Appel: Enhancing and using electronic dictionaries, Coling workshop

Fri Mar 5 16:57:03 UTC 2004

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 17:50:43 +0900
From: Michael Zock <zock at cl.cs.titech.ac.jp>
Message-Id: <a06020400bc6c9daf5ae0@[192.168.208.98]>
X-url: http://www.limsi.fr/Individu/zock/coling2004workshop.html
X-url: http://www.issco.unige.ch/coling2004/
X-url: http://www.issco.unige.ch/coling2004/coling2004downloads.html

Enhancing and using electronic dictionaries

Michael Zock (Limsi, CNRS) & Patrick St. Dizier (Irit, CNRS)

Introduction

A dictionary is a vital component of any natural language processing
system. Its modern, digital form has considerable potential,
especially if it is extended and built in a way compatible with the
needs and habits of the average language user. There are many ways to
make an electronic dictionary useful for people in their daily tasks
of processing language. One could assist

1. reading and writing: adding a transliterator and a morphological
generator/parser to a dictionary would put the needed information at
the distance of a mouse click. Imagine someone trying to look up the
meaning (or translation) of a word in a script he can’t read.
2. language learning: combining dictionaries with a parametrizable
flashcard system and a goal-driven exercice generator could help the
memorization and automation of words and basic syntactic patterns. In
such a system choosing a goal would trigger syntactic templates,
filling the latter with words would yield (simple) sentences.
3. lexical access (navigation): structuring the dictionary in a
similar way as the human mind, i.e. building an associative network
akin to WordNet, but with many more links in particular at the
syntagmatic axis, could assist the writer not only in finding new
ideas (brainstorming), but also the word he is looking for. Within
this framework, word access amounts to entering and navigating in a
huge, associative network. To build such a tool one could extract
associations from an encyclopedia, label and add them as links to a
resource like WordNet.

As one can see, there are numerous ways to enhance dictionaries. While
the new hardware offers many, sometimes surprising opportunities for
novel uses, seizing them requires some rethinking. This is the goal of
this one-day workshop.

In particular, we’d like to discuss interesting extensions and
enhancements of electronic dictionaries. For example, one could
consider merging different, thesaurus-like dictionaries and see what
kind of conceptual and navigational aids might be added to support the
language user: what are his needs, what information is he looking for?
Actually, a focus shift might be necessary to move from the data
(content and size of the dictionary) to their organisation and
access. As, what is a huge dictionary good for, if one cannot find the
word one is looking for?

Target audience

The aim of this workshop is to bring together leading researchers
involved in the building of electronic dictionaries to discuss
modifications of existing resources in line with the users’ needs
(i.e. how to capitalize on the advantages of the digital form). Given
the breadth of the questions, we welcome reports on work from many
perspectives, including, but not limited, to linguistics, computer
science, psycholinguistics, language learning, and ergonomics. We
request that each contribution addresses computational aspects.

Topics

We would like to invite papers addressing any of the following issues:

type of information to be stored in the dictionary
representation and structuring (indexing) of the data;
management, visualization and useability of the data;
access (aids for navigation, interface, strategies);
acquisition of lexical data (corpus);
possibilities for editing entries (annotation, updating);
integration (combination of the dictionary with
other ressources, writer’s workbench);
uses of dictionaries by people
(learning/teaching; writing) and by machines
(NLP).

Submission instructions

Papers should be original, hence report on
previously unpublished work. Papers
simultaneously submitted to other conferences
should reflect this fact on the title page.

As the review process will not be blind, papers
should contain the names and affiliations of
authors.

Submissions must be electronic only, and should consist of full papers
of max. 8 pages (inclusive of references, tables, figures and
equations).  Project notes and position papers should not exceed 4
pages. Authors should follow the COLING 2004 formating guidelines,
available at:
http://www.issco.unige.ch/coling2004/coling2004downloads.html.

All submissions should be made by email to the following address
zock at limsi.fr. They should consist of a single PDF file. Before
submitting your document, please verify that all non-standard fonts
are correctly embedded in your PDF file (you can do this by disabling
the "Use Local Font" option when viewing your document with Adobe's
Reader).

Formating requirements for the final version of the papers will be
posted as soon as they become available.

Important dates

* Deadline for workshop paper submissions: 1st
May 2004 * Notification of workshop paper
acceptance: 1st June 2004 * Deadline for
camera-ready workshop papers: 15th June 2004 *
Workshop Date: 29th August 2004

Organising Committee:

* Michael Zock (Limsi-CNRS, Orsay, France) chair
* Patrick Saint Dizier (IRIT-CNRS, Toulouse, France)

Program Committee:

* Antonietta Alonge (University of Perugia, Italy)
* Christian Boitet (GETA, Grenoble, France)
* Nicoletta Calzolari (ILC-CNR, Pisa, Italy)
* Christiane Fellbaum (University of Princeton, USA)
* Graeme Hirst (University of Toronto, Canada)
* Mathieu Mangeot-Nagata (NII, Tokyo)
* Rada Mihalcea (University of North Texas, USA)
* Alain Polguère (OLST, University of Montreal, Canada)
* James Pustejovsky (University of Brandeis, USA)
* Gilles Sérasset (GETA, Grenoble, France)
* Patrick Saint Dizier (IRIT-CNRS, Toulouse, France)
* Takenobu Tokunaga (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan)
* Dan Tufis (RACAI, Bucharest, Roumania)
* Jean Véronis (University of Aix en Provence, France)
* Piek Vossen (Irion Technologies, Delft, The Netherlands)
* Leo Wanner (University of Stuttgart, Germany)
* Michael Zock (Limsi-CNRS, France)

Contact

For any queries please contact Michael Zock:
zock at limsi.fr

........................................................

Michael ZOCK c/o Professor Tokunaga
Department of Computer Science
Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering
Tokyo Institute of Technology
Oookayama 2-12-1, Meguro Ku
TOKYO 152-8552/ Japan
url:	  http://www.limsi.fr/Individu/zock/

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