EACL 2012 Workshop on Computational Models of Language Acquisition and Loss

[Thierry Poibeau]

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                First Call for Papers
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                EACL 2012 Workshop on
Computational Models of Language Acquisition and Loss

          http://sites.google.com/site/eaclcogws/

Deadline for Submissions: January, 20th, 2012

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The past decades have seen a massive expansion in the application of
statistical and machine learning methods to speech and natural
language processing. This work has yielded impressive results
which have generally been viewed as engineering achievements. Recently
researchers have begun to investigate the relevance of computational
learning methods for research on human language  acquisition and loss.

The human ability to acquire and process language has long attracted
interest and generated much debate due to the apparent ease with which
such a complex and dynamic system is learnt and used on the face of
ambiguity, noise and uncertainty. On the other hand, changes in
language abilities during aging and eventual losses related to conditions
such as Alzheimer's disease and  dementia have also attracted considerable
investigative efforts. Parallels between the acquisition and loss have
been raised, and a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in both,
and of how the algorithms used to access concepts are affected in pathological
cases can lead to earlier diagnosis and more targeted treatments.

The use of computational modeling is a relatively recent trend boosted
by advances in machine learning techniques, and the availability of resources
like corpora of child and child-directed sentences, and data from psycholinguistic
tasks by normal and pathological groups. Many of the existing computational
models attempt to study language tasks under cognitively plausible criteria
(such as memory and processing limitations that humans face), and to explain
the developmental stages observed in the acquisition and evolution of the
language abilities.

The workshop is targeted at anyone interested in the relevance of computational
techniques for understanding first, second and  bilingual language acquisition
and change or loss in normal and pathological conditions. Long and
short papers are invited on, but not limited to, the  following topics:

*Computational learning theory and analysis of language learning
*Computational models of first, second and bilingual language acquisition
*Computational models of language changes in e.g. dementia and
Alzheimer?s Disease
*Computational models and analysis of factors that influence language
acquisition and loss in different age groups and cultures
*Computational models of various aspects of language and their
interaction in acquisition and change
*Computational models of the evolution of language
*Data resources and tools for investigating computational models of
human language processes
*Empirical and theoretical comparisons of the environment and its
impact on acquisition/loss
*Cognitively oriented Bayesian models of language processes
*Computational methods for acquiring various linguistic information
(related to e.g. speech, lexicon, syntax, and semantics) and their
relevance to research on human language acquisition
*Investigations and comparisons of supervised, unsupervised and
weakly-supervised methods for learning (e.g. machine learning,
statistical, symbolic, biologically-inspired, active learning,
various hybrid models)

SUBMISSIONS

We invite three different submission modalities:

 * Regular long papers (8 content pages + 1 page for references):
   Long papers should report on solid and finished research
   including new experimental results, resources and/or techniques.

 * Regular short papers (4 content pages + 1 page for references):
   Short papers should report on small experiments, focused contributions,
   ongoing research, negative results and/or philosophical discussion.

 * System demonstration (2 pages): System demonstration papers should
   describe and document the demonstrated system or resources. We
   encourage the demonstration of both early research prototypes and
   mature systems, that will be presented in a separate demo session.

All submissions must be in PDF format and must follow the EACL
2012 formatting requirements (available at
http://eacl2012.org/information-for-authors/index.html).
We strongly advise the use of the provided Word or LaTeX template
files. For long and short papers, the reported research should
be substantially original. The papers will be presented orally or as
posters. The decision as to which paper will be presented orally
and which as poster will be made by the program committee based
on the nature rather than on the quality of the work.

Reviewing will be double-blind, and thus no author information
should be included in the papers; self-reference should be
avoided as well. Papers that do not conform to these requirements
will be rejected without review. Accepted papers will appear in the
workshop proceedings, where no distinction will be made between
papers presented orally or as posters.

Submission and reviewing will be electronic, managed by the START system:

   https://www.softconf.com/eacl2012/Cognitive2012/

Submissions must be uploaded onto the START system by the submission deadline:

  January 20, 2012 (11:59pm Samoa Time; UTC/GMT -11 hours)

Please chose the appropriate submission type from the starting
submission page, according to the category of your paper.

IMPORTANT DATES

Jan 20, 2012    Paper submission deadline
Feb 20, 2012    Notification of acceptance
Mar 09, 2012    Camera-ready deadline
Apr 23 or 24, 2012      Workshop

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Afra Alishahi, Tilburg University (Netherlands)
Colin J Bannard, University of Texas at Austin (USA)
Marco Baroni, University of Trento (Italy)
Jim Blevins, University of Cambridge (UK)
Rens Bod, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Antal van den Bosch, Tilburg University (Netherlands)
Alexander Clark,  Royal Holloway, University of London (UK)
Robin Clark, University of Pennsylvania (USA)
Matthew W. Crocker, Saarland University (Germany)
James Cussens, University of York (UK)
Walter Daelemans, University of Antwerp (Belgium) and Tilburg University (Netherlands)
Barry Devereux, University of Cambridge (UK)
Sonja Eisenbeiss, University of Essex (UK)
Afsaneh Fazly, University of Toronto (Canada)
Cynthia Fisher, University of Illinois (USA)
Jeroen Geertzen, University of Cambridge (UK)
Henriette Hendriks, University of Cambridge (UK)
Marco Idiart, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)
Aravind Joshi, University of Pennsylvania (USA)
Shalom Lappin, King's College London (UK)
Alessandro Lenci, University of Pisa (Italy)
Igor Malioutov, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)
Marie-Catherine de Marneffe, Stanford University (USA)
Fanny Meunier, Lumière Lyon 2 University (France)
Brian Murphy, Carnegie Mellon University (USA)
Maria Alice Parente, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)
Massimo Poesio, University of Essex (UK)
Brechtje Post, University of Cambridge (UK)
Ari Rappoport, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel)
Dan Roth, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA)
Kenji Sagae, University of Southern California (USA)
Sabine Schulte im Walde, University of Stuttgart (Germany)
Ekaterina Shutova, University of Cambridge (UK)
Maity Siqueira, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)
Mark Steedman, University of Edinburgh (UK)
Shuly Wintner, University of Haifa (Israel)
Charles Yang, University of Pennsylvania (USA)
Beracah Yankama, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)
Menno van Zaanen, Macquarie University (Australia)
Michael Zock, LIF, CNRS,  Marseille (France)

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS AND CONTACT

Robert Berwick, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)
Anna Korhonen, University of Cambridge (UK)
Thierry Poibeau, LaTTiCe-CNRS (France) and University of Cambridge (UK)
Aline Villavicencio, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) and
   Massachussets Institute of Technology (USA)

For any inquiries regarding the workshop please send an email
to cognitivemodels2012 at gmail.com
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