneva, Switzerland)
Anne Condamines (CNRS, Toulouse, France)
Christophe d'Alessandro (CNRS, Orsay, France) -- Chief editor
Éric De la Clergerie (INRIA, Rocquencourt, France)
Marc El-Bèze (University of  Avignon, France)
Dominique Estival (Sydney, Australia)
Claire Gardent (CNRS, Nancy, France) -- Chief editor
Sylvain Kahane (University Paris 7, France)
Alain Lecomte (University Pierre Mendès France, Grenoble, France)
Denis Maurel (University of Tours, France)
Piet Mertens (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)
Marie-Paule Pery-Woodley (University Toulouse le Mirail, France)
Jean-Marie Pierrel (LORIA, Nancy, France)
Christian Retoré (University of Nantes and INRIA, Rennes, France)
Évelyne Tzoukermann (Bell Labs, USA)
Bernard Victorri (CNRS, Paris, France) -- Chief editor
Pierre Zweigenbaum (University Paris 6, France)


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